Third L.A. starts from the premise that Los Angeles is a model for the world’s megacities as it navigates demographic change, a mobility revolution, climate change and new frontiers in urban planning and design. The city’s dramatic reinvention is moving it toward a future that actually looks a lot more like its past: a more-connected metropolis with a bustling downtown that has more affordable housing, more successful public open spaces and a mature and comprehensive transit system.
L.A.’s Chief Design Officer Christopher Hawthorne, professor of the practice of English at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and former architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times, launched 3rd LA in 2015 as a series of stimulating conversations about the future of Los Angeles. He brought the pioneering initiative to USC Dornsife in January 2020. In early 2023, Prof. Natalia Molina began leading Third L.A.
The Hardware of Inequality: Public Restrooms and Public Life
January 23, 2023
A webinar addressing public space by way of the rise and fall of the public restroom. The discussion will feature historian Bryant Simon of Temple University, Evan Madden of The Portland Loos, Kerry Morrison of Heart Forward LA, and will be moderated by Natalia Molina, Distinguished Professor at USC.
This programming is brought to you in partnership with Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
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Eating, Drinking, & Working in LA
October 17, 2022
Join ICW for a conversation with entrepreneur Cedd Moses and historian Natalia Molina. Cedd Moses and his Pouring With Heart enterprise have revitalized historic space and places across LA and created pathways to career success for all employees. Natalia Molina’s recent work explores her family history and the community significance of her grandmother’s Echo Park restaurant, El Nayarit. Across time and space, Cedd and Natalia epitomize what food, drink, labor, and community can mean for all of us in greater Los Angeles.
This programming is brought to you in partnership with Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
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Low Rise, High Stakes
What New State Laws Mean for Housing Policy, Residential Architecture, and Neighborhood Development in Los Angeles
April 28, 2022
Join us for a panel featuring architects, housing experts, and city planners that will consider the impact of Senate Bill 9, which allows single-family lots to be subdivided to hold up to four residential units, as well as other new state housing legislation. The discussion will focus on strategies to promote affordability, neighborhood cohesion, and multigenerational living as the City works to locate housing closer to transit lines and job centers.
Moderated by Christopher Hawthorne, Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles and Director of the Third L.A. Series at USC Dornsife, the panel will feature Albert Escobar and Karin Liljegren from Omgivning; Thomas Robinson from LEVER Architecture; Matt Glesne and Sarah Molina-Pearson from Los Angeles Department of City Planning; and Alejandro Gonzalez from Genesis LA.
This programming is brought to you in partnership with Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
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A Reckoning for L.A.
How Should L.A. Remember 1992?
March 18, 2022
Join us for a discussion on how the L.A. media responded to 1992 and how it has evolved—or hasn’t—since, looking in particular at coverage of responses to the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement and debates over police funding. It will feature Los Angeles Times columnist Erika D. Smith; Slate’s Joel Anderson, host of the recent “Slow Burn” podcast on 1992; journalist Rubén Martínez, who covered the events of 1992 for L.A. Weekly and is now on the faculty at Loyola Marymount University; and Warren Olney, whose long-running KCRW radio show “Which Way, LA?” was launched in response to the unrest.
This programming is brought to you in partnership with Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
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Responses in Art and Culture
How Should L.A. Remember 1992?
March 11th, 2022
Join us for an online discussion marking the 30th anniversary of the verdicts handed down in the Rodney King beating case and the subsequent civil unrest which immediately followed in the spring of 1992. How should we remember and mark these events? What has changed in and across Los Angeles? What has not? Sponsored by Third LA and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, the panel will focus on responses to 1992 in art and culture and feature playwright Anna Deavere Smith, filmmaker Grace Lee, and curator Tyree Boyd-Pates. Moderated by Christopher Hawthorne, Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles.
This programming is brought to you in partnership with Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
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Civic Memory and Memorials in the American West
December 15, 2021
Historian Megan Kate Nelson joins Christopher Hawthorne, Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles, in a wide-ranging discussion of memory and memorialization in the West and Southwest. Part of the Third LA series, this conversation explores commemorative themes beyond the sites and histories that the Civic Memory project recently took up across greater Los Angeles.
