Sheditecture: Vote for your favorite cabin design

  Minutes before the three cabins were to be unveiled, 17 exhausted architecture students in Woodbury University's design-build program raced to finish like a construction crew awaiting a city inspector. Ladders were still propped against the structures. Tool belts and Skilsaws lay about. "They were drawing and redrawing until the end," said architect Jeanine Centuori, chairwoman of the undergraduate program.

As we reported earlier, the challenge had been daunting: Take the components of a hardware store shed kit and build a cabin that can sleep two, with light, ventilation and insulation. Read our full story on the process and click through a photo gallery of the finished projects, then tell us: Which team created the best cabin?

 

 

Vote! We'll keep the poll open for a week and will share the results.

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Artists open studios for Venice Art Walk & Auctions

Venice artists and architects will open their studios and homes to the public this weekend for the Venice Art Walk & Auctions, the 34th annual fundraiser for the Venice Family free Clinic. Artist Jesse Hazelip will be working on "Hearts of Oak," a live painting and mural installation throughout the weekend on the Red Fort, a Venice landmark built in 1922 and located at 901 Pacific Ave. Other painters, sculptors and photographers will be part of a self-guided tour from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. (That's painter Gary Palmer pictured in his studio at the Distillery.)

Painter Isabelle Alford-Lago, known for her human-like gorilla portraits, right, will be featured inside the building at 1320 Main St. The show will include her signature artworks on large oil canvas along with several new pieces.

Alford-Lago's work will be among 400 items donated for a silent auction on Sunday, held at Google Los Angeles, Hampton Drive and Sunset Avenue. The auction runs from noon to 6 p.m. followed by a party until 7:30 p.m.

Self-guided architecture tours run from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. They will highlight homes designed by architects including Neil Kaufman, Steven Shortridge, Molly Reid, Steven Ehrlich, John Frane and David Ritch, whose update of a 1906 bunaglow we featured a few years ago.

Tickets to the Art Walk are $50. Architecture tour tickets are $125. Buy online or register at the Westminster School, 1010 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice. For a full schedule of studio and architecture tours, silent auction and family events, consult the Venice Art Walk website.

MORE VENICE ARTICLES:

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A green cube: Venice house planted on three sides

-- Lisa Boone

Photo: Gary Palmer

Painting: "Grandmaster" by Isabelle Alford-Lago

 

Woodbury architecture students turn sheds into cool little cabins

The challenge for three teams of architecture students from Woodbury University in Burbank: Design the coolest, smartest cabin that you can dream up. The catch: Your building materials have to come from an ordinary, not-so-cool shed kit from Lowes.

“There was a lot of grumbling at the beginning,” said Jeanine Centuori, chairwoman of the undergraduate architecture program at Woodbury. Each 10-by-10-foot shed had to be transformed to accommodate two people for sleeping. The template had to be tweaked to provide light, ventilation and insulation. And though the teams each had a budget of $1,500 for additional supplies, they also had a mandate to experiment with one assigned material — paper, plastic or wood.

PHOTO GALLERY: Woodbury students tweak shed kits into mini modern cabins

POLL: Vote for your favorite cabin design

Just how much can a simple shed be transformed? The answer becomes apparent before you're even off the driveway at the Shadow Hills Riding Club, the San Fernando Valley equestrian center where the three cabins were built.

The paper team's bright orange cabin practically glows, its exterior pop-outs borrowing an idea from motor homes (imagine dresser drawers left open). The pop-outs provide seating on the outside and space for luggage racks on the inside. Two beds are cleverly hidden under removable floor panels. Colorful hammocks from Craigslist hang from the ceiling, prompting student Sunny Lam to claim (as only a college student could) that the cabin “sleeps four.” (That's Lam in the photo hanging out, with Colin McCarville holding a floor panel that, when lifted up, becomes a privacy screen.)

