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Home » Authors » Christopher Hawthorne

Christopher Hawthorne

Christopher Hawthorne was the architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2018 and served as Los Angeles's first Chief Design Officer.

Articles

ARTICLES

If Walls Could Speak

Moshe Safdie’s Life as an Architect

Review: 'If Walls Could Speak' by Moshe Safdie
Christopher Hawthorne
November 17, 2022
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In his new memoir, Safdie fills the pages with stories about his career and personal life, from his childhood in Israel to his time at Harvard GSD.
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Mike Davis.jpg

Tribute: Mike Davis (1946–2022), L.A.'s Prescient Truth-Teller

Christopher Hawthorne
November 1, 2022
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Former Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reflects on the influence of the author and activist, who died last week of esophageal cancer.  


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Commentary: What Happens to Architectural Criticism When Dailies Shrivel and Bloggers Take Over?

Christopher Hawthorne
January 1, 2015
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In 1998, the British critic Martin Pawley rather dramatically announced what he called “the strange death of architectural criticism.” Pawley lamented the disappearance of an aggressive, “take-no-prisoners” approach to critical writing about architecture, which he felt was being replaced by “wall-to-wall testimonials of praise.” Illustration: © Ross MacDonald I wonder what Pawley, who served as architecture critic for both the Guardian and Observer newspapers and died in 2008, would say about the state of the field today, particularly in this country. If the praise, at least for certain celebrity architects, has grown even more over-the-top, the number of critics has
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Emerson Los Angeles

Scene Stealer: Thom Mayne explores a new set of ideas in his first major project for his hometown in 10 years.
Christopher Hawthorne
May 16, 2014
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Thom Mayne explores a new set of ideas in his first major project for his hometown in 10 years.


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The Controversy Over L.A.'s 'Sculpturalism' Show

Christopher Hawthorne
May 22, 2013
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Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant, Los Angeles, Grinstein/Daniels Architects Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more tumultuous at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), which has been buffeted by a string of financial and personnel crises in recent years, a new brouhaha has surfaced. And this time it concerns architecture—to be precise, a significant controversy surrounding a planned MOCA exhibition called A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture from Southern California. The show is a major component of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. (see page 59), a series of exhibitions running through the summer in venues across
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SFMOMA Exhibit Showcases Lebbeus Woods's Work but Little Else

Christopher Hawthorne
April 16, 2013
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An exhibition at SFMOMA examines the work but not the legacy of Lebbeus Woods.


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Build Nothing and They Will Come

Christopher Hawthorne
February 28, 2013
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An exhibition at SFMOMA examines the work but not the legacy of Lebbeus Woods. Lebbeus Woods, San Francisco Project: Inhabiting the Quake, Quake City, 1995, graphite and pastel on paper, 14.5 inches by 23 inches. Lebbeus Woods, who died last year at age 72, was among the most singularly gifted and stubbornly consistent architects in American history. His fantastically dense drawings in pencil and graphite imagined not just new kinds of buildings?some burrowed into the earth and others floating in the air or through space?but new cities and new worlds. Though he is often connected with the Deconstructivist movement and
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Taking the Pulse of Architecture

Christopher Hawthorne
October 16, 2012
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David Chipperfield looks for common ground at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale. Almost by definition, the Venice Architecture Biennale is a wildly uneven affair. It combines a main exhibition overseen by a major architect, critic, or curator with a scattered collection of separately organized national pavilions. And it seems to get bigger and flashier with every edition, as ancillary exhibitions, press conferences, and Bellini-soaked parties in rented palazzi sprawl across most of the city of Venice. The odds that these diverse elements will come together to offer a compelling message about architecture, architects, buildings, or cities would seem close to
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The Barnes Foundation

After a tempest over its relocation, an acclaimed art collection settles into its spacious new home.
Christopher Hawthorne
June 16, 2012
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There is a good deal to admire about the architecture of the new Barnes Foundation, which opened May 19 on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway, just down the road from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The sober, handsome, and exquisitely detailed museum, designed by the increasingly busy New York City architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, offers a rare combination of material richness and spatial ingenuity.
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Nakahouse

Nip and Tuck in Hollywood: A Los Angeles firm does reconstructive surgery on a 1960s house to turn it into a glamorous pad for a pair of fashion models.
Christopher Hawthorne
April 16, 2012
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There are any number of reasons to envy Ryan Burns and his wife, Aline Nakashima.


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