WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing covered a range of cultural issues and was widely known for its innovative use of graphic art. Started as a simple one-man operation that included artwork and text solicited from friends and acquaintances, the production, team, and circulation of the magazine would grow over the years. Its content also evolved to cover a wider expanse of stories that captured a smart and artsy Los Angeles attitude that was emerging at the same time as punk, but with its own distinct aesthetic. The magazine’s energetic creativity and flair for the absurd would remain a constant. As design problems arose, solutions were often improvised on the spot, creating a quirky and prescient editorial sensibility that remains one of WET's most enduring legacies. Its layout and design helped to catalyze the graphic styles (NSFW) later known as New Wave and Postmodern.
posted by Trurl
on May 4, 2012 -
9 comments
The Jackie Robinson of architecture. An orphaned African American boy from downtown Los Angeles,
Paul Revere Williams wanted to be an architect, and when he mentioned his career goal the high school guidance counselor ”stared at me with as much astonishment as he would have had I proposed a rocket flight to Mars...
Whoever heard of a Negro being an architect?”. Therefore, Williams learned to read and draw upside down -- he knew that white clients would not sit next to him --
graduated from USC and in 1924 became the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi. In a
50-year long extraordinary career, he designed landmarks like the
Theme restaurant at
Los Angeles International Airport (with
Welton Becket), the
LA County Courthouse, the
Hollywood YMCA,
Saks Fifth Avenue in
Beverly Hills, restored the Beverly Hills Hotel. Some of his most interesting buildings, like the
La Concha Motel in
Las Vegas have either been
razed to the
ground or, like the "
Batman house", aka
160 S San Rafael mansion in Pasadena, have been destroyed by fire. Now, Williams' historic
Morris Landau House has been
cut into 21 separate pieces and sits in a Santa Clarita storage yard,
rotting away. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jul 2, 2006 -
25 comments
The most modern home built in the world. "From the outside it looks
like a spaceship you cannot enter. But if you go inside, it feels very cozy… very Zen and calming. Maybe because you are
floating above the city, in the sky".
John Lautner's
Chemosphere residence is the product of a
fortuitous union of architect, client, time and place.
Leonard Malin was a young aerospace engineer in late-1950s L.A. whose father-in-law had just given him a plot north of Mulholland Drive, near Laurel Canyon. The only catch: at roughly 45 degrees, the slope was all but unbuildable. Lautner sketched a bold vertical line, a cross, and a curve above it. "Draw it up," he told his assistant.
Now publisher
Benedikt Taschen owns Chemosphere (NSFW), and after 20 years of neglect the house has been beautifully
restored (.pdf) by
Frank Escher.
posted by matteo
on Apr 7, 2005 -
24 comments
