It's an awesome feeling knowing that through Christ our Lord and Savior we can be forgiven and live a new life. I just recently got baptized this afternoon, and it was a fun and exciting experience finally knowing and understanding the meaning behind the baptism. I would encourage everyone who calls them self a Christian to get baptized as well.

God Bless,

Home Sweet Home!

Finally, this semester is OVER! well not quite, I still have two finals tomorrow. As I venture off to new and brighter things, my departure from Fullerton College is well overdue. I have to say, when I first started at FC, it was a thrill and intimidating at the same time, however now that I matured and enlightened my conscience on the nature of our society, I am overwhelmed with humility. I have come to accomplish a lot in this spurt of my life and lessons I did learn, some the hard way and others not so much. Architecture has become my true passion, but more importantly, improving the conditions of our underprivileged parts of our communities. As for now, I will embark on a new adventure, hopefully at USC, "Fight On!" but really, I can't wait to stop making that early morning drive to the O.C., and look forward to making that drive west. LA is my home and I feel good about that. I am just amazed as to how many people I encountered while in the O.C. that really don't know what LA is all about, and frankly I'm a little tired of everyone saying LA is ghetto when they never even venture out that way anyway. Oh well, I know the true LA, its better that I keep my secret spots to myself anyway. Seriously though, LA is the best place to live, and this is evident by all the out of towner's thronging here from all over the nation after one visit. To each is his own, and I hope the best for all the friends and acquaintances that I made while in the O.C., BUT SEE YA!

Another Gehry Building

Frank Gehry's buildings can look unfinished or unruly, even a bit chaotic. But they often have surprisingly direct metaphorical stories to tell.Walt Disney Concert Hall is a joyously informal ship of state for a city keen to come together, if only for a few hours, in a collective experience. Gehry's own house in Santa Monica, a modest pink bungalow the architect wrapped in colliding layers of corrugated metal and chain link, is an unabashed affirmation of the workaday, un-pretty built landscape of Southern California.In the case of Gehry's newest project, the riotously sculptural $100-million Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, the story is about the depths, and ultimately the limits of the human mind.

It's the poignancy of that architectural narrative that ultimately helps the building, which will open officially with a gala celebration Saturday night, overcome its reliance on some of Gehry's most recognizable architectural gestures. For me, and I suspect for other critics and architects, some of these strategies, intentionally crude detailing, exposed structure and the casual juxtaposition of dramatic and banal spaces, to name just three — have lost more than a little freshness over the years, particularly as the size and budgets of Gehry's projects have soared.At the Ruvo Center, which rises from a wide-open intersection about a mile north of the big casinos lining the Las Vegas Strip, the familiarity of those elements is balanced by a deep, affecting humanism at the building's core. This is surely in large part because the Ruvo Center's mission the complex is dedicated to research on and treatment of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and other neurological diseases, is one Gehry has fully embraced.

Yet with his new addition to his portfolio, Gehry continues to push the limits of Architecture, however, is it a bit too far. Some might say his style is drastically progressing as he ages, and others beg to differ. As a young aspiring Architecture student, my peers and I continue to see Gehry in a different light, Yes he's an innovator, but sometimes his new designs just strike me as him losing his knack for functionality and practicality. Its almost as if Gehry is just being lazy with his designs and trying to produce some hocky building until someone says something to him. I hope for continued success for Gehry, but I am awaiting the story when he is smashed by the client for producing something they really don't like.

Changing Face of Education

Nearly anywhere you drive nowadays you can cruise past a public school that’s recently been opened. You can’t miss them, from the High School of Visual and Performing Arts’ erector-set tower looming above the 101 freeway downtown to the six-story concrete-and-glass hulk of the Helen Bernstein High School at Sunset and Wilton to one of those purple or green or yellow or orange buildings that occupy prominent intersections in Pacoima, San Pedro, Huntington Park, and beyond. The schools are not just splashily spray-painted; they’re in-your-face urban. Often two or three stories high, they’re shoved right to the sidewalk, the opposite of the utopian, reassuringly spread-out archetypes of the 1950s and ’60s and the stately, graceful ones of the ’20s and ’30s. The crop of budget-conscious contemporary architecture attempts to fashion metal and glass and stucco into gritty evidence that public investment is paying off in the form of a good public school education. Three decades of neglect preceded the Los Angeles Unified School District’s current building boom. Enrollment climbed while schools declined. Broken windows, locked bathrooms, leaky roofs, shattered furniture, and shuttered libraries weren’t uncommon, nor were overcrowded classrooms. The district pleaded poverty and its critics cried foul, but the reality remained unchanged until 1997, when voters passed the first of nine local and statewide ballot measures to put up billions of dollars to construct new schools and revive old ones. The money is bankrolling the nation’s largest public works project, dubbed “Roy Romer’s Assembly Line” for the former district superintendent who initiated the vast undertaking. By the end of last year, 76 schools and 59 expansions had been completed to accommodate the district’s 900,000 students. By 2013, LAUSD will have spent $20.1 billion to christen 131 schools and 64 additions. These are big numbers.

