Danielle Rago

Los Angeles Design Festival

Danielle — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:04:41 +0000

As part of the third annual Los Angeles Design Festival, de LaB is hosting the first-ever Pecha Kucha x Ping Pong Night at SPiN at The Standard Downtown. Pecha Kucha is a japanese term that loosely means “chit-chat.” It’s a simple presentation format wherein 20 presenters from various design disciplines, ranging from architecture, design, fashion, and art are invited to show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. For the inaugural event on June 26, a variety of presenters have been selected across the design disciplines in honor of the LADF’s spirit of creative inclusion. I was asked to kick-off the event by talking about LA as a design place and a place of design.

On the Road

Danielle — Fri, 24 May 2013 14:28:29 +0000

On the Road‘s first event took place at Temple @ Alameda in downtown Los Angeles on June 2, 2013 from 12-6pm as a flotilla of U-Haul trucks turned impromptu galleries. This one day exhibition presented work by 18 studios and individuals, each invited to show-and-tell a project they are currently working on. Participants included Andrew Kovacs, Bryony Roberts, Curt Gambetta, Foundation for Architecture and Design, First Office, House of Style, Jimenez Lai, Joe Alguire Workshop, Jonathan Louie, Maxi Spina Architects, Michael Faciejew, Paul Stoelting, Studio Bonner + Stayner Architects, Rowen Studio, T8projects, Vacation Projects, Wedgeworthy, and WELCOMEPROJECTS. Image © Jaime Kowal.

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On the Road

Danielle — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:14:21 +0000

On the Road is a yearlong series of architecture, art, and design programs intended to frame a moment in time within the contemporary context of the city of Los Angeles. It is an extension of the rich history of experimentation in Los Angeles for artists and architects alike, with a focus on exploiting potentialities within current lines of investigation and processes. The series and related programming is organized by Danielle Rago / Curator, Courtney Coffman / Editor, Jonathan Louie / Protagonist, and James Michael Tate / Instigator.

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PIN-UP

Danielle — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:39:50 +0000

‘Chat Group’

Architecture’s avant-garde academic fringe has always made a happy home at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, or SCI-Arc as it is more generally known. Founded in 1972 in an effort to provide a more experimental and less traditionalist perspective on architecture, SCI-Arc is reputed for pushing educational boundaries and for its healthy obsession with the next big thing. It’s therefore a great surprise that, just in time for its 40th anniversary last year, the school put top priority on protecting its past, digitizing over 1,000 hours of video footage of lectures, symposia, performances, and gallery talks by some of the most profound and influential architects, designers, and theorists, including Reyner Banham, Peter Cook, Frank Gehry, David hockney, Rem Koolhaas, and John Lautner, to name but a few. The article was featured in the Spring Summer 2013 Issue 14 of PIN-UP Magazine.

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PIN-UP

Danielle — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:36:34 +0000

‘Price Done Right’

The late Ken Price may have been a local hero in Southern California, but the artist’s oeuvre — largely a collection of bulbous and/or oblong ceramic objects — is less well known in the rest of the U.S. or internationally. This summer, a survey of his prolific career, “Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective,” initiated by curator Stephanie Barron only months before the artist’s death in February 2012, will travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, finally allowing Price the recognition he deserves. The article was featured in the Spring Summer 2013 Issue 14 of PIN-UP Magazine.

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KCRW

Danielle — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:27:28 +0000

As part of KCRW’s preview of “Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA,” DnA hosted an afternoon of design and architecture which included a pop-up art gallery, and a showing of contemporary LA design, curated by DnA’s new “DJS,” design journalists. I curated a nomadic living room set featuring product by Korean designer Jaewon Cho, of J1 Studio. Using locally-sourced and recycled materials, Cho creates structures that push the potential of a single form (most often, the triangle) and applies a system throughout to create beautifully complex compositions. From sculptural pieces to useful objects like tables, chairs, stools, and shelves, Jaewon works outside of the categories of traditional furniture making and instead is interested in the natural formations that occur as result of shifting environments.

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WIRED

Danielle — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 18:22:22 +0000

‘This plug-and-play museum in Texas took its inspiration from nature’

The new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas, is a “huge plug-and-play puzzle”, according to Thom Mayne, founder of Morphosis Architects, who oversaw the project. The building is made entirely from poured concrete casts — an “abstraction of the literal idea of geology”, says Mayne, 69. The article was published in the March 2013 issue of Wired Magazine.

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KCRW

Danielle — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:37:38 +0000

DnA: Design and Architecture

Part of the extended programming of KCRW’s DnA: Design and Architecture broadcast, I will be contributing as a “DJ” (design journalist), adding a fresh voice and perspective to the program as well as keeping track of emerging design talent and important design stories and report on them for the show.

Abitare

Danielle — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:36:34 +0000

‘Iwan Baan: The Way We Live’

The renowned Dutch architectural photographer Iwan Baan recently opened a solo-exhibition in Los Angeles at Perry Rubenstein Gallery. Titled The Way We Live, the exhibit chronicles the last eight years of the artist’s prolific career from his early glossy images of iconic buildings to more recently his gritty depictions of socially-driven projects. Perhaps reminiscent of an overall shift in the architectural profession as a whole, Baan seems to captivate the current ethos of the time whether it be the starchitecture of the 2000’s or the more socially and politically engaged practice of today.

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TANK

Danielle — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:32:31 +0000

‘Rachel Armstrong talks to Danielle Rago’

Reimagining the city while challenging traditional architectural conventions, British scientist and architect Rachel Armstrong has invented a new practice that aligns our contemporary cities with evolving ecosystems typically found in nature. Armstrong’s book, Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives explores the city of the future as much as the contemporary city. Examining and reconsidering how to achieve truly sustainable development for the built environment, Armstrong looks to biology as well as current practice to form the basis of her compelling argument for a city that is activated by living architectural systems – one of the defining characteristics of contemporary culture.

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