Category: california
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Midcentury California Cohousing: Crestwood Hills
THE ORIGIN of Crestwood Hills begins in the cadence of a fairytale. Four musicians, returning from war, dreamt of combining their resources to build four neighborly homes around a swimming pool. It was 1946, in the midst of a severe housing shortage in southern California, and the musicians’ dream proved attractive to many. After placing an…
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Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California & Graphic Design, 1936–1986
“MONOTONE DOES NOT signal class (at least in Southern California),” writes designer Lorraine Wild in Louise Sandhaus’s recent survey Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California & Graphic Design, 1936–1986. Wild’s observation, like many others in this captivating, dayglo-jacketed book, celebrates a visual history of an environment that seems to counter the stringent, sometimes monotone rules of…
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The Wedge: Redesigning the Cabin
After his first camping trip to Yosemite, in 1921, architect Rudolf Schindler declared that he wanted to build a “permanent tent.” A couple years later, his newly built home in West Hollywood featured sleeping porches sheltered by canvas for outdoor slumber, and yards landscaped to function as outdoor living rooms, with fireplaces in case one…
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The Remarkable Nature Boys of Los Angeles
A photograph taken near Palm Springs, California, depicts a long-haired, bearded man sitting on a tree stump playing slide guitar. He’s barefoot and wears a loose wrap around his waist. Behind him is a simple hut he built himself, covered with palm fronds. The man is William Pester. He’s been living in the desert for…
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Surreal Grandeur of San Francisco’s Little-Known Salt Fields
The southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area is known for expensive real estate, tech companies, and aerospace engineers. Less well known is its salt content. Yet the salt industry has been a vital part of the South Bay for more than a century. Fly into any of the region’s airports and evidence of this…
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Seismic Shift: Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal and California Landscape Photography, 1944-1984
Joe Deal, reflecting on his landscape photographs of the early 1970s, wrote: “Why contribute, I reasoned, to the growing pile of photographs of an idealized American landscape while it was being chewed up before our eyes by advancing suburban development, interstate highways and shopping malls?” Deal’s sentiments were shared by a new school of Southern California-based…
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Hot Tub Books from the 70s
“Some say bathing alone is a sin.” Do you have more examples? If so, email me. The Odd Book Club of Los Angeles is always on the lookout.