One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in L.A. two years ago was the fantastic variety of signs cluttering the visual landscape. A great tradition of Latin American hand-painted sign-making is alive and well here, alongside crappy vinyl-cut placards advertising hastily opened pot shops, faded banners hanging off the side of dilapidated neighborhood nurseries, and the ubiquitous yellow production company arrow signs. The feel was more akin to the low-brow stuff I'd seen in Miami, as opposed to th
I also took a cursory flip though Robert Venturi's Learning from Las Vegas , which drove home the point that you need big signs in a land when your shop window gazing is done through a windshield at 60mph. I moved to Highland Park and came upon our local icon Chicken Boy . Around that same time, I heard a great interview with Bill Griffith , creator of the Zippy comic strip, and checked out a bunch of old collections from the library. As a twelve year old reading the strip, I hadn't noticed Griffith's not
L.A.'s ambiguity or lack of central identity can make it an alienating place to live, but it can also be very rewarding. Producing The Machine Project Field Guide to L.A. Architecture this summer was a fantastic excuse to explore the city and it's many histories, this past century in particular. I was struck by how actively the individuals and institutions I came across in my work seemed to be engaged in 'rediscovering' L.A.'s recent past, extracting its stories, values, and lessons for today and trying t