BuBees beehive: modern architecture for the urban bee

Backyard beekeeping is the buzz of urban farming, with some wanting to replenish bees disappearing through Colony Collapse Disorder and others simply wanting to harvest home-grown honey. Now a Malibu business called BuBees is making beehives that are as fashionable as the city dwellers keeping them.

Designed by commercial artist and Art Center College of Design graduate Steve Steere, the $300 hives are a blend of form and function. A so-called top bar design, BuBees beehives mimic the way bees live in nature. The 36-by-18-inch living space is equipped with 24 bars, under which the bees build their combs. Two solid boards that run the width of the hive can be moved to make the space smaller or larger depending on how many bees adopt the hive. A viewing window lets beekeepers see inside the space, which can accommodate thousands of the pollinators.

For beekeepers who want honey, the top bar system allows easy harvesting. Just lift out one of the bars, cut off the comb and smash it in a bucket.

'Bookshelf' by Alex Johnson holds volumes of fun design

Stacked cinder blocks and boards work just as well as most, but they’re nowhere near as fun — or as optimistic in this e-book world — as the swirling, angled, wacky shelves in Alex Johnson’s new book. “Bookshelf” (Thames & Hudson, $24.95) has more than 300 color photos of minimalist, ladder-shaped shelves, jumbled boxes, swirling towers and the occasional farm animal. (That's Estante Vaco, above, by Brazilian designer Dennys Tormen). One disorienting design built into a staircase holds 2,000 books, but many others were created without much apparent thought to storing more than a few volumes.

“It’s partly that designers like taking something small and basic and playing with it, and there’s nothing much more basic than a bookcase,” Johnson said from his home in Britain, where his three children, ages 3, 9 and 11, are all big readers.

“The truth for many readers is that their bookshelves are nearly as important to them as their books,” he said, adding that he remembers the size and shape and smell of his childhood bookcases with as much fondness as the books in them.

Nobody & Co. designer Alisee Matta, whose Bibliochaise is included in the book, said life in a small, book-filled apartment inspired her to create a leather armchair that envelopes the sitter with 16 feet of shelf space. “Sitting and living in the middle of your favorite books is a very strong feeling,” she says in “Bookshelf.”

Counterpane quilts: L.A. artist goes improvisational

The quilts of Los Angeles artist Pauline Boyd stand out not only for their surprising mix of materials -- remnants of Moroccan silk tunics and African wax prints, Balinese sarongs and Mexican embroidered cotton dresses -- but also for their unconventional, freehand style.

"It really is an improvisational thing," she said of the way she assembles her handcrafted quilts using textiles that traditional quilters might find maddening. Boyd said she has long quilted in her spare time, exploring color and form on the bare floors (significant because many quilters like to compose on sheets of flannel hung on the wall).

She began selling her Counterpane quilts online in January, and the business has been gaining momentum ever since. She was a vendor at the Unique L.A. craft fair in February, and was featured in a gallery show last month in Echo Park. She recently shipped quilts to the boutique Beautiful Dreamers in Brooklyn. 

Growing passion fruit: It's easy if you can beat the bugs

Passion fruit vines have been threaded on a chain-link fence between the Fountain Avenue Community Garden and the school next door. For about two years, the plant’s growth was lackluster. But once its roots got established, the vine exploded with, well, a passion. Now it’s up in the pine tree over the garden and is spreading around the corner, covering at least 50 feet of chain link.

“We plan to have crawling vines, a wall of green, all around the garden,” gardener Charlene Gawa said. This winter the plant was loaded with fruit, but gardeners couldn’t enjoy the harvest. Schoolkids picked the fruit, usually when it was still green (even though it won't ripen when off the vine).

Considered a pest by some and even banned in some community gardens, passion fruit comes in more than 500 varieties. Originating in Paraguay, Brazil and parts of Argentina, passion fruit is grown throughout the tropics now. Its juice is used in processed drinks, but it’s best enjoyed raw: guava-like flavor, flowery bouquet and custardy texture that creates a jelly-like umami moment that would seem impossible to duplicate. For added effect, chew the crunchy seeds.

