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Conference Schedule
Thursday June 5
9:30am - 5:00pm
Morning Keynote
Interview with Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti
Sam Grawe, Dwell Editor-in-Chief
The focus of this year’s conference is Los Angeles and the ways in which this region is dealing with the new challenges facing it: increasing density, and need to live more sustainably. Who better to discuss this than Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti? A fourth-generation Angeleno who was raised in a suburban home in the Valley, Garcetti is now a firm advocate of smart growth – even when it earns him criticism – and has been a leader in using legislation to promote green design. Garcetti is in the vanguard of reshaping Los Angeles to meet today’s needs. To cap his appeal to Dwell readers, he loves good Modern architecture.
Track A Session 1: Los Angeles LEEDs the way?
What does a mandated LEED program mean for the City of Los Angeles?
Moderator: Aaron Britt, Dwell Editor
With a stroke of Governor Schwarzenegger’s pen Executive Order S-20-04 mandated that all California state-owned construction and renovations comply with LEED Silver standards. Smaller municipalities have taken further steps towards mandating LEED, among them the City of Los Angeles where an ordinance, authored by Council President Eric Garcetti, was just voted into law, calling for all buildings over 100,000 square feet to be LEED certified. Malibu is considering whether to waive certain permit fees if construction meets LEED standards. What does this mean for developers and architects? Does it go too far or not far enough? Can a building be green without the imprimatur of LEED? How far can, and should, the government go in the service of green building? Are incentives preferable to mandates?
Los Angeles city councilman Eric Garcetti, architect Roger Kurath of Design 21 and Walker Wells, Director of the Resource Efficiency and Sustainable Communities Program for Global Green USA take up just that question in a discussion that will address the affordability of citywide green design, the boundaries of government intervention in the private sector, and if it opts to, how precisely the city of Los Angeles ought to go about greening things up.
Sarah Dusseault
Senior Policy Advisor
City of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA
Warren Wagner, AIA
Founder and Principal
W3 Architects
Venice, CA
Walker Wells, AICP LEED AP
Director of the Resource Efficiency
and Sustainable Communities Program
Global Green USA
Santa Monica, CA
Track B Session 1: Nature meets the Metropolis
Weaving Wildlife and Growing Food in the City.
Moderator: Amber Bravo, Dwell Senior Editor
This session will address the importance of inserting green space—of both the prodigious and deciduous variety—into the urban context. Fritz Haeg and Andy Lipkis will speak about their respective initiatives to bring sensible, ecologically responsible practices to the greater community and discuss the ways in which small-scale interventions can yield manifold results.
Fritz Haeg
Principal, Fritz Haeg Studio
Founder, Edible Estates and Gardenlab
Los Angeles, CA
Dale Bell
Principal and Founder
Media & Policy Center Foundation
Santa Monica, CA
Break
Track A Session 2: LA Grows UP: Dealing with Density
Vertical Cities and Multifamily Projects.
Moderator: Frances Anderton, Dwell Los Angeles Editor
Where most major cities in the US are dense and vertical, LA has been distinctively horizontal – a sprawling county of around 10 million people spread over 4000 square miles in mostly single family houses, with easy access, by car, to the network of freeways and wide surface streets. This urban model has enabled a lifestyle that felt liberating and self-determining, and that prioritized private space over public. It also produced some highly original and influential residential architecture.
But as LA’s population has grown and its affordable, available land has diminished, the region is going increasingly vertical. In the last few years there has been an explosion of construction of low and high-rise multi-family buildings, from non-profit affordable housing, to high-end condo towers in downtown, Century City and Hollywood. Some of these buildings are designed by top Los Angeles architects and are very exciting architecturally.
But the vertical development is also disturbing to many Angelenos, who associate it with traffic congestion, density and loss of the free-spirited LA lifestyle, especially since this “manhattanization” of LA has not yet caused people to get out of their cars and use public transportation.
At Dwell on Design, we’ll discuss the architectural and social opportunities, and the challenges, facing Los Angeles as it Grows UP.
James L. Atkins, P.E.
Partner
The South Group and Williams & Dame Development
Los Angeles, CA
Angela Brooks, AIA, LEED AP
Principal
Pugh + Scarpa Architecture
Santa Monica, CA
Founder, Livable Places
Scott Johnson, FAIA
Design Partner
Johnson Fain
Los Angeles, CA
Christoph Kapeller, AIA
Principal
CK-Architecture
Los Angeles, CA
Lorcan O’Herlihy, AIA
Founder/Principal
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects
Culver City, CA
Doug Suisman, FAIA
Principal
Suisman Urban Design
Santa Monica, CA
Olivier Touraine
Touraine Richmond Architects
Venice, CA
Track B Session 2: The Face of Gardens in a Densifying City
Gardens in the Sky, Public Parks on the Ground.
Moderator: Geoff Manaugh, Dwell Senior Editor
This panel will explore the aesthetic role, civic importance, and social impact of gardens in the city. Cultivated green space, even on the scale of the home garden, adds more than just biological diversity; it can utterly transform both the texture and character of an urban environment. Five exciting speakers will explain how landscape – the space between buildings – is as much a part of the city as the architecture, and what parks, campuses, green roofs, and streetscapes can do for an urban community.