For that kind of money LAUSD could have built 73 Disney Concert Halls. Not that the LAUSD has created comparable landmarks. Public school districts don’t have unlimited budgets, let alone the latitude of private developers to relentlessly push the boundaries of design—or anything else, for that matter. At LAUSD, architecture has had to fight for its existence and often has lost. The district’s campaign for new campuses has certainly led to its share of lousy results and many more that are, in the words of one prominent architect sitting on the district’s Design Advisory Council, just mediocre. What’s surprising is that in a school district perpetually uncertain of how children learn or what we ought to teach them and plagued by catastrophic budget shortages, a few good-looking schools have emerged.

Discouraging News for our future leaders!

What will it take for our state to get its act together? Stemming from the budget crisis and how it already hampered many after school programs and threatened to send many lower income families phoning their local legislators, the Governor is on attack once again. What happened to those days, when Schwarzenegger was campaigning on college campuses promising to lower tuition and help our inner city youth achieve a higher education? Today, just as some speculated during these tours, were False Promises. I dare to ask, How did we get in this mess anyway? Do our politicians have the general public's best interest at heart, or are they on a selfish pursuit to make a name for themselves and their families while climbing the political ladder? It is sad to say that the general public has no say in this, even if we head to the polls, solely because our pocketbooks and wallets don't have enough strength to stand and voice an opinion. Gone are the days when our leaders made an impact in our communities, so what should an aspiring politician look too? Corruption, Greed...I have no words of advice but our current gov. system has definitely left me scared and deterred from rising up and being that influential leader in our community.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger outlined a stark vision of a California that would sharply limit aid to some of its poorest and neediest citizens.His $83.4-billion plan would also freeze funding for local schools, further cut state workers' pay and take away 60% of state money for local mental health programs. State parks and higher education are among the few areas the governor's proposal would spare.The proposal, which would not raise taxes, also relies on $3.4 billion in help from Washington — roughly half of what the governor sought earlier this year — to help close a budget gap now estimated at $19.1 billion. Billions more would be saved through accounting moves and fund shifts.

Elimination of CalWorks, the state's main welfare program, would affect 1.3 million people, including about 1 million children. The program, which requires recipients to eventually have jobs, gives families an average $500 a month. Ending those payments would save the state $1.6 billion, the administration said. It would also make California the only state not to offer a welfare-to-work program for low-income families with children.Lawmakers rejected previous attempts by the governor to eliminate the program.Families would also lose state-subsidized day care under the governor's proposal; about 142,000 low-income children would be affected. That would save the state $1.2 billion. Preschool and after-school care would remain in place, as would some federally subsidized day care.Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal is a starting point for negotiations that typically stretch well into the summer. His previous attempts to eliminate landmark state services have been upended by lawmakers who nevertheless agreed to substantial cuts last year. Their alternatives are limited, however; their tens of billions of dollars in temporary tax hikes and program cuts in recent years failed to end the state's chronic budget problems.

The governor blamed legislative inaction for the deep wound to state services. He said if controls on state spending that he has long sought were in place, the budget gap would be much smaller. He also accused the Legislature of failing to move quickly to rein in spending after he called an emergency session of the Assembly and Senate in January for that purpose.The Democrats who control the Legislature noted that Schwarzenegger vetoed measures they approved earlier this year to address a piece of the deficit. Voters twice rejected the spending controls the governor seeks.Democratic leaders immediately vowed to reject the governor's plans and craft alternatives, which they said could include new taxes on oil companies as well as the abolition of some corporate tax breaks.

Patriotism = $$$$

Michael Ovitz has one. David Geffen has another. Eli Broad has a couple. Just what is it about Jasper Johns's early "Flag" paintings that make some blue-chip collectors seem so, well, patriotic? It is clearly these aficionados are collecting for a more apparent reason $$$$, AND that is a very good reason to collect. Currently the Art market as it is now being called is spurring with well to do entrepreneurs who see lots of cash to be made from trades and exchanges. One must question though, whether these artworks are really being patronized through the manner of how they are being sold to be stored in some collectors basement only to be introduced to another. Furthermore, one must question what is the public to gain out of this? do we ever get to see the real thing, or will we keep being disassociated from such well known artwork if this keeps up?
You can hear Ovitz rhapsodizing about the painted stars and stripes for yourself. For along with the usual auction catalogue for Tuesday night's sale of the Michael Crichton estate, which includes a 1960-66 "Flag" (right) among other works. The cast of characters includes Christie's contemporary co-head Brett Gorvy, Crichton's fifth wife Sherri and master printmaker Ken Tyler. But the star turn belongs to Ovitz, who was Crichton's agent for 30 years.

