LA architecture aficionados take note: this Saturday you can tour five architecture studios within a one-mile stretch on Hyperion Avenue in Silver Lake, thanks to a fundraiser organized by de LaB (design east of La Brea). The studios featured on the self-guided tour include Michael Maltzan Architecture, known for civic-minded projects like the New Carver Apartments, and Lehrer Architects, whose recent work includes the Spring Street Park downtown.  Tourgoers can also stop at WTARCH, MASS Architecture & Design, and MAKE Architecture. The tour begins at 3:00 pm and ends at 6:00 pm.  A buy-your-own happy hour follows. Tickets cost $20 and can be purchased online.  Proceeds from the event benefit de LaB programs.  For more information, visit de LaB's event page

There's nothing that'll kill the buzz on your birthday faster than rumors of the Rapture coming on the same day. But we think John Chase, the beloved urban designer of the City of West Hollywood, would have handled it in stride. Chase, the oft-celebrated "King of Public Space," was a tremendously outspoken presence in planning and politics and was responsible for transforming the scruffy city into one with attractive public spaces that are both progressive and respectful of the city's past. To remember the late urban designer, de LaB, a group of Chase's friends, family, co-workers, and collaborators, is leading a walking tour on the anniversary of his birthday, Saturday, May 21, across the city. Architects and city leaders will guide the participants through various projects and share their memories of Chase and discuss his urban spaces. Stops include Formosa 1140, Plummer Park, The MAK Center, Habitat 825, Holloway Park Veteran's Memorial, Sierra Bonita Affordable Housing, 8140 Sunset Boulevard, and West Hollywood City Hall, among others. The tour will conclude (hopefully with the world still intact) with drinks at one of Chase's favorite places in the city, Barney's Beanery. Presented by KCRW's DnA: Design and Architecture, design east of La Brea and The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, the day's speakers include Frances Anderton, Christopher Hawthorne, John Keho, Jennifer Davis, Katherine Spitz, Deborah Murphy, John Kaliski, Margaret Crawford, Lorcan O'Herhily, Richard Loring, Merry Norris, Andy Liu, Wade Killefer, Pat Smith, Bruce Kaye, and more to be announced. John Chase's West Hollywood: An Architectural Walking Tour Saturday, May 21, 2011 10:00 a.m.: Tour departs from the West Hollywood Gateway, 7100 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood. Meet in front of the Starbucks in the courtyard. 5:30 p.m.: Drinks at Barney's Beanery, 8447 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood. You can take the 704 or 4 bus back to the start. Please visit AN's diary for more info.

WAY TO GO CLIVE The unofficial mayor of Silver Lake, Barbara Bestor, once again transformed local Mexican restaurant Casita del Campo into a sweaty mosh pit for architects and other designers at the end of March. Among those dancing like teenagers were Clive Wilkinson and his beautiful, young (mee-ow alert!) girlfriend Cheryl Lee Scott, a local real estate agent. Back when we reported on his fantastic new house in West Hollywood, we couldn’t help but notice that it seemed an empty place for a bachelor. SEPARATED AT BIRTH Of the two Johns involved with San Francisco’s Public Architecture—that’s John Cary, who was the executive director, and John Peterson, the founder—the former has announced his departure from the nonprofit organization, without any other immediate plans. Peterson, who has been the public face of the pro-bono, 1-percent work program, will continue as president. Said Cary: “I got the organization up and running, and we’ve been able to build a great staff and attract incredible firms to our cause.” With Peterson having come on board full-time in 2008 as president, however, Cary’s 100-percent commitment didn’t seem to cut it. He can at least go out on a high note, that being The Power of Pro Bono, his magnum opus due out from Metropolis Books/Distributed Art Publishers this fall. WHO KNEW? Looks like it takes a massive slowdown to discover that architects know how to do something other than solve design problems. Design collective De Lab (Design East of La Brea) took advantage of the moment and invited a gaggle of creative LA architects and designers to sell their artistic and non-architectural products at their pop-up store at a manic and crowded LA Artwalk on April 8. This included the irresistibly mischievous dolls of Debi Van Zyl, the live air plants of Kara Bartelt/toHOLD, the vintage and classy stationery of Cartoules Letterpress, the hip accessories of Poketo, the always-trendy Peri Lamps, and many more. Oh, and speaking of hidden talents, we just learned that LA architects David Martin and Glen Irani are both motorcycle racers. Really? When did these folks pick up these skills? Have architects in fact been living, and not just working all this time? Send custom Ducati superbikes to eavesdrop@archpaper.com

What do we love more than Dim Sum? Not much... But how about design and biking and Dim Sum? This Saturday LA arts incubator De Lab (Design East of La Brea) put together this genius combination, with a bike tour that left from LA's Highland Park neighborhood and wound up in Chinatown. Highlights along the way included cool architecture studio Fung + Blatt, a scenic ride through historic Lincoln Heights; a tour of LOC's ingenious Chun King Loft; and a look at Chinatown's Fifth Floor Gallery, with its hot new furniture collection designed by local architects. Who knew Chinatown was so cool? The road ended at dim sum specialist Ocean Seafood, where the hungry bikers went to town on dumplings galore. A great photo tour of the trip is available here.

Architecture was heard and not seen at City Listening, the latest installation of de LaB (design east of La Brea), LA's semi-regular design gathering hosted by AN contributors Haily Zaki and Alissa Walker (the writer of this post, but better known to you as "we"). Monday night's event was held at the new Barbara Bestor-designed GOOD Space in Hollywood, where design writers and bloggers crawled out from under their keyboards to show us their faces, and in some cases, their feelings. The evening was packed with AN contributors and readers, including two pieces out of seven read that were originally published in AN! Frances Anderton opened the night with a piece published in AN over two years ago that reflected on her first impressions of LA as a newly-arrived Brit. After making a Chapter 11 joke that made a few LA Times freelancers twitter nervously, Christopher Hawthorne read a piece from the LAT about last year's wildfires (isn't that great, we now have an annual wildfire tradition). We loved Curbed LA editors Josh Williams and Marissa Gluck riffing on the disturbing proliferation of floral wallpaper and velour furnishings as part of their regular feature "That's Rather Hideous" (their excellent Flickr stream with photos by their readers provided background imagery the rest of the evening).

Jade Chang's tribute to minimalls published in Metropolis made us blush with nostalgia and was the perfect bookend to Sam Lubell's wistful critique of Americana at Brand, also published in AN (speaking of, Sam will be signing his new book London 2000+ at the LA Forum tonight!). We tried to lift spirits dampened by the economy with our poem The Night Before Layoffs, predicting what local designers from Frank Gehry to Shepard Fairey will need to do to weather the downturn. Although the crowd roared regularly throughout the evening—who knew design writers were so drop dead hilarious?—nothing quite matched West Hollywood Urban Designer John Chase's account of love, guilt, soul-searching, urban planning, and..er, um, how do we say this...hard-ons with a local homeless man. Unfortunately, this was an unpublished (and probably unpublishable) piece. Believe us when we say you had to be there for that one. More photos, thanks to Keith Wiley.