The first critical study of the ubiquitous and mundane Los Angeles dingbat apartment, featuring critical essays, photography, and international competition winners re-envisioning the dingbat for the 21st century. Often dismissed as ugly and unremarkable, dingbat apartments have qualities that arguably make them innovative, iconoclastic, and distinctly “L.A." For more than half a century the idiosyncratic dingbat has been largely anonymous, occasionally fetishized and often misunderstood. Praised and vilified in equal measure, dingbat apartments were a critical enabler of Los Angeles' rapid postwar urban expansion. While these apartments are known for their variety of midcentury decorated facades, less explored is the way they have contributed to a consistency of urban density achieved by few other twentieth century cities. Dingbat 2.0 integrates essays and discussions by some of today's leading architects, urbanists and cultural critics with...
Description:
The first critical study of the ubiquitous and mundane Los Angeles dingbat apartment, featuring critical essays, photography, and international competition winners re-envisioning the dingbat for the 21st century.
Often dismissed as ugly and unremarkable, dingbat apartments have qualities that arguably make them innovative, iconoclastic, and distinctly “L.A." For more than half a century the idiosyncratic dingbat has been largely anonymous, occasionally fetishized and often misunderstood.
Praised and vilified in equal measure, dingbat apartments were a critical enabler of Los Angeles' rapid postwar urban expansion. While these apartments are known for their variety of midcentury decorated facades, less explored is the way they have contributed to a consistency of urban density achieved by few other twentieth century cities.
Dingbat 2.0 integrates essays and discussions by some of today's leading architects, urbanists and cultural critics with...