“We both owned several works of Jasper over the years from different periods and always spoke of the dream of owning a Flag,” says Ovitz about half-way into the video, going on to describe how Johns's first "Flag" images broke from the then-dominant style of painting (i.e., Abstract Expressionism) and ushered in new experiments (i.e., Pop Art).Crichton bought his red-white-and-blue “Flag,” 1960-66, made of encaustic and paper on canvas, directly from the artist in 1973. Christie's is offering it Tuesday night with an estimate of $10 to $15 million.
Ovitz bought his highly textured "White Flag," 1955-58, at Christie’s in 1988 for about $7 million. He has given it pride of place in his home ever since. When I interviewed him once for an ARTnews "Top 200 Collectors" issue, he singled out "White Flag" as the centerpiece in his collection.
Unfortunately the best “Flag” paintings in Southern California cannot always be seen in person. In New York the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan both have great examples of these paintings, of which there are around 20 in existence. L.A. museums do not.
Rather, the best "Flags" out here are buried in private collections. David Geffen has one example, vertical in orientation. Eli Broad's foundation owns, along with a darker variation from 1994, two "Flags" from the 1960s. One is white like Ovitz’s. The other, colored like Crichton’s but significantly larger,went on display at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA until Broad withdrew the bulk of his collection from the museum in late 2008.

Simply Water

The beauty of water if taken a closer look, and the vital functions that it possesses should throng individuals to more considerate of the brevity that our world is currently facing. Here in LA it is hard to relate this travesty of water deprivation, as one congressman and mayor address the issue of water conservation in LA, our residents really need to see the impact of our actions and photos might just suffice.

As the world faces the challenge of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we have renewed cause to contemplate the role of water in our lives. A good place to start is at the Annenberg Space for Photography’s current exhibit, “Water: Our Thirsty World.”The exhibit is in partnership with National Geographic Magazine and features photos from a special issue of the magazine. It’s split into six themes, each of which explores the role of water in human life and its relationship to our survival and that of the planet. The documentary-style images are bright, bold and arresting and serve as vivid guideposts to the complicated social and ecological issues surrounding water resources and arid lands.

The Annenberg space is the photographic equivalent of theater in the round, with pictures arranged in an aperture-like circle around a multimedia presentation space. The “Water” exhibit begins its journey on one side of the sphere. with photos from a series called “The Big Melt,” which examines what’s called “the great melt of the Tibetan Plateau,” an endangered glacial source that reportedly supplies nearly 40% of the world’s water.

Some of the exhibit’s most breathtaking images come from the series “The Burden of Thirst,” in which photographer Lynn Johnson follows the daily journey of Kenyan women as they walk through miles of stark desert -- colorful skirts and headdresses flapping around their thin, dark legs -- with bright yellow containers of water on their backs. A drought in that country has made retrieving safe drinking water even more difficult, and as the caption points out, “If the millions of women who haul water long distances had a faucet by their door, whole societies could be transformed.”

More familiar is “California’s Pipe Dream," in which pictures by Edward Burtynsky show vast expanses of suburban land with cookie-cutter tract homes that have been abandoned, their once-verdant lawns returning to a natural, arid state. Other images show Los Angeles freeways and sprawl, a desert region fed by imported water. The exhibit comes full circle with touching pictures from the series “Sacred Waters,” which documents humanity’s communal, religious and ritualistic use of water. A giant print by John Stanmeyer depicting half-naked men and women rolling, bathing and dancing in the crisp, cold water of the Saut d'Eau waterfall in Ville Bonheur, Haiti, during the Festival of the Virgin of Miracles seems to embody the almighty, life-giving power of water.

www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org

As one Great Conductor moves on...

I feel obliged to write on the nature of Esa after reliving the energetic movement that is Gustavo Dudamel. So what is Esa up to after his many years of conducting the LA Philharmonic, and spear heading the move to the Walt Disney Concert Hall. After all it was as if the new venue was specifically built for Esa and the LA Phil to redefine the music culture here in our backyard. Well surely one does not leave the music industry after having been drained in it for so long, it is Esa's passion and first love and he is on to move prosperous adventures and seeking to hone in on his talent, prompting some to think this move away from the spotlight was for exactly that.

The Finnish conductor and former music director of the L.A. Philharmonic is receiving an honorary doctorate at Friday's commencement ceremony at the University of Southern California.In its citation, the university described Salonen as a "preeminent composer, conductor and advocate of contemporary music."

