Today architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne announced that he is leaving his position at the Los Angeles Times, a job he has held for more than a decade, for a new position in city government: the chief design officer for Los Angeles.
“Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has asked me to fill a new post called chief design officer for the city,” Hawthorne writes in a piece published in the Times this morning. “In that role, beginning next month, I’ll be working in the mayor’s office to raise the quality of public architecture and urban design across the city — and the level of civic conversation about those subjects.”
Hawthorne’s work has also appeared here in ARCHITECT, both as a reporter and as a subject. Just last week, senior editor Eric Wills reviewed Hawthorne’s new documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright’s L.A. houses.
“Anyone who’s familiar with Christopher’s work knows that his creative eye, and his understanding of urban design are unparalleled,” Garcetti said in a press release. “I am proud to welcome him to my administration in this important new role.”
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Coming Around to Frank Lloyd Wright
Christopher Hawthorne reconsiders the legacy of the architect on the 150th anniversary of his birth.
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The Return of Pacific Standard Time
Christopher Hawthorne on what the latest iteration of this exhibition series reveals about the hall-of-mirrors cultural relationship between L.A. and Latin America.
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Reinventing Architectural Education
Christopher Hawthorne explores what a new generation of architecture school deans, the rise of the Free School in Los Angeles, and online courses by Gehry and Hays reveal about the democratization of the profession.
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Paul Revere Williams: From the Center to the Margins and Back Again
The 2017 AIA Gold Medal winner was a prolific and gifted architect whose recognition is belated in more ways than one.
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The Enduring History of Louis Kahn
A biography (by Wendy Lesser), an exhibition (coming to the Kimbell), and a rising generation of architects are conspiring to reassess Kahn's legacy.
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What SO–IL’s Shrem Says About the Future of Museum Design
Christopher Hawthorne argues that the Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis represents a steadfast turn away from an architecture of self-promotion.
