DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE
According to The San Francisco Chronicle, the city’s new planning department director John Rahaim is looking for a new apartment after his boyfriend Lance Farber destroyed their shared residence by damaging antique furnishings, smearing the walls with canned tomatoes, and setting a mattress on fire late last month. But this wasn’t just any old PacHeights rental—Rahaim was living at the Dennis T. Sullivan Memorial Fire Chief’s Home, a 1926 landmark sometimes offered to city employees in need of transitional housing. A million dollar bail has been posted for Farber, who fled the scene and was arrested later that night on suspicion of driving under the influence. While support for Rahaim, who was appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom last September, has been overwhelmingly positive, one public official, fire commission vice president Victor Makras, is calling for Rahaim to cover the estimated $30,000 in damages. And Makras would seem an expert on uninhabitable apartments in his role as president of property management company Makras Real Estate: A slew of negative reviews by his former tenants on the website Yelp range from “negligent with security and repairs” to “this is the epitome of a slum lord.”
THE TWIN TOWERS
Architects coast to coast are murmuring about a tower proposed in February for Seattle by Portland-based Zimmer Gunsul Frasca that bears more than a passing resemblance to Robert A. M. Stern’s Tour Carpe Diem announced in January in Paris. The glass towers both feature double-take-inducing faceted facades of triangular planes that angle in and out. While we cross-referenced the employee contact lists of each firm to find out which disgruntled architect lifted the blueprints along with his walking papers, several responses to an ArchNewsNow.com newsletter reveal that there are actually several more angles to the story. Keen eyes saw similar angles in Dallas’ Fountain Place byHenry Cobb of I.M. Pei & Partners (1986), I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower (1990), Lab Architecture Studio/Bate Smart‘s Federation Square, Melbourne (2002), even in the under-construction Bank of America Tower by Cook + Foxin Manhattan. Wow, we had no idea that architects were so… multi-faceted.
NOW THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
When we got word that SBE Entertainment Group (owners of trendy LA restaurants, clubs, and other real estate) CEO Sam Nazarian was named to SCI-Arc’s board of directors last month, we only had one question: How long until Spencer Pratt goes back to school for his masters in architecture? Let us explain. SBE’s got a recurring gig on the is-it-real-or-is-it-fake docudrama The Hills (it’s fake), one of the hottest shows on television, since star Heidi Montag“works” there. Watch closely (because you know you want to) and you’ll notice SBE-affiliated institutions like the Philippe Starck-designed Katsuya fleet seem to appear on-screen a little more frequently than other LA locations. Therefore, it’s only logical that next season will see a fascinating plot twist that results in a scantily-clad catfight in SCI-Arc’s parking lot. Or Nazarian could help out the unemployed Lauren Conrad, who left her “job” at Teen Vogue at the end of last season. Maybe there’s an opening in the SCI-Arc publications department?
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