Salonen is one of five people receiving honorary doctorates this year at USC. The others include William J. Bratton, the former L.A. Police Department chief; John Hood, former vice chancellor of the University of Auckland and of the University of Oxford; Ting-Kai Li, a physician and scientist; and Festus G. Mogae, the former president of Botswana.

Salonen is receiving his honorary degree from the university and then speaking at the satellite ceremony for the Thornton School of Music on the south lawn at Ramo Hall at 10:30 a.m. A spokesman at the USC Thornton School of Music said that Salonen participated in an informal master class at the school earlier this week during which he reviewed students' scores.
The meeting was organized by Don Crockett, chair of the composition department. Salonen reviewed student compositions, listened to recordings and offered comments. In 2009, Salonen stepped down as music director of the L.A. Philharmonic after a tenure of 17 years. During his time in L.A., he championed the programming of new music and helped to oversee the orchestra's move to Walt Disney Concert Hall. He is currently the principal conductor of London’s Philharmonia.

Gustavo Dudamel is all the RAGE!

Since last years announcement that Gustavo Dudamel will be taking over the reigns of the renowned LA Philharmonic as the existing Essa Pekka Salonen humbly obliges this new move, Gustavo has not ceased to impress and continues his tour of the world. The orchestra's first tour with its charismatic new conductor gets off to a rousing start at Davies Symphony Hall. Just as he has bewitched Los Angeles audiences since becoming music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic last fall, so the charismatic 28-year-old conductor has quickly brought Bay Area audiences under his spell. A pair of sold-out concerts in San Francisco on Monday and Tuesday evenings marked the launch of Dudamel's inaugural tour as music director of the Philharmonic, the orchestra's first national tour in almost a decade. If audience reactions to Monday's performance are anything to go by, the Philharmonic will be returning home later this month after completing its all-but-sold-out 10-concert journey with eight cities full of Dudamel devotees in its wake.


The audience didn't wait for the end of the concert to show its appreciation for the visiting group and its conductor, who has appeared on the same podium two times previously — with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in 2007 and the San Francisco Symphony in 2008. Dudamel first arrived on stage Monday amid rapturous applause and yells of "Gustavo!" During the slow sections of the second movement of the symphony, some audience members nodded their heads and even swayed slightly as if hearing a lullaby. As is his habit, the conductor led Mahler's work without the aid of the score.


The Adams piece, a kinetic ode to the city of Los Angeles featuring stampeding percussion and careening solos for the trumpet and alto saxophone written especially for Dudamel's inaugural concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall last fall, had some people sitting at the edge of their seats. This included concertgoers David Lomeli and Leah Crocetto, respectively a tenor and soprano with the San Francisco's Opera's Adler Fellowship program, one of the country's top opera training institutions. The rising opera stars both performed under Dudamel's baton in a performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem Mass with the L.A. Philharmonic in November.


It is quite apparent that this gifted man is surely pressing his talent on the masses, however not all are taking a liking to his conducting. As stated from the critique on his performance from some local San Francisco radio station, "we don't know if his take on Mahler is something of his own or if it's just him still trying to iron out the kinks with the group as a whole." Surely this young energetic phenom has taking the Classical music world by storm, but to what extent does hype overshadow the nature of the music? We will have to humbly wait ourselves and see if Gustavo can withstand the high expectations that LA has come to bestow upon its celebrities. I can only wait and hope that Gustavo remains true to his roots and does not get burnt out from the constant invitations coming from the world, and hones in on his talent to another level here in LA.

Eli Broad is at it AGAIN??

The billionaire is reportedly looking at a Grand Avenue site for his art museum. Here’s what city officials should have in mind for possible negotiations. It's a familiar recipe for urban revitalization in downtown Los Angeles. Start with a nondescript parking lot in a strategically important location. Propose replacing it with a new building by an acclaimed architect. Repeat as often as politically or financially feasible.That was the plan for the first phase of the ambitious but now stalled Grand Avenue project, which called for a mixed-use complex by Frank Gehry to replace a parking structure across the avenue from Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall.And in the last few days have come a flurry of news reports that Eli Broad wants to build an 82,000-square-foot museum for his Broad Art Foundation on another site now filled with cars, this one a surface parking lot at the southwest corner of Grand Avenue and 2nd Street. Owned by the city, the property was originally pegged as part of the Grand Avenue development's second phase.

What would the arrival of the museum mean for Bunker Hill and downtown?Broad, naturally, can be expected to push hard for a site and a deal that best suits his foundation, his collection and his much-debated vision for Grand Avenue. Indeed, it seems likely that Broad has kept the other sites in contention largely as a way to boost his leverage on Bunker Hill.As is so often the case in Los Angeles, the question is who on the public side will be pushing back — and how effectively.Handing the site over to Broad will make sense for the city only if the museum project can avoid becoming an isolated, self-contained architectural attraction in the inglorious tradition of downtown development. Indeed, even as Grand Avenue has continued to collect individual buildings by leading architects, long-imagined improvements to its streetscape have largely failed to materialize.Talks over the Bunker Hill site will be complicated by the fact that Broad has served as co-chair of the board of the Grand Avenue Committee, which includes representatives from the city, county and Community Redevelopment Agency and has been overseeing the planned project with developer Related Cos. and Gehry.

