SAH/SCC’s “Authors on Architecture” presents architect and urban planner Doug Suisman, FAIA, author of Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Public (ORO Editions, 2014). In this new edition, the author explains the impetus for writing the book 25 years ago: it was a response by “a 32-year-old architect (born and educated on the East Coast) trying to make sense of the urbanism of Los Angeles.”

The first part of the book originally appeared as a “pamphlet” published by the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Eight chapters—with names that take the term “body” public to heart (“Umbilical,” “Girdle,” “Suture,” “Pathogen”)—explore how the boulevards establish the framework for the public realm, and how architecture and urban design play critical roles in place-making along the boulevards and in the districts and neighborhoods that line them.

Following is “Boulevards in Practice,” new text that shows projects from Suisman’s firm, which is known for designing the LA Metro Rapid bus system and The Arc, an award-winning scheme for the West Bank and Gaza. These 10 projects range in location from Atlanta and LA to Copenhagen and Pittsburgh. The most recent project, The iQuilt Plan, brought Suisman back to his home town of Hartford, CT, where, as a 10-year-old kid riding the bus, he first started making sense of urbanism.

Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, who also undertook a massive journalistic exploration of LA’s boulevards, contributed the foreword.

After the presentation at the Santa Monica Public Library (Moore Ruble Yudell, 2006), the book will be available for sale and signing by the author.

Authors on Architecture: Suisman—Saturday, January 31, 2015; 1-3PM; Martin Luther King, Jr. Auditorium at the Santa Monica Central Library, 601 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica; free; seating is available on a first-come, first served basis; 310.458.8600.

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