A few years ago, some jottings of the architect John Lautner (1911-94) were discovered, tucked away in a cupboatd in his California vacation home since the late 1960s. One thought in that bunch nicely sums up Lautner's ambition and sheds light on much of his output (including the Jetsonian "Chemosphere," created in 1960 and pictured above): "The space age is progressing because it is right from scratch with no precedents," wrote Lautner. "The idea 'Go to the moon'...We should do this with Architecture." And so, starting this Sunday and through October 12, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles offers up " Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner ," the first major exhibition survey of his work. Curated by historian Nicholas Olsberg and architect Frank Escher (who, with partner Ravi GuneWardena , the Los Angeles Times calls "Lautner's architectural heirs"), the show will feature newly crafted large-scale models to provide a sense of the internal spaces and scale of key projects, digital animations that reveal Lautner's construction processes, and short films by documentary filmmaker Murray Grigor to convey the sensation of movement through the buildings and their sites. Also on view will be oodles of archival materials, including never-before-seen drawings, architectural renderings, study models, and construction photographs. Olsberg puts it best, "Lautner's dwellings took on dramatically new and varied shapes, as he mo ...
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A few years ago, some jottings of the architect John Lautner (1911-94) were discovered, tucked away in a cupboatd in his California vacation home since the late 1960s. One thought in that bunch nicely sums up Lautner's ambition and sheds light on much of his output (including the Jetsonian "Chemosphere," created in 1960 and pictured above): "The space age is progressing because it is right from scratch with no precedents," wrote Lautner. "The idea 'Go to the moon'...We should do this with Architecture." And so, starting this Sunday and through October 12, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles offers up " Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner ," the first major exhibition survey of his work. Curated by historian Nicholas Olsberg and architect Frank Escher (who, with partner Ravi GuneWardena , the Los Angeles Times calls "Lautner's architectural heirs"), the show will feature newly crafted large-scale models to provide a sense of the internal spaces and scale of key projects, digital animations that reveal Lautner's construction processes, and short films by documentary filmmaker Murray Grigor to convey the sensation of movement through the buildings and their sites. Also on view will be oodles of archival materials, including never-before-seen drawings, architectural renderings, study models, and construction photographs. Olsberg puts it best, "Lautner's dwellings took on dramatically new and varied shapes, as he mo ...