FIVE PLACES L.A‪.‬ Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, Emmanuelle Bourlier

J. Yolande Daniels is an Associate Professor in Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture and a fellow of the Independent Study Program of the Whitney American Museum of Art in studio practice and cultural studies. Daniels’ practice combines independent design-research and architecture and design in studioSUMO, which she co-founded in 1995. Daniels’ work explores the spatial effects of race and gender in the built environment by revealing spatial narratives of resistance and autonomy. Daniels’ work has been exhibited widely including most recently in the 18th Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition.

In 2021 her project Black City: the Los Angeles Edition was featured in the exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Along with her fellow Reconstructions exhibitors, she is a cofounding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective.

This is an evergreen conversation, focusing on Yolande’s Los Angeles based research. We recorded in 2021 when Yolande was living in L.A. before moving to teach at MIT and shortly before the opening of her show at the MoMA. Yolande’s Black City project continues to expand. Learn more about the project here and follow on Instagram for upcoming venues.

“As I started to do research, the narratives that I found had to do with the agency of the inhabitants and how they built community focusing on their power to shape the spaces around them. …

African Americans are often made to feel that we have no history or that our history is only sorrow, but the people who were making the history, they were fighting all the time to realize good things for themselves and for their family and for others. That's what I see in these stories and I want others to see them too.” - J. Yolande Daniels, MoMA, 2020

This is a special bonus clip excerpted from EPISODE 14 in which art critic Shana Nys Dambrot interviewed poet, historian, and writer Mike Sonksen, aka Mike the Poet. Their full conversation, which is linked in the show notes, is wide ranging and beautiful, and we highly recommend listening to the entire thing, or watching it on YouTube, but we couldn’t resist pulling out Mike’s poem as a stand-alone. Mike and Shana's full bios, as well as Shana's five places interview, are linked in the show notes.

Mike Sonksen, aka Mike the PoeT, is an acclaimed poet, professor, journalist, historian and tour guide. He teaches at Woodbury University, where he serves as the Coordinator of the school’s First Year Experience Program. He has published over 500 essays and poems, most recently two excerpts in Dear California: The Golden State in Diaries and Letters, edited by David Kipen (Stanford University Press, September 2023). He has delivered over 2,000 poetry readings, served as guest speaker at over 100 academic institutions, appeared on radio and television and hosted events in locations like Grand Performances and Getty Center. The second edition of his latest book, Letters To My City was just published by Writ Large Press in Summer 2023.

Watch to the end to hear Mike speak one of his extraordinary original poems on Los Angeles, “Los Angeles A to Z”.

Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter is an architect, educator and community leader advocating for architecture to advance environmental and social justice. She currently serves as President of Architecture for Communities Los Angeles (ACLA), a non-profit organization launched by AIA LA to focus on education and community outreach. She also serves as Chair of the Education Committee for the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), and is Professor in the Architecture Department at East Los Angeles College, California’s largest community college.
In partnership with Roland Wahlroos-Ritter, her architectural practice, W-ROAD, navigates transdisciplinary territory in the diverse type and scale of projects, and she has collaborated on multiple award-winning projects as architect and façade consultant. One of their latest projects is the renovation of the Los Angeles Mission, at 156,000 sf, one of the nation’s largest service providers of the unhoused.
Ingalill has forged educational pathways and launched programs that support her vision of education for all. She served as Dean of Woodbury School of Architecture from 2016-2021, and has taught at Yale, Cornell, the Bartlett (UCL), and SCI-Arc. As founder and Director of WUHO, the Woodbury University Hollywood gallery, she produced over 100 exhibitions celebrating social justice-focused design. She was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in 2018, received the 2018 AIA|LA Presidential Educator of the Year Award, the 2016 AIA California Council Educator Award, and was recognized by DesignIntelligence as one of the nation’s Most Admired Educators in Architecture and Design in 2018 and 2019.

Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Downtown LA. She is the Arts Editor for the L.A. Weekly, and a contributor to Flaunt, Artillery, and other culture publications. She studied Art History at Vassar College, curates and juries exhibitions, writes prolifically for exhibition catalogs and monographic publications, and speaks at galleries, schools, and cultural institutions nationally. She is the author of the surrealist novel Zen Psychosis. She is the recipient of the 2022 Mozaik Future Art Writers Prize, the 2022 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, and the LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Critic of the Year award for 2022.
Shana called in from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where she was on a writing retreat, so you may notice that the audio and video are just slightly choppier than usual. If you watch on YouTube you’ll catch a sneak peek of Laurie Lipton’s current project, a nearly 7ft x 20ft triptych aptly titled SMOKE.
Watch to the end to see some of Osceola Refetoff’s gorgeous photography for Zen Psychosis and to learn Shana’s plus one choice.
Discover more of Shana’s work on her website, instagram, and @shananys on every social media platform.

Los Angeles native Gary Baseman is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the human condition through fine art, illustration, performance, film, fashion, and toy design. Known for his raw style and humor, his art has appeared in international publications (The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, TIME, Rolling Stone), games and toys (Cranium), digital collectibles (VeVe), and in the ABC/Disney animated series and feature film “Teacher’s Pet,” for which he was creator and executive producer. Baseman’s awards include multiple Emmys, a British Academy of Film & Television Arts award, and Fulbright and Sundance New Frontier fellowships. His many brand collaborations include COACH, Lladro, and Dr. Martens. His fine art has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America and South America.
We highly recommend watching this episode on our YouTube channel, as Gary shows several of his extraordinary drawings onscreen, his cat Bosko drops in several times, and we have embedded photographs from Gary’s long history in LA into the video. Big thanks to Gary for sharing his art, his photos, and his stories so generously.