Rudy Jansen

mobylosangelesarchitecture:

ok, here’s a random one, architecturally speaking.
a bungalow in silverlake.
and why, you might ask, include a slightly run-down bungalow in silverlake in a weird blog about los angeles architecture?
because of urban brain drain.
los angeles is still, for the most part, a pretty cheap place to live.
a friend of mine just bought a small 2 bedroom condo for $250,000 in a pretty nice part of l.a.
in new york a 2 bedroom condo would cost, at least, $1,000,000.
in london a 2 bedroom condo would cost, at least, $2,000,000.
in san francisco a 2 bedroom condo would cost, at least $750,000.
so, as new york and london and san francisco and other cities become prohibitively expensive lots and lots of artists just move to l.a.
see, i know nothing about the house in this picture except that:
a-it’s kind of beat up.
b-it has spectacular views of griffith park and huge swathes of l.a.
c-it probably costs 1/10th as much as it would cost in any other big, western city.
new york and london and san francisco used to be run down cities where artists and musicians and writers could
go for cheap rent and amazing creative communities.
now new york and london and san francisco are losing artists and musicians and writers (thus: brain drain) because the artists, writers, musicians, architects, gallerists, publishers, designers, etc can’t afford the rent.
and, lucky for l.a, lots of the artists and writers and musicians and designers and architects who’ve been priced out of other cities come to los angeles because
it’s cheap, it’s weird, there are tons of other artists here, and it’s 75 degrees in february.
that’s why i’m including this house in my weird architectural blog.
because it represents one of the things that makes l.a amazing in 2012:
odd residential architecture that pretty much any working artist or writer or musician can afford.
new york, london, san francisco, and lots of other cities still have amazing creative communities and are still wonderful, dynamic places.
but they’re also incredibly expensive places to try and live.
and most of the artists in other cities are, simply, being priced out.
and lots of them are coming to l.a.
which is great.
plus we have a ton of coyotes who sound like lunatic banshees at 3 a.m when they start howling at each other.
-moby

A pretty compelling argument—and I dig this house.