The Future of Housing in L.A. | KCET

The Future of Housing in L.A.
The modern single family home is where the advertising campaign for the Second L.A. was created and transmitted, thanks to a series of famous advertisements by the architectural photographer Julius Shulman. Those photographs suggested the forward-looking, deeply glamorous optimism of postwar Los Angeles, epitomized by the hillside modernist house with a pool — and, of course, a view to die for. But what does that dream look like now? These homes were meant as prototypes for a new generation of middle-class housing — big on architectural character but modest in size and price. Today, they are rented out for parties, film shoots and product launches. What you can see from their living rooms is not the expanse and promise of Second L.A. but a landscape of conflict in the flats of Hollywood, ground zero for debates about growth, density and development.
John Lautner’s Sheats-Goldstein house has been pledged by its owner to the L.A. County Museum of Art, to become a kind of hyper-modern house museum. There’s the palpable sense that L.A.’s architectural experimentation at the level of the individual building — especially the single-family house — has passed into history, is something to be protected by a museum, to be looked at as if under glass.
Full Episodes
-
Artbound
Artbound
S9 E1: That Far Corner - Frank Lloyd Wright In Los Angeles
Season 9, Episode 1
Frank Lloyd Wright accelerated the search for L.A.'s authentic architecture. This episode explores the provocative theory that his early homes in L.A. were also a means of artistic catharsis for Wright.
-
Artbound
Multi-disciplinary
S9 E2: Desert X
Season 9, Episode 2
The vast, strange, sometimes contradictory world of the urban desert and its people are explored in 11 public art exhibits and their respective locations scattered throughout Coachella Valley.
-
Artbound
Visual Arts
S9 E3: Electric Earth - The Art of Doug Aitken
Season 9, Episode 3
For more than 20 years, Doug Aitken has shifted the perception and location of images and narratives. His diverse works demonstrate the nature and structure of our ever-mobile, ever-changing, image-based contemporary condition.
-
Artbound
Cultural Politics
S9 E4: Variedades - Olvera Street
Season 9, Episode 4
This look at Los Angeles’ Olvera Street is part-history lesson and part-immersion in stereotype of the birthplace of Los Angeles.
-
Artbound
Cultural Politics
S9 E5: La Raza
Season 9, Episode 5
In East L.A. during the 1960s and 1970s, a group of young activists used creative tools like writing and photography as a means for community organizing, providing a platform for the Chicano Movement.
- 1 of 10
- next ›
Upcoming Airdates
Desert X
Season 9, Episode 2
The vast, strange, sometimes contradictory world of the urban desert and its people are explored in 11 public art exhibits and their respective locations scattered throughout Coachella Valley. Art includes Will Boone’s “Monument,” an underground bunker off Ramon Road in Rancho Mirage and Phillip K. Smith III’s “Circle of Land and Sky” in Palm Desert. Desert X is a site-specific biennial exhibition that first took place in the spring of 2017 where artists from different parts of the world were invited to create work in response to the unique conditions of the Coachella Valley
-
2019-02-19T13:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
-
2019-02-21T05:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
-
2019-02-23T14:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
-
2019-02-24T09:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
Electric Earth: The Art of Doug Aitken
Season 9, Episode 3
This episode profiles prominent artist Doug Aitken who for more than 20 years has shifted the perception and location of images and narratives. His multichannel video installations, sculptures, photographs, publications, happenings and architectural works demonstrate the nature and structure of our ever-mobile, ever-changing, image-based contemporary condition. In his newest piece, “Underwater Pavilions,” he creates a conversation with the viewer to become fully present and immersed in the sea.
-
2019-02-20T19:00:00-08:00KCETLINK
-
2019-02-24T19:00:00-08:00KCETLINK
-
2019-02-26T13:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
-
2019-02-28T05:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
-
2019-03-02T14:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
-
2019-03-03T09:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
Variedades: Olvera Street
Season 9, Episode 4
This look at Los Angeles’ Olvera Street is part-history lesson and part-immersion in stereotype of the birthplace of Los Angeles. Emmy® award-winning journalist, author and musician Rubén Martínez, explores the sometimes-violent, 200-year struggle for the political and symbolic control of the city as told in “Variedades” — an interdisciplinary performance series that brings together music, spoken word, theater, comedy and the visual arts, loosely based on the Mexican vaudeville shows of early-20th century Los Angeles.
-
2019-02-27T19:00:00-08:00KCETLINK
-
2019-03-03T19:00:00-08:00KCETLINK
-
2019-03-05T13:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
-
2019-03-07T05:00:00-08:00KCET-HD
La Raza
Season 9, Episode 5
In East Los Angeles during the late 1960s and 1970s, a group of young activists used creative tools like writing and photography as a means for community organizing, providing a platform for the Chicano Movement in the form of the bilingual newspaper/magazine La Raza. In the process, the young activists became artists themselves and articulated a visual language that shed light on the daily life, concerns and struggles of the Mexican-American experience in Southern California and provided a voice to the Chicano Rights Movement.
-
2019-03-06T19:00:00-08:00KCETLINK
-
2019-03-10T20:00:00-07:00KCETLINK
-
2019-03-14T06:00:00-07:00KCET-HD
-
2019-03-16T15:00:00-07:00KCET-HD
No Trespassing: A Survey of Environmental Art
Season 9, Episode 6
Throughout its history, the natural beauty of California has inspired artists from around the world from 19th-century plein air painting of pastoral valleys and coasts to early 20th-century photography of the wilderness (embodied famously in the work of Ansel Adams) and the birth of the light and space movement in the 1960s. Today, as artists continue to engage with California’s environment, they echo and critique earlier art practices that represent nature in “The Golden State” in a particular way. Featuring artists Richard Misrach, Laura Aguilar and Hillary Mushkin.
-
2019-03-13T20:00:00-07:00KCETLINK
Popular Videos
-
"LA Foodways" looks at the storied agricultural history of Los Angeles to understand present food waste challenges and opportunities to bring fresh foods to urban communities.
KCET Original -
It appears on the southern slope of the San Bernardino Mountains. Over the years it has been the subject of a host of Indian legends.
-
The candy recipes of Mary See started selling in a little shop and are now famous around the world.
-
Chopped down trees, unspent money, building homes thirty feet from the freeway: Is the city of Los Angeles falling down on the job when it comes to certain environmental policies? Socal Connected investigates.
KCET Original -
California is the world's fifth largest economy — yet, hiding in plain sight are workers who labor off the books, unprotected and unregulated. Follow four California workers organizing to find pathways for legalization and protection.
KCET Original
Expiring Soon
-
On his first-ever expedition to Siberia, George witnesses the alarming effect of melting permafrost, visits a 12,000-year-old dog, and camps out with reindeer herders on the chilliest night of his life.
-
This home is now designated as a historic property and open the public.
-
The Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher disembarks the Orient at Victoria Dock, returning to Melbourne after years abroad.
-
Huell Howser learns that Vandenberg Air Force Base is an important part of America's space history.
Comments