"In many ways, then, the book is astonishingly extroverted. It's a book by an architecture office about the city it works in, not a book documenting that firm's work; and, as such, it serves as an impressive attempt to understand and analyze the city through themed conversations with other people, in a continuous stream of partially overlapping dialogues, instead of through ex tempore essayistic reflections by the architects or dry academic essays."<br />
<br />
Comment from Robert Farrell: "Perhaps the answer to the traditional architectural monograph lies in the above discussed book. How boring it is to see glossy image after glossy image of an architects portfolio put on bookshelf. It seems at a time when most architects are not building much, that investigation should take the lead."

"Los Angeles has been compared to a laboratory — an urban ground for experiments both prescribed and accidental. Laboratory is a perfect word. Enveloping, chaotic and mutable, LA is a nocturnal workshop where the constant experiments leave no time to tidy up and reset the data in order to start fresh in the morning. In LA, you are both the experiment and the scientist. One is forced to be the object of fascination and fray, while simultaneously judging and monitoring the urban experiment…<br />
<br />
what is the new identity for a city whose entire life has been marked by its ability and desire to endlessly expand? Perhaps the lack of perceptible hierarchies — or, likely, the reality that traditional thresholds and boundaries in this city are hidden and constantly transgressed — makes LA a difficult case study in the urban milieu…<br />
<br />
As an evolving being, its dynamics make description difficult. Perhaps it is not a city — perhaps it can only be described as Los Angeles."

""It's an outrage that the priority of this university is not in favor with the students," said Jessie Fernandez, an SFSU senior who attended the meeting. His major, **urban studies and planning**, is currently threatened by the plan." (emphasis mine)<br />
<br />
Urban Studies, of all things! So, Michael Maltzan, that's the crux of the neoliberal frenzy here in California. Where does architecture step in? Do we proceed with bloated buildings as the idea of what an open, accessible city is, or do we defend the spaces of our own discipline?"

"While in Montreal for the Elektra festival, i went to the Canadian Center for Architecture to discover architects Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, and Alessandro Pol's views on space exploration and its impact on terrestrial realities. I'm still not sure why the 3 architects were brought together under the same roof but the diversity of their vision certainly made for an exciting ride."

"Michael Maltzan has designed a snow-white art campus in the urban hell of Skid Row in Los Angeles. Ilaria Mazzoleni explains how philanthropy and architecture are trying to save this city."

"With an eye to using architecture and design as agents for social change, Maltzan and Power created a campus where every space is a “teachable moment,” from the way the buildings are designed, arranged and used, to the way nature is invited in to what used to be a concrete jungle. And what fired up Maltzan and Power’s own creativity was looking at artwork presented by the children when asked to envision what their ideal Inner-City Arts campus would look like."

"A half-century ago American engineering was the envy of the rest of the world. Cities like New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans were considered models for a brilliant new future. Europe, with its suffocating traditions and historical baggage, was dismissed as a decadent, aging culture.