Freya Bardell
Partner
Greenmeme
Los Angeles, CA
Judy Kameon
Founder/Principal
Elysian Landscapes
Los Angeles, CA
Sarah Graham
Principal
agps architecture
Los Angeles, CA
Zurich, CH
Mark Rios, FAIA, FSLA
Founding Principal
Rios Clementi Hale Studios
Los Angeles, CA
Katherine Spitz, AIA, ASLA
Principal
Katherine Spitz Associates
Marina Del Rey, CA
Lunch Break
Meals available from concessions at Los Angeles Convention Center
Presentation: The Designer's Accord
Valerie Casey
Founder
The Designers Accord
San Francisco, CA
Presentation: Now That Everyone Can Fly
Aidan Chopra
Product evangelist
Google SketchUp
Mountain View, CA
Presentation: Craft Story
Track A Session 3: Design Developers
Progressive developers investing in good design.
Moderator: Aaron Britt, Dwell Editor
Planned obsolescence isn’t just for your laptop anymore, or that secret switchgrass plantation out back. A worrying amount of new construction, far more concerned with the bottom line than any form of longevity, isn’t meant to last for more than twenty years with the prevailing build-it-up-tear-it-down mindset. And LA, a city seemingly founded on the concept of the strip mall, is one of California’s prime offenders. But as these five developers and designers so aptly demonstrate, Los Angeles’ unique character needn’t be lost in the push toward greener pastures.
Our panelists have all shown a commitment not just to beautifying Los Angeles, but to doing so through sensitive, progressive design. We’ll sit down to discuss what role developers and planners must take to ensure that good design gets off the drawing board and into our cities. Richard Loring Paul Solomon
John Chase
Urban Designer
City of West Hollywood
West Hollywood, CA
Managing Director
Habitat Group Los Angeles LLC
Los Angeles, CA
Cara Mullio
Principal,
Root Development, LLC
Los Angeles, CA
Rose Olson
Director of Development,
Urban Environments LA
Los Angeles, CA
Founder and Partner
Linear City
Los Angeles, CA
Founder and Partner Linear CityLos Angeles, CA
Track B Session 3: The Inventive Spirit.
Innovators in Resource and Energy Efficiency
Moderator: Sarah Rich, Dwell Editor
There are plenty of arguments about the merit or futility of various "green" actions. Is corn-based plastic better than glass? Is it better to buy a new hybrid or keep your old gas-guzzler until it croaks? The one thing that everyone agrees on, however, is that reducing energy use is critical if we are to halt climate change and prevent planetary meltdown.
Buildings alone account for almost half of the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the US. By directing research and resources towards energy innovation in the building industry alone, we stand to make real progress toward slowing the overall rate of global warming. As architect Edward Mazria states in the Architecture 2030 Challenge, "Slowing the growth rate of GHG emissions and then reversing it over the next ten years is the key to keeping global warming under one degree centigrade (°C) above today's level."
In this session we will hear from innovators in energy innovation in the building sector, about the challenges of creating unprecedented solutions and leading by example.
Monica Gilchrist
Green Building Resource Center Coordinator
Global Green USA
Santa Monica, CA
Jonathan Budner
Project manager for Sustainable Communities and the California New Homes Program
Southern California Edison
Nat Kreamer
President and COO
Sun Run Generation LLC
San Francisco, CA
Break
Track A Session 4: Single Family Dwellings;
Green within reason.
Integrating concepts of sustainability into single family home design.
Moderator: Geoff Manaugh, Dwell Senior Editor
Being green more often than not starts at home – even with the home itself. But building green takes place in the context of a neighborhood, a community, and a legal and economic climate. These factors can work both for and against the constructive pursuit of sustainability. Here, four panelists will discuss their extensive and diverse experiences working with city & regional governments, private developers, and nonprofits, to reflect upon the practical side of the sustainable single family home, as well as the more abstract notions that have inspired their particular work. We will discuss the costs, material possibilities, and family impact of going green.
Steve Glenn Michael Hricak, FAIA Alejandra Lillo Track B Session 4: (R)evolution in light, form and materials Moderator: Sam Grawe, Dwell Editor-in-Chief Through history, the evolution of form has largely been catalyzed by the evolution of technology and materials. Great gothic expanses of glass were made possible by harnessing the strength of the arch. Our modern cities grew skyward by virtue of steel and glass. The space age was powered by plastic, and the computer age offers an as-yet untapped universe of possibility. In today's world, the designer faces a mind-boggling array of challenges, but is offered an ever- increasing palette of tools from which to tackle the problem at hand. Our panelists will share their imaginative design processes which weave together new technologies and materials with factors such as social-consciousness and environmental responsibility. Enrico Bressan Patrick Tighe, AIA
Founder and CEO
LivingHomes, LLC
Principal
Michael Hricak Architects
Venice, CA
Partner
GRAFT LLC
Los Angeles, CA
Greg Reitz
Founder and Principal
REthink Development
Culver City, CA
Tone Wheeler
Principal
Environa Studio
Sydney, Australia
How are new materials and systems impacting the design world?
Benjamin Ball
Ball-Nogues Studio
Los Angeles, CA
Principal & Co-Art Director
Artecnica Inc.
Los Angeles, CA
Jenna Didier
Founder, Materials & Applications
Principal, Fountainhead Design
Collaborator, infranatural
Los Angeles, CA
Principal and lead designer
Tighe Architecture
Santa Monica,CA
End of Thursday proceedings.
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