As many are anticipating the supposed new project to reach final negotiations, the public is drawing weary. For this struggle fits with the ambitions of the Billionaire and his indecisiveness to pick a suitable place for his new adventure. However what are we to do, who really knows what kind of artwork Eli Broad has, and what about the design of this new museum, which will house his pieces, surely DTLA would be a great location, turning the downtown region into an even more mega center for the art and culture. Primly located across from the already steam engine museum MOCA, surely Broad's new project will stir up competition amongst curators, and that will be to the benefit of the general public. However my concern is Architecture of course, and how the monopolization of Gehry's design will soon infiltrate the DTLA region, it's time for that new great innovator to surface and give Gehry some competition as well. Only if I had finished college already, perhaps I would be that person to contend the marginalized world of Architecture in Southern Cali.

the new OUTDOOR living

Architect Jeffrey Tohl's backyard has had several incarnations in the last 16 years: a grass yard in the shape of a Fender guitar, then a space dedicated to the kids complete with jungle gym, treehouse and a sandpit surrounded by a tricycle path. Now, the final metamorphosis — an outdoor living room and multilevel garden — may be laid at the feet of Maggie, the family's 4-year-old Airedale.
To accommodate the new family member, Tohl needed to reconsider the Studio City yard. Besides, the kids had outgrown their play area, and he and his wife, TV director Ellen Pressman, had always wanted an "adult place" to entertain friend’s outdoors and a Jacuzzi to sink into after a long day — all on a steeply sloped site.
Simply beautiful architecture is what Jeffrey Tohl’s achieved. Who says that a yard needs to have grass? With his technically placed slabs of concrete that evoke a passion of aesthetic beauty he is redefining what the outdoor living room is supposed to look like. Surely this notion of bringing the inside, outside is catching on and we are beginning to see this trend catch on a smaller scale in our local neighborhoods. Therefore expand your mind on the nature of living, get inspired from the art and culture that is LA.

What a challenging paper!

Tonight i finally finished my research paper on the lack of dependency upon religiosity within modern Western Culture. As a follower of Christ's teachings, i understand the nature and challenge is it to live a Christina life. However, i also see the the lack of interest among those who see that their life is fine and God thus has no place in their lives. This brings up a good point, is it only when tragic events and devastation's befall our life that we see a need for a spiritual outlook? Precisely so, those things that limit our understanding on the nature of existence, drives ourselves to seek answers in all forms of knowledge. But the likelihood of individuals to see that Christianity offers an individual with tools that combat the trials and tribulations of life has become deluded. No longer are we seeking answers in this manner, today we have psychologist, in which there job title has become more of a therapeutic listener.

My greatest fear is that we as a society will become so washed out from a spiritual outlook, that the notion of a Godless culture will enable much more strife, and negate any personal reasoning of the individual. The meat of my paper was foretelling the contrary which is Atheistic belief, for any good argument comes from an individual who emerges themselves in the oppositions viewpoint. For that, i was extremely challenged in my beliefs, but as i recounted with a friend this weekend, it will take the heart of the individual to be guarded through prayer and time invested in the Bible when challenging our own beliefs in a subject matter as this. Ultimately, as my discussion concluded we should not be swayed so easily by the material we read or study, for it truly takes discernment from the individual to mature their understanding of any subject that they happen to divulge into.

What I hope to get out of this study, is that our society will see the need for a religious lifestyle no matter how involved it may be, but at least some acknowledgment from our young minds. Especially those who find themselves in a position of ease, such as the College Student. For it is he/her that is most vulnerable, consumed by their thirst for knowledge and susceptible to be easily manipulated from professors who hold degrees in various subjects. It has to be that the individual will take with caution the information that is being fed to them and pursue to seriously understand and study the subject matter for themselves. This I know may be a tough task to tackle considering the math and science fields of study, but i direct this notion not only towards those who are pursuing a degree in Theology, but some of the basic subjects such as philosophy, psychology, and anthropology and so forth.

After doing the research regarding my stance on religiosity, I have come to find a new enlightenment in my understanding that could not have been addressed merely by listening to others accounts of Christianity's validity, but it had to be from my own personal pursuit to find truth in religiosity. This is what i urge others to do as well, for it will be of great value to know that the understanding that one has come to, has been through their personal study. If the opportunity presents itself, take hold of it and thoroughly invest the time to reach a conclusion on the nature of Christianity until sufficiently appeased.

