Our End o' Year Awards are broken into multiple pieces and categories. We give you Architecture awards now, with Urban Planning, Real Estate and Curbed Stuff coming later. Renderings have been posted. Thank you for continuing to read the blog.
ARCHITECTURE TRENDS
Everybody's Gone Green: LEEDiest Building
WINNER: Wired Living Homes. We're lacking a measuring stick to properly compare how green your house/office/igloo is so we're relying on our own coverage, and no developer milks the coverage like Steve Glenn's LivingHomes, which finished its second home this year with the help of Wired Magazine. We attended the home's opening party, parked ourselves outside the food service pen with a glass of eco-wine, and had a very LEEDy evening. [more]
Architectural Feature Most Likely To Bring Out the Pitchforks
WINNER: The Asshat. The corner-circle tower with a cap on it has become pervasive in the lexicon of Los Angeles architecture. The trendy little architectural flourish wore out its welcome early on, but it was too late for many buildings who will forever be decorated by the asshat -- a sure sign of mid-2000's lack of imagination aka crapitecture. [more]
Architectural Idea Most Likely To Free Us From Our Middling Existence
WINNER: Recycling of Society's Garbage to Make a Home. David Hertz may have gone big with his house made from an airplane, but others have put recycled materials to good use this year, including architect Peter Demaria who reused old shipping containers to build a home in Redondo Beach. DeMaria is also piecing together a community-center in Boyle Heights using the containers. Project 7 Ten also found ways to build with recyclables, as did Pugh + Scarpa whose wall of crushed cans helped save a few trees in the construction of the Community Corp affordable housing project in Santa Monica.