How Does Design Improve Our Well-Being?

Bad lighting, windowless walls, low ceilings, and dull furniture are the hallmarks of many an office, hospital, care center, or any place aiming for cost-effective function over beauty. But good-looking environments matter. Before Zócalo presents next week’s panel on what healthy design does for us, we asked five architecture experts – writer Alain de Botton, KCRW’s Frances Anderton, interior designer Lynnette Tedder and architects Roger Sherman and Victor Regnier – whether good design improves our well-being. Their answers, drawing on everything from the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center to KCRW …

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Michael Maltzan

Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan grew up on Long Island in Levittown, the prototypical suburb. “It was an incredible place to be a kid,” he said. Today, Maltzan is design …

Frances Anderton

Frances Anderton is the host of DnA: Design and Architecture, aired monthly on 89.9 KCRW and KCRW.com. She is producer of KCRW’s national and local current affairs shows, To The …

The Secret Lives of Buildings

The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories
by Edward Hollis

Reviewed by Shahnaz Habib

Buildings are not simply buildings, according to …

Roadside America

John Margolies’ Roadside America captures fading landmarks to American automobile culture. Margolies, appetite whetted on road trips with parents who never pulled over, began crisscrossing the country in the mid-1970s. …

Lost Buildings

In Lost Buildings, Jonathan Glancey compiles structures from ancient times to present day, some once real and some only imagined, that fell to war, commerce, natural disaster, or “fickle” architectural …