Emmanuel Sandoval
God Bless You

The beauty of our society

As one finds himself inhabiting a structure, one should really look into the functionality of the building, is there some formality that serves the building purpose. The uniformity or cohesiveness has to be sync otherwise the structure becomes another dead inhabitant of space. Blame may be on the responsibility of the Architect, for this individual is ultimately deemed with the responsibility to see the projects design and circulation through. However, it today’s society and industriously driven world, the architects responsibility no longer functions to meet the needs of the inhabitant so much so as it is to meet the demands of the clients budget. This is then where disassociation becomes derived, for the general public has no say when constraints are placed on the architect to produce the most cost effective and speediest design. Sprouting out are hundreds of myriad buildings and dwellings that no longer serve a purpose to the inhabitant, but focus more on how soon and cheap a building can be derived. From this, are the changing landscape of our cities and towns. No longer does the architect get total freedom to use his craft as a way to display not only and ingenious and artful side of his talent, but also the sustainable and efficient side.
No matter where a person may find themselves, they are constantly surrounded by structures. Ranging in size and composition these structures are compiled for many purposes that feed our needs. Everyday an individual passes by and inhabits such buildings, but how often are they really appreciated. Some may have an appreciation or knack for the design detail that accompany such shelters of life, but few do remain sole engaged by the true meaning and purpose of architectural design. To some extent the general public has become disassociated from the building and its function
Architectural students have flocked to various parts of the globe, studying such movements of the past and present, but few really get the chance to display their skills in this profession. It has become to some extent as holding that next great basketball prodigy to only display his/her talent on the court of their driveway. The future of architecture has become in dire need of liberation and freedom, clients need to realize that their structure is another form of art and can be produce at the minimalist of costs. There are hundreds of architectural firms that posses the talent to reshape cities and countries into a more ornate environment, but for now most are confined to design and plan the next BOX. As I pass throughout my town and look around at various structures, I become nostalgic and think of all the great improvements that could be made that would produce a more exuberant shape. At some point there will develop a person who will feel this urgency to promote action and begin to invoke a new spirit in architecture and that person has become I. Our residential, business, entertainment spaces have a burden of desolation from which we as a society can improve. No longer will the day be that settling for the mundane will be acceptable. A new spirit within the students has evolved and a passion is about to explode in our coming generation. There will begin to unfold a new landscape filled with intricate and artistically sound structures. For it is conceivable to design in such a way, if permitted the time, one walk through the design studio of our local architectural schools will prove this fact. Students are deep in design and are making the so called box structure take whole new form. If at all the fear subsides from such clients who are so stuck inside the box will release their inner strength, they too will see the beauty of a new movement about to evolve. The downtown skyline will take on a new shape and flourish making the surrounding buildings historic artifacts of study, and this will become our new physical timeline of history. Hopefully as a result, buildings will begin to take on new names, as the artwork of the likes of Monet, Picasso, Warhol have become household names so will the Architects and their structures

The fate of Architects

The inside of Studio Daniel Libeskind is crowded with hope. Every desktop, table, storage shelf, and file cabinet in the loft that serves as the firm's Lower Manhattan headquarters sprouts a scale-model building. These detailed miniatures, made of plastic, cardboard, and wood, are an early step in the architectural process, a 3D glimpse of structures that, with a little faith and a lot of money, will one day rise from the ground, spreading good design along with the Libeskind name.
On one table is a four-tower residential/hotel complex destined for Busan, South Korea, in 2011. On another is a 58-story condominium high-rise that just got under way in Toronto after a two-year hiatus. Over there is a shopping mall in City-Center in Las Vegas, which opened last December. And that's where faith and financing reach their limits. The $80 million New Center for Arts & Culture in Boston? Canceled, as is the mixed-use seaside development in Monaco. A 54-story residential skyscraper in Warsaw grew to just 16 floors before the cash ran out. A 43-story condo in Los Angeles is delayed pending new financing. The World Trade Center redevelopment in New York has been scaled back after almost eight years of delays. "You have to be an optimist as an architect," says Daniel Libeskind, 63, the firm's founder and principal. "I don't know of a single project where someone said, 'We just ran out of money, no more project.' Some of them are hibernating."
Architecture is notoriously cyclical, rising and falling in tandem with real estate. Firms suffered large losses, and dumped employees, as construction sank in 1991-92 and again in 2002-03. Yet neither retrenchment approached the severity of the current slump. The American Institute of Architects' billings index—a survey of nearly 600 firms that measures planned construction—has been contracting for 26 consecutive months. Since mid-2008, when architecture employment in the U.S. peaked at 220,500 jobs, the profession has cut 55,000 people, or one in four, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The layoffs continued in March even as overall payrolls grew.
Executives from architecture firms such as Gensler and Perkins + Will say that prior to the recession, they competed with just a handful of rivals on any given bid. Now, because work is so scarce, they commonly face 12 to 15 rivals. Fees have plunged as clients press the negotiating advantage and firms race one another to the bottom. Historically, margins averaged 15%, these executives say. That has fallen to 5% to 10%, and in some cases firms are submitting breakeven bids just to get the work. "It's a rough-and-tumble world out there," says David Gensler, executive director of Gensler, the biggest U.S.-based practice by number of architects. "It's become a battle for market share."
In an attempt to compensate for the paucity of meal-ticket projects, major firms are broadening their services. Commercial architecture represented 50% of business at San Francisco-based Gensler in the mid-2000s. This year, that has dropped to 35%, with renovations of offices and car dealerships now the fastest-growing area. St. Louis-based HOK, which ranks second in the U.S. and fourth in the world, had two megaprojects in Dubai die within 36 hours in late 2008 and has stepped up its building rehab and product design practices. The firm recently launched a line of commercial lighting fixtures.
None of those sidelines, though, brings in as much as soaring planes of concrete, steel, and glass. Revenue at HOK fell 21% in 2009, to $473 million. Vice-Chairman Clark Davis says labor accounts for more than 80% of costs, which left management little choice but to cut the workforce from 2,300 to 1,800 today. As revenues at Gensler fell 30% to under $500 million in 2008, the company cut 750 people from its workforce of 3,000.

