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1. Eric, Miller, Addison and Emily Moss 2. Bill Simonian and Michael Folonis (B.Arch ’78) 3. Dana Swinksy (M.Arch ’89) and Neal Borsuk (M.Arch ’89) 4. Guests at the event 5. Shelly Kappe, Former Board Chair Ian Robertson, Former Director Ray Kappe, and Graduate Programs Chair Hernan Diaz Alonso 6. Jane Suthigoseeya (M.Arch ’12), Jinsa Yoon (M.Arch ’12), Matt Pool (B.Arch ’13), Kathleen Mejia (B.Arch ’16), Ryann Wynn (B.Arch ’13) and Paul Andrzejczak (B.Arch ’13) 7. Beth Gibb (M.Arch ’89), Debbie Mackler Fisher (M.Arch ’94) and Jayne Larson 8. Tom Farrage (B.Arch ’87), Rick Gooding (B.Arch ’84) and Trustee Thom Mayne 9. David Cameron, Brandon Welling, Maryam Arguello Belli and Monique Birault (M.Arch ’92) 10. Trustee Merry Norris and Cesar Giraldo 11. Hitoshi Abe (M.Arch ’89) and Alumni Trustee Dan Weinreber (M.Arch ’02) 12. Patricia Joseph (M.Arch ’15) and Tanveer Sami (B.Arch ’12) 13. Faculty David Freedland, Heather Flood (M.Arch ’04) and Ramiro DiazGranados (B.Arch ’00)
BUILDING COMMUNITY AT MAIN EVENT
SCI-Arc alumni, trustees, faculty, students and friends gathered for Main Event 11 on Saturday, November 1, at the Pterodactyl in the Hayden Tract of Culver City. This year’s event honored SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss, who is in the final year of his tenure as director and whose leadership since 2002 has had a transformational impact at SCI-Arc. Main Event 11 marked a return–of sorts–to the event’s roots as the Hayden Tract served as the venue for the first Main Event in 2000. Since then, SCI-Arc’s annual fundraiser has been held in diverse settings around Los Angeles, most recently at the Prism Gallery in 2011 and the headquarters of Creative Artists Agency in 2010, and has honored luminaries from the SCI-Arc community. Its return to Culver City was in honor of Moss, who is the architect of the Conjunctive Point development in the Hayden Tract. The newest building in this development, the Pterodactyl, served as a dramatic backdrop for the event, and guests were invited to tour the building throughout the evening. The outdoor parking structure in front of the Pterodactyl was transformed into a welcoming event space with lounges, tables, food service and bars serving the Eric Owen Mosscow Mule. Trustee Tom Gilmore, who has served on the SCI-Arc Board throughout Moss’ tenure, emceed the evening’s program which paid tribute to Moss’ contributions to the SCI-Arc community as a leader, educator and architect. Each of the speakers affirmed Moss’ singular vision and notable accomplishments. “The testament to leadership is whether an organization is better off at the end of a tenure than its beginning. For Eric and SCI-Arc the answer is resoundingly ... YES,” said Board Chair Jerry Neuman. “Under Eric’s leadership SCI-Arc has grown up to be not only a world class architecture school but a world class institution as well. Now consistently ranked at the top of its field, Eric has also lead the school to buy its building and adjacent properties, build endowment, significantly increase scholarships, engage alumni and establish a faculty and student body that is the envy of all others. Simply put, Eric Owen Moss has had an incredible impact on SCI-Arc and SCI-Arc is profoundly better for it.” Other tributes were more personal, acknowledging Moss’ contribution to the field as a designer and educator. “As an architect, Eric Owen Moss is a model for any student,” noted trustee Thom Mayne. “His architecture practice is a model of his own view of the world—to understand his work is to live in his brain. He is a model of the importance of being your own person, for being completely comfortable of your place in the world. e.e. cummings might well have been speaking of Eric when he said, ‘Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you.’” And as long time Moss collaborators and Conjunctive Point developers Frederick and Laurie Samitaur Smith noted, “In his novel The Idiot, Dostoyevsky created an Anti-Christ who was willing to sacrifice himself to either a rapist or saint. Eric being skeptical of lovers and poets knows better and therefore has produced an authentic legacy that bows before no iconic standard. His architecture expresses grace and humor. That is it. He is not an Idiot. He is a teacher.”
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All tributes pointed to Moss’ insistently individual perspective on the world. “The evidence is clear that his architecture owes nothing to nobody,” said Director of Academic Affairs Hsinming Fung. “And much the same can be said of his approach to teaching, with its emphasis on the polemical and the exploratory. In the glimpses of his work you might get from his lectures and discussions, you are constantly reminded that his sources, from myth to tragic-comedy come from a never-sated, highly personal, intellectual hunger. That hunger extends to the ideas and ambitions of others. He regularly promotes the work of young faculty, seeks out ways to give them an opportunity to test their ideas, and to protect their own, hard-fought individuality with a generosity that often surprises those who see Eric only as the ‘tough-guy.’ Students and faculty bear the brunt. They are required to return salvo for salvo, inflict intellectual damage, and emerge, stronger than ever, with an unrelenting urge towards excellence.” Main Event 11 was attended by nearly 450 guests, whose support generated over $200,000 for student scholarships. Guests included many from the SCI-Arc community–trustees, former directors, founding faculty, current faculty, founding students, current students, and alumni of all generations–as well as friends from the architectural, building and cultural sectors. The event’s sponsors included Presenting Sponsor Gilmore Associates; Venue Sponsor Samitaur Constructs; Platinum Sponsors Forest City, Frank and Berta Gehry, Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, Johnson Fain, Morphosis, and US Bank; Gold Sponsors Jamie and Carolyn Bennett, Blu Homes, Gensler, Jerry Neuman, STUN (SCI-Arc Student Union), Abigail Scheuer, Sean O’Connor Lighting, and Siemens Industry Inc.; Silver Sponsors 950 E. Third Street, AGA Architects, Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP, Bremco Construction Inc., Anthony and Ronda Ferguson, Linear City Development, Merry Norris Contemporary Art, One Santa Fe, Perkins + Will, Richard Meier & Partners Architects, RoTo Architects, Ted and Joan Tanner, and Wurstküche; and Bronze Sponsors Arup, Barcelona Regional Urban Development Agency, C.W. Howe Partners Inc., Community Films, Hughesumbanhowar Architects, Kaplan Gehring McCarroll Architectural Lighting, Ken and Julie Klausner, Menn, Van Kuik & Walker Inc., Michael Maltzan Architecture, Park Advisory Board of the Pacific Palisades Recreation Center, Roscoe & Swanson CPAs, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Steinberg, and Walter P. Moore. We thank all of the sponsors and supporters who made Main Event 11 a success and look forward to seeing alumni and friends again at next year’s Main Event 12. Look for details in 2015.
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