This programming is brought to you in partnership with Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
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Close to the Ground: The Complex History of Outdoor Settlement in the American West
December 10, 2021
ICW hosts a wide-ranging discussion of the history of camping and tent encampments across the last 150 years in the American West. Historian Phoebe Young’s new book traces the history of camping back to the Civil War and forward to the rise of the Occupy Movement. She discusses her work with historian Josh Sides and Anthony Allman of Veterans Advocacy, who will discuss veteran encampments at the VA installation near UCLA. Moderating the discussion is Professor Marissa López of UCLA.
This programming is brought to you in partnership with Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and The Huntington Library.
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Beyond Land Acknowledgement: New Models of Support and Reparation for Indigenous Communities
May 13th, 2021
Join four leading Tongva voices for a discussion about how Los Angeles and other cities can more actively and meaningfully support Indigenous communities. Many institutions have adopted Indigenous land acknowledgement policies in recent years. Yet, Native leaders frequently caution that these statements risk ringing hollow if they are not backed by a larger commitment to reparative work, land conservancy and co-management, and land return, among other goals. This event, free and open to the public, will explore what forms this work can take and the coalitions moving it forward.
Note: This is the first public event to solicit community input and feedback on “Past Due: Report and Recommendations of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office Civic Memory Working Group,” which was released on April 15 and includes sections on Indigenous land acknowledgement, land return, and related topics. The full report — coordinated by Christopher Hawthorne, chief design officer for the City of Los Angeles and director of the 3rd LA series at USC Dornsife — can be found here.
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Four (More) Ecologies: Reassessing Reyner Banham’s Famous Book on Los Angeles as It Turns 50
March 11th, 2021
The British architectural historian and critic Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, published in 1971, earned great acclaim and wide readership for its deft and surprisingly upbeat analysis of post-war Los Angeles. Few books have more powerfully shaped how the world thinks about the architecture, built environment and creative culture of Southern California.
Five decades on, how does the book hold up? What were its blind spots and what proved to be its strengths? What do we make now of its four ecologies, which in Banham’s view could explain all of L.A. (Surfurbia, for the beach; Autopia, for the freeways and car culture; The Foothills, for the hills and canyons; and the Plains of Id, for the flatlands and wide L.A. basin)? How well has that structure aged?
This panel of experts in architecture, urban design and criticism will examine those questions — and, in the interest of looking forward as well as back, nominate four more ecologies to help us make sense of 21st century L.A.
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Pump to Plug
December 11th, 2020
Gas stations have been symbolic of Los Angeles and an incubator for innovative architecture across Southern California for the better part of a century, in styles ranging from ornate Spanish Colonial Revival to streamlined neomodern. But as parity between electric and gas-powered vehicles approaches and climate change accelerates, this building type is overdue for reassessment in a number of ways.
Pump to Plug is an initiative designed to curate creative responses to the challenges and opportunities posed — in urban, architectural and environmental terms — by the transition to electrified mobility. Organized by Christopher Hawthorne, Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles, in collaboration with the 3rd LA public-affairs series at USC’s Academy in the Public Square and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, it will ask invited teams of architects, landscape architects and experts in new mobility to produce forward-looking proposals in three categories: the design of charging stations, the future of gas station sites, and facilities for an electrified long-haul trucking fleet. These proposals will be presented and discussed on this virtual symposium.
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Inside Out, Outside In: What this unprecedented year means for the future of public and private space
October 16th, 2020
The three overlapping crises facing the design of cities in 2020 — climate change, a global pandemic and a racial-justice reckoning — have thoroughly transformed how we think about public and private space. In this 3rd LA event, leading global mayors will discuss how this tumultuous year, with its crises and calls to action, has led them to rethink the design of the public realm and the role of outdoor space in their cities. A second panel, featuring experts in architecture and interior design, will look at the flip side of those themes; it will take up the question of how stay-at-home orders have changed our relationship with the domestic realm and how we arrange and broadcast our residential lives as Zoom turns them into workplaces and schools (and, more recently, as wildfire smoke seeps inside our otherwise hermetic pandemic bubbles). A connecting thread between the two panels will be the question of which of our responses to the challenges of 2020 should become permanent and which left behind, helping viewers better understand their place in a world turned inside out.