The cost of Immigration

As many as 60,000 immigrants and their supporters joined a peaceful but boisterous march through downtown Los Angeles to City Hall, waving American flags, tooting horns and holding signs that blasted the Arizona law. The legislation, which is set to take effect in midsummer, makes it a crime to be in Arizona without legal status and requires police to check for immigration papers.Though the crowd was roughly half as large as police had projected, it was the largest May Day turnout since 2006, when anger over federal legislation that would have criminalized illegal immigrants and those who aid them brought out more than 1 million protesters nationwide. Since then, most activists have deemphasized street actions in favor of change at the ballot box through promoting citizenship and voter registration.But this year is different. Outrage over the Arizona law, continued deportations and frustration over congressional delay in passing federal immigration reform prompted activists nationwide to urge massive street protests on this traditional day of celebrating workers' rights
What is to say over the discrimination of people of all cultural backgrounds? Are we not all immigrants anyway? That is what this discussion boils down to, whether you may be illegal or not, at one point in this nation’s history a family member immigrated into the US from various countries and thus began this great nation of Freedom. Or should I be so bold to say RESTRICTIONS, for it seem as if no one these days can truly have freedom. One is not to exclude the affluent in this topic as well, for even they are constrained by obligations to contribute to the greater well being of our society. We as a FREE nation must invoke change, but the change must first come from our own being.
Victoria Vergara, a 53-year-old Mexico native and U.S. resident for 27 years, stood with a group of workers from the Westin Bonaventure and other hotels. Her brother, an illegal immigrant who runs a used-car business in Chicago, is afraid U.S. authorities will shut down his business and deport him after more than two decades here, she said."I was lucky. I was able to get amnesty in the 1986 law and now I'm an American citizen," she said. "We want President Obama to know that it's time to help these hard-working people who don't have papers, who have worked hard all their lives in this country and want to be good Americans."The marchers also included African American union members, Korean drummers dressed in colorful traditional garb and even a white educator hoisting a sign that read "Gringos for Immigrants' Rights."One illegal immigrant from South Korea, who asked to be identified by his first name, Jeff, said he came to protest the "broken-down immigration system.""This does not just affect Latinos," said Jeff, wearing a white shirt that crossed out the word "minutemen." "This affects all communities."In the hot seat of Arizona, rallies in Tucson and Phoenix drew hundreds of protesters.In Tucson, organizers released a flock of doves and hundreds of white balloons, and Aztec dancers performed. Rally speakers included labor organizer Dolores Huerta and singer Linda Ronstadt.Rep. Raul Grijalva, the Arizona congressman who has called for an economic boycott of the state, was received with boisterous cheers. "We are going to fight this law," he told the crowd.A couple of dozen counter-protesters carried signs that read "Deport Illegal Mexicans," "Remember the Alamo, Mexico," "Boycott Mexico" and "Mexico Out of US."Claudia White, 56, a Tucson resident and naturalized Mexican immigrant who organized the counter-protest, said she supported the Arizona law because she worried about the consequences of what she called "open-border policies." Recent immigrants, she said, show "less of an interest in how this country was originally set up — where everybody is an individual and doesn't identify as part of a group or a block or a race."In Phoenix, where many activists were too exhausted by the fight against the bill to plan a unified event, a few thousand people poured onto the broad lawn in front of the state Capitol for what became a sort of daylong festival against SB 1070.Vendors sold ices and mangoes, anarchists handed out literature about the right of indigenous people to travel freely, and families wheeled strollers carrying toddlers who chanted "Si se puede!"A handful of people supporting the law trickled in during the day and often had to leave under police escort after being surrounded by agitated demonstrators.Amelia Sally, a 35-year-old customer service representative, held a sign that read: "Got Your Papers? If So ... Welcome." She was disheartened at the way demonstrators around the country were bashing her state.

