Is Deconstruction a Dirty Word? Cindy Olnick 00:00Today on Save As: Guadalupe Flores 00:01Funny thing is that this reuse of materials in new construction, it’s not new. Man has been doing this from the dawn of time. Cindy Olnick 00:17Welcome to Save As:…
Tag archive for: USC Heritage Conservation Program
The Postwar L.A. of Gin Wong
Chinese American architect Gin D. Wong, FAIA (1922-2017) defined what it means to achieve the American dream. He immigrated from China as a boy and went on to have a 60-year career as a successful architect in Los Angeles. He played a key role in the design of post-World War II L.A., with projects including LAX, CBS Television City, and the iconic Union 76 gas station in Beverly Hills. In this episode, new alum Nirali Sheth discusses her thesis, A Silent Legacy: The Influence of Gin D. Wong’s Work on the Los Angeles Built Environment. She talks with co-host Cindy Olnick about Wong’s life and work, how credit can elude architects in big corporate firms, and how she researched her subject without access to his archive.
Read MoreSeason 3, Episode 3Feng Shui as Cultural Heritage
This episode delves into global heritage conservation, as producer Willa Seidenberg talks with recent grad Haowen Yu about his thesis, Examining Feng Shui as Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage. Many Americans consider Feng Shui primarily an approach to arranging space. Yet it’s a far more complex system of knowledge, practice, and tradition that has spanned more than a millennium. Feng Shui underlies virtually the entire built environment of China, but it hasn’t (yet) been designated as a form of cultural heritage. Haowen discusses why he’s not so sure it should be, and how Feng Shui has been viewed in China and around the world.
Read MoreSeason 3, Episode 2Surf, Sand, and Self-Determination: Jim Crow-Era Leisure for Black Angelenos
We said “so long” to summer with a trip to the Santa Monica beach with historian Alison Rose Jefferson, whose work at USC launched a deep dive into African American recreation areas in the Golden State. Her master’s thesis on Lake Elsinore led to her widely acclaimed book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites in the Jim Crow Era.
Alison shares some of the struggles, successes, and legacies of Black leisure spaces in early twentieth-century SoCal. We also hear from an oral history with the late Verna (Deckard Lewis) Williams, who experienced fun in the sun—and racism from white beachgoers—firsthand.
Read MoreSeason 3, Episode 1Surf, Sand and Self-Determination: Jim Crow-Era Leisure for Black Angelenos Trudi Sandmeier 0:00Today on Save As: Alison Rose Jefferson 0:01The African American folks who were here in Los Angeles and Santa Monica figured out that they can hang out at…
Tabula Raza: A New Table for People-Centered Conservation
As a kid, Laura Dominguez would sit under the kitchen table during tamale season, listening to family stories as the grownups handed her corn husks to play with. Now she’s one of the people setting a new table for heritage conservation, with community as the centerpiece. In this episode, Laura shares the personal roots of her professional path, her doctoral research into the origins of conservation in Los Angeles, and a glimpse of the future she’s helping to shape.
Disco and Diversity in Armenian L.A. Cindy Olnick 0:00 Today on Save As a warning: this episode may cause hunger and the urge to dance. Trudi Sandmeier 0:14 Welcome to Save As a podcast that glimpses the future of heritage…
Disco and Diversity in Armenian L.A.
You may know that Greater Los Angeles has the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia. But you might think it’s concentrated in the city of Glendale and Hollywood’s Little Armenia. Recent alum Erik Van Breene found pockets of Armenian Americans throughout the county while researching his thesis, Not So Little Armenia: Conserving Armenian Heritage Sites in Los Angeles. In this episode, Erik shares how these enclaves formed in waves of immigration from the 1910s through the 1990s. He also gives us a glimpse of the vibrant Armenian economy encompassing food, media, and music–including a recording studio that drew Armenian artists from around the world in the 1970s. That means disco, which you do not want to miss. And he makes the case for mapping and more to conserve Armenian sites before it’s too late.
Robert Kennard, Architect for Humanity
Robert A. Kennard, FAIA (1920 – 1995) led an extraordinary life as an architect, mentor, and humanitarian. The son of a Pullman car porter, Kennard defied steep odds to build a successful career, design more than 700 structures, and create one of the longest-running African American-owned architecture firms in the western U.S. He “believed that people were more important than the spaces they occupied,” wrote USC alum Jerome Robinson in his master’s thesis, An Odyssey in B-Flat: Rediscovering the Life and Times of Master Architect Robert A. Kennard.
Jerome passed away before we could interview him for this podcast, yet he left a trove of stellar research and archival audio. We bring you some of it in this episode. We also hear personal stories of Kennard from his daughter Gail, who still runs the firm he formed in 1957. This episode is longer than usual (around 40 minutes), but stick with it–you’ll find it worth your while, or your money back!
Robert Kennard, Architect for Humanity Trudi Sandmeier 00:00 Today on Save As, we explore the story of two extraordinary men, whose lives crossed, even though they never actually met. [music] Cindy Olnick 00:17 Welcome to Save As, a podcast that…