While we bloggers sometimes have an uneasy relationship with the LA Times, every once in a while we feel like the paper does something right. Case in point - architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne's (the non-douchey Nicolai Ouroussoff) new column in West magazine, whose debut this week had the good sense to cover, well, us. We were intrigued - is Hawthorne straying from architectural criticism and delving into the murky waters of urban planning and theory? We asked, and he answered:
The piece on architecture and ugliness, which will appear in print on Sunday, is the debut of a column called Watch This Space that I'll be contributing to the magazine (now relaunched as a monthly). I'll be writing about L.A.'s slow and often awkward transition from private to public (& more crowded) city and what that means for the notion of shared space, whether it's in post-fire Griffith Park, along a sidewalk somewhere or in a subway car. My hope is that it'll allow me to explore some topics that are timely and really interest me but don't always lend themselves to straight architectural criticism.So we will indeed be watching that space, both literally and metaphorically. After all, we love puns.