What would you pack for the Apocalypse?

I've been thinking a lot about the Apocalypse. I’m not a pessimist by nature, but disaster scenarios have been forced on me by the culture’s obsession with them. I read The Road; I saw The Book of Eli. Along with millions I have been recently introduced to some lithe and colorful creatures called the Na’vi, who apparently represent our best hope for salvation in the face of civilization’s maniacal drive toward self-destruction. If that were not enough, the real world has complied as well. Stores keep closing on the boulevards, and people continue to lose jobs. A malaise of uncertainty has settled over us all. Add to this the horrifying situations in Haiti and Chile, and it’s hard not to imagine what might, with a little help from our carbon footprint, lie in store.
But apocalypses can be writ large and small, which is why a certain basement in Silver Lake has captured my attention. It’s in a Spanish bungalow rented by Lynne Oropeza, a friend of mine. One day she casually tells me that she lives above an ancient bomb shelter. I’m so intrigued, I jump into my car and drive to Silver Lake. As Lynne leads me to the basement entrance, she tells me the provenance of the house. It was built in 1926 by John and Phyllis Fliegauf, who lived there until 2004. When the couple died, the bungalow had to be dug out of the impenetrable tangle of trees that had been allowed to grow around it. The backyard was a junk heap of pipes and huge slabs of stone, random materials John had culled (for reasons obscure) from his years working for the DWP. Inside, the house was layered with clutter, a thick jumble of saved and found objects that begged logic. The windows were covered with aluminum foil, as if the Fliegaufs had wanted the home to double as a giant tanning box.
Lynne takes me down a flight of stairs softened by the house’s original faded carpeting. I enter a warren of dark, cramped, and unfinished rooms. Each space leads to a smaller one, which gives onto a smaller space still, until I realize that the basement was built with a nod to some sort of architecture. The light is dim, the air teeming with dancing dust particles. The weather in this basement is chilly. It’s a cold one suspects greets the buried, suggestive of a suspension of time during which things neither grow nor completely decay. Makeshift shelves hold what at first appears to be the kind of detritus we all have packed away into a garage or a closet: old tools, jars of nails, musty books whose pages are yellowed and brittle. A pile of records fills one shelf, those heavy-as-lead 78s that might have spun on an early Victrola. Dishes and glasses are stacked next to cloudy bottles of various shapes and sizes. Everywhere, it seems, there are lamps. It looks like a massive yard sale waiting to happen.
As I walk from room to room, the objects become a little stranger. Rusted meat hooks hang menacingly from the ceiling beams. Nailed to the walls are sharp-tooth saws and heavy mallets. A hoe and a rake dangle from the beams, their wooden handles like vines. Large cans of caviar are stored next to some rather disconcerting bottles of boric acid. I pause and ask myself, Is this really a bomb shelter? If so, where are the cans of beans and peaches? Where’s the Spam? Where are the flashlights and emergency kits? We’ve all been briefed on what to have on hand in case of a disaster. But there’s not a blanket or an extra pair of sneakers in sight. Exploring further, I pry off the lid from an industrial garbage can and discover that it is packed with at least a hundred bars of soap, their wrappers dating them from the ’50s and ’60s. Another canister overflows with lightbulbs. I unscrew a large Ball jar containing what look like fist-size shards of concrete, but with the release of the trapped air comes the smell of chocolate. Why did the Fliegaufs save chunks of chocolate? A collection of ceramic dogs and cats sits on one shelf; on another, a wooden box holds a set of filigreed silver. A cardboard box, falling apart at the seams, is full of maps from every state. Then there is the wine. There are boxes of the stuff and intriguing bottles of home-brewed brandy. A narrative is taking shape that makes me reconsider the bomb shelter theory. When I open a metal file case and discover the couple’s personal papers, the story ratchets into focus. There beneath a Bible lies a letter written on crisp, translucent bond stating that Mrs. Phyllis Fliegauf wishes to withdraw her membership in the Eastern Star, because this fraternal organization is part of “Babylon the Great that will soon be destroyed by Jehovah. Revelations 18:4.” Ah, I think, this was not simply a bomb shelter. This was a safe house where the Fliegaufs, true believers, intended to live through the End of Days.

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