some articles

a brief history of horizontality [2003]

on FOA's Yokohama Terminal and the future of architectural visibility in the city

towers of concentration lines of growth [2002]

on telecommunications and urban form in the contemporary city

cathedrals of the culture industry [2002]

on the OMA project for LACMA and the idea of the museum city

hallucination in seattle [2001]

on Frank Gehry's Experience Music Project in Seattle and Late Capitalism

architecture after couture [2001]

on architecture and fashion

who's afraid of postmodernism? [1999]

on late capitalism and architecture

the caress of the commodity [1997]

on automony and capitalism in architecture

some student projects

projects

immersive mapping, gps, and the tunnel effect

analysis of starbucks

thesis on muzak

varnelis.net [site map] is a research forum for architecture, network culture, and postmetropolitan urbanism.

Kazys Varnelis teaches history and theory of architecture and urbanism at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He is also a member the board of directors of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design and a founding principal of Architecture Urbanism Design Collaborative [AUDC] and frequently works with the Center for Land Use Interpretation.

His teaching and research focuses on late modernism, architecture and capitalism, and the impact of recent changes in telecommunications and demographics on the contemporary city in general and on Los Angeles in particular.

[projects] [articles] [curriculum vitae]


search varnelis.net

Current news:

My article Corporate Camouflage. Space International's Noevir USA Showroom has just been published in LA Architect Magazine. The next issue of Praxis will carry my piece "Los Angeles. Practice in a Late Capitalist City." My essay on One Wilshire recently appeared in issue five of the Berlin journal An Architektur. Produktion und Gebrauch gebauter Umwelt. In the next few days, watch for a new website I designed for the LA Forum.

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If the post you are looking for isn't here, check out the archives, organized by month, or use the search function in the middle of the page.

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

In another symptom that the Bilbao-Effect cannot be easily reproduced (if at all), the Guggenheim proposal for the Gehry structure on the East River was cancelled yesterday, according to the New York Times. See Guggenheim Drops Plans for East River Museum

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 10:46 AM PST [Link]

The Washington Post reports that the number of pay phones in the US has dwindled from 2.7 million to 1.9 million. Does the cell phone's rise mean the end of the pay phone? See Requiem for the Pay Phone

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 12:09 AM PST [Link]

Sunday, December 29, 2002

Christopher Reynolds reports on demolition in Los Angeles in today's Los Angeles Times: Out with the old

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 09:18 AM PST [Link]

Saturday, December 28, 2002

The NYT reports more bad news for Rem Koolhaas in the ongoing story of OMA's troubled attempts to re-create the supposed "Bilbao-Effect" See Retrenching Guggenheim Closes Hall in Las Vegas

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 09:59 PM PST [Link]

Friday, December 27, 2002

Broadband is spreading to the countryside says the Boston Globe

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 05:50 PM PST [Link]

Thursday, December 26, 2002

The LA Times dissects the decision to give up on OMA's planned reconstruction of LACMA. Go to the article.

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 08:54 AM PST [Link]

Friday, December 20, 2002

According to the LA Times, the More Pieces Fall Into Place for Downtown L.A. Revitalization. The LA Times seems particularly excited about Ralph's Supermarkets' announcement that it will open a store in the neighborhood.

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 12:19 AM PST [Link]

Sunday, December 15, 2002

If wireless is the wave of the future, why is Hughes Electronics Corporation shutting down DirecTV DSL? See the Reuters piece: Yahoo! Hughes to Shut Down High-Speed Internet Service

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 03:25 PM PST [Link]

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

The 11 December issue of the LA Times carries Reassembling a Sad Chapter of History, on the National Park Service's restoration of Manzanar, an internment site of Japanese-Americans during World War II located in the Owens Valley.

During 2003, I will be undertaking a collaborative project on the Owens Valley with the Center for Land Use Interpretation

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 11:14 PM PST [Link]

LA Times architecture critique Nicolai Ouroussoff laments LACMA's decision to put on hold the Koolhaas project. We're puzzled as to why. Destroy one of the few successful urban spaces in Los Angeles? Tear down buildings that are part of LA's history (think of Ed Ruscha's "LACMA on Fire")? Replace it with a big top (we all know what that did to SCI-Arc...which was clearly Koolhaas's inspiration)? Ouroussoff also seems to miss the point that OMA's star is in rapid decline since the NY Prada store opened. See Prudent decision for LACMA is a setback for the city. For a radically different perspective, see my article on LACMA and our obsession with museum-cities: Cathedras of the Culture Industry

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 11:29 AM PST [Link]

Monday, December 9, 2002

The LA Times reports that the Los Angeles County Art Museum is deferring the OMA project that would involve tearing down all the existing structures. As these - even in their mediocrity - are far superior to what OMA is proposing, this is something of a relief.

Posted by Kazys Varnelis @ 09:41 AM PST [Link]