“We would just go up into the mountains [of Honduras] and pick them and they were quite sweet,” said Jamie Inashima, staff member and resident bug expert at Sunset Nursery. “We’d crack them open like eggs and suck out the inside.”

Long Beach shopping: Cool finds in Bixby Knolls

Long Beach shopping used to mean upscale 2nd Street in Belmont Shore or the vintage clothing and home décor on 4th Street’s Retro Row, but locals know the biggest surprise lies in Bixby Knolls. The neighborhood to the north has been quietly amassing a collection of interesting shops, galleries and restaurants.

Well, maybe not so quietly. On "First Fridays," crowds take to Atlantic Avenue — on foot or by red double-decker bus — to listen to live music, dine on Thai or Lebanese cuisine, and browse stores for antiques and other home furnishings, toys, stationery, clothing and dog treats late into the evening. (That's Paul Alicante, at right, with the letterpress at the Paper Crew.)

PHOTO GALLERY: Bixby Knolls in Long Beach

Atlantic Avenue is home to most of the action, but shops are popping up on nearby Long Beach Boulevard as well. Within the last year, Urban Cottage (home decor), Lucy’s Boudoir (retro-style lingerie) and Salvage Life (Taylor Swift wears its frocks) have opened. Bike lovers can go slightly farther south for the latest on two wheels at Long Beach Cyclery.

Bargain hunters take note: Many eateries and shops in Bixby Knolls participate in Bike Saturdays, a Long Beach program that includes discounts or deals to those who pedal in. Look for the Bike LB decal in the window. The Factory restaurant will give 20% off food any day you bike there. Here's a sampling of what else is out there:

'Dark Shadows': The story behind the grand, Gothic set design

For anyone familiar with the original long-running television series “Dark Shadows,” one of the biggest surprises of Tim Burton's big-screen remake opening this week may lie with what's behind the massive front doors of Collinwood Manor.

Freed from the budgetary constraints of a daily soap opera set and fertilized with the vision of Burton and production designer Rick Heinrichs, the interior of Collinwood was built on a soundstage as a full-fledged, exquisitely detailed character of its own. Fading Gothic grandeur is seamlessly combined with maritime motifs that reference the Collins family's ties to the sea.

The floor of the grand foyer is tiled in a blue-and-white pattern that evokes ocean waves, and upon closer examination, the immense chandelier overhead proves to have milky white octopus tentacles snaking among the strings of crystals.

“I designed the undulating floor tile based on a 12th century basket-weave design I'd found,” Heinrichs said. “It was made to our specifications out of extra hard plaster, since a movie production can be a lot of wear.” The production designer said the marine-themed chandelier had to be sketched out and then rendered in 3-D.

Garbage Maven: Recycling cellphones at the ecoATM

Mobile devices are discarded more rapidly than any other type of electronics, yet only 11% of them are recycled, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But something called an ecoATM is working to change that.

The ecoATM is a self-service kiosk that helps people dispose of cellphones and other mobile devices. The machine uses electronic diagnostics and artificial intelligence to evaluate electronics' value and pay customers on the spot with cash or credit.

The company the makes ecoATM is based in San Diego. It began rolling out its machines in 2010 and has been operating 50 ecoATMs at malls around California, including the Glendale Galleria, Westfield Century City and Westside Pavilion. Thursday marked the kickoff to another round of openings, starting at malls in Brea and Orange and continuing later this month in Baldwin, Westminster, Ontario, Burbank and the South Bay.

Recycling needs to be convenient, financially rewarding and immediate to prevent people from throwing cellphones in the garbage, ecoATM Chief Executive Tom Tullie said.

Although California is one of the few states that bans electronics from landfills because of the hazardous materials they may contain and their potential to be reused, many cellphones still end up in landfills. Recapturing raw materials such as copper and plastic saves the energy, expense and environmental cost that go into mining and processing new materials.