Please click the button above to place your ticket order for the Conversation on June 23, 2013

The Nature of Place: From The Rancho to the New Urban Scene

More and more, people are discovering the value of “ordinary places” within a region and state and people famous for its iconic, extraordinary imagery.

Speakers:

D. J. Waldie, author of Holy Land – A Suburban Memoir and Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles, a “hybrid mixture of fact and emotion, memory and history," said the Los Angeles Times, which “engages the reader like poetry, producing images that remain long after you finish reading.” Among his other works are California Romantica: Spanish Colonial and Mission-Style Houses, and House, with Diane Keaton. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, D.J. Waldie received the Whiting Writers’ Award in 1998.

Christopher Hawthorne, the acclaimed architectural critic for the Los Angeles Times, assesses architecture and the re-emerging urban value of the city and region from mass transit and highways to planning, housing, neighborhoods, and communities. A former architectural critic for SLATE, and contributing editor for Metropolis magazine, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is co-author of The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture (2012).

Additional distinguished panelists:

Greg Goldin, architectural critic at Los Angeles Magazine, writer on urban affairs and design, and contributor to the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly.
Alan Pullman, AIA, founder, and Michael Bohn, AIA, design director, Studio One Eleven, a division of the international firm Perkowitz+Ruth Architects, Long Beach.

Free parking for this event will be at CSULB Lot 11 with free continuous, handicap accessible shuttle service to the Rancho.

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Please click the button above to place your ticket order for the Conversation on September 22, 2013

September 22, 2013 1:00–4:00PM

Shadow Landscapes: Overlapping Communities in Time, Shared Neighborhood Spaces, and Ghost Populations Hidden in Plain Sight

Public places, streets, and homes have belonged to many over the years, often revealing overlapping cultural communities in time—sometimes living in shared neighborhoods and sometimes existing as “ghost” populations hidden in plain sight.

Speakers:

Cindi Alvitre, recognized cultural leader in the region and state, is a “most likely descendant” of the Gabrielino-Tongva community, and teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and in the American Indian Studies Department at California State University Long Beach.

Gustavo Arellano, editor of the OC Weekly, is author of the nationally syndicated column, “¡Ask a Mexican!” and three nationally bestselling books, ¡Ask a Mexican! (2007), Orange County: A Personal History (2008), and TACO USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America (2012).

Philip Ethington, Professor, Department of History at the University of Southern California, is an innovative, interdisciplinary, “mixed-media” historian whose scholarship explores the past through spatial theories of history and mapping time, including residential segregation. His photography and cartography have been published and exhibited internationally.

Additional Distinguished Panelists:

D.J. Waldie (see bio above)
Susan Straight, author of seven acclaimed, award-winning novels, primarily powerful stories of African American history and contemporary life.

Free parking for this event will be at CSULB Lot 11 with free continuous, handicap accessible shuttle service to the Rancho.

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Please click the button above to place your ticket order for the Conversation on November 10, 2013

November 10, 2013 1:30–4:00PM

Reimagining and Reclaiming Our Place: The Olmsted Brothers, Rancho Los Alamitos and Los Angeles – Vision and Priorities

Connect the dots between visionary planning, power politics, and priorities and see how far you get. In 1930, “Playgrounds, Parks and Beaches,” prepared by the Olmsted Brothers and Bartholomew & Associates for Los Angeles County linked the mountains to the beaches through scenic traffic routes and a concern for fragile ecologies. Not implemented in its day, its recommendations lived on. But back at Rancho Los Alamitos, another Olmsted plan was already growing in the garden.

Speakers:

William Deverell, Chairman of the History Department at the University of Southern California, and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West is a scholar of political, social, ethnic, and environmental history. His many works include Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles, A Companion to California History, A Companion to Los Angeles, Encyclopedia of California, and Eden By Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region.

Stephanie Pincetl, adjunct professor and Director of the Urban Center for People and the Environment at the UCLA Institute of the Environment. An expert on environmental policies and governance, she analyzes the impact of institutional rules which support human activities on natural resources.

Additional Distinguished Panelists:

D.J. Waldie (see bio above)

Frances Anderton, the award-winning commentator and host of DnA: Design and Architecture on KCRW and KCRW.com is the former producer of its current affairs shows, To The Point, and Which Way, LA with Warren Olney. She combines her astute knowledge of politics and current affairs to her wide ranging coverage of architecture and design.

Jon Christensen, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Department of History and former Executive Director of the Bill Lane Center of the American West at Stanford University. A free-lance environmental journalist and science writer for over thirty years, he studies the role culture plays in defining nature, understanding eco-systems, and responding to environmental crises.

Free parking for this event will be at CSULB Lot 11 with free continuous, handicap accessible shuttle service to the Rancho.

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