A native of Japan and a graduate of SCI-Arc, Takashige Ikawa is both precise and poetic. Perhaps due to his early training as a photographer, he sees architecture as a series of emotional moments to be connected through space and time. Whether designing a house, an exhibition, or a large creative workspace, Taka immerses himself in context and in the spirit of a place. The results are diverse but consistently thoughtful and thought-through.
Anupama Mann is a researcher and designer living in Los Angeles. Their academic work focuses on development projects, historical studies and media analysis and can be found on Researchgate and Academia. Anupama is also Principal at Wyota Workshop that specializes in residential building projects. Some of their work can be seen at www.wyotaworkshop.com.
Becky Nicolaides is an LA-based historian and consultant specializing in the history of suburbs, metro areas, and Los Angeles. She’s author of The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945 (Oxford, 2024), and two other award-winning books on suburban history. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other outlets. After receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia University, she became a tenured faculty member at UCSD, then moved into full-time consulting for public history projects, individual communities, film/TV, and podcasts. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Huntington Library, UCLA, and the EU Erasmus+ Programme. She served on the LA Mayor’s Working Group on Civic Memory, and is cofounder of the consulting firm History Studio. Becky is a lifelong Angeleno and bleeds Dodger blue. Read more about Becky at www.beckynicolaides.com.
Tequila Mockingbird is a Los Angeles based artist, historian, cultural preservationist and indisputable punk legend. With a career spanning over three decades, Tequila is the curator of the Los Angeles Punk Museum, hosts The Punkast with UCLA musicologist Jessica Schwartz, acts for movies and television, and uses her expertise in underground music from the past century a music supervisor in the entertainment industry.
In tandem with experimental music luminary Peter Ivers, Tequila booked the most prominent punk acts of the era for their television debut on New Wave Theater, including Black Flag, X, and Circle Jerks. Together, the pair explored the tragic glamour of 1980’s Hollywood spaces, played in the Ivers’ last band Vitamin Pink, travelled the world, counting among their friends both Timothy Leary and the Dalai Lama. Performing with everyone from members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience to Jeff Goldblum, it’s safe to say that if it happened and if it was cool – Tequila was right there.
As an architectural historian, Tequila is fascinated by the ghosts of history and the way that they layer over the ravages of time, seeping into the backdrop of our day to day. A few of Tequila’s most persistent memories of begone LA spaces include the opulent Garden of Allah and the Sunset Strip’s House of Blues, which blended modern art folk art, and beyond into an ancient looking – but very much alive – venue. Within the architectural world, she’s counted giants like Frank Gehry and the late Richard Neutra among her personal friends. “To preserve the past and keep it alive,” she says, typifying the ethos behind her tireless drive to sing for the spaces and songs we’ve almost forgotten. Never shying away from the unorthodox, she counts even the cemeteries of the city among its most rich and beautiful places. “That’s your forever real estate,” she aptly judges. With her encompassing sense of place, its past, and its dynamic, haunted present, Tequila Mockingbird is one of LA’s renaissance women – an invaluable fount of ruthless historicism and legendary taste.
Mary is a Senior Associate and architectural historian at Architectural Resources Group in downtown Los Angeles. She specializes in historic resource surveys, landmark nominations, and historic context statements. Also an archaeologist, Mary is particularly drawn to vernacular and less visible sites that tell the stories of the historically underrepresented people of Los Angeles.
Nastassja Lafontant is a South Florida native from a Haitian/Colombian family, and is a recent architecture graduate from the University of Southern California. During her time in California, Nastassja held an internship at Studio One Eleven, where she was a part of a team that spearheaded an American Institute of Architects project about Roy Sealey. She was also a final contestant in the AIA Film Challenge, for which she created a film that shed light on the homelessness in Bellflower City. Nastassja is currently pursuing graduate studies in architectural urban development and landscaping at Harvard University.
Wolfgang Wagener is a German-American architect, author, and development advisor. He holds a PhD in architecture from RWTH Aachen University in Germany and an advanced management degree in real estate from Harvard University. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute, the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the Society of Architectural Historians, Southern California Chapter, having followed his passion for Mid-century modernism from western Europe to the coast of California.
Leslie Erganian is an American artist, designer, and writer. Her artwork is in the permanent collections of the California Museum of Photography and Xerox Corporation. She contributed her design talents to the production of feature film projects for MGM, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., and Showtime. She has been a writer and correspondent for NBC, Discovery, and Hallmark. Leslie was a contributing writer to the architectural monograph Raphael Soriano for Phaidon Press, and is co-author of NEW WEST: Innovating at the Intersection, published by Hirmer Verlag. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Art + Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and obtained an M.F.A. in film production from the University of California, Los Angeles. Leslie is a lifetime member of the Society of Architectural Historians, Southern California Chapter and a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild.
Read Leslie’s biography about Raphael Soriano here.
Inspired by diverse communities and their geographical relationships toone another, Oquendo enjoys researching the 88 cities in Los AngelesCounty, highlighting unique bus or train stops that inspire his series,METRO, an anthology of short, scripted stories connected via public transportation in LA.
METRO has premiered in festivals all over the world, including the Seoul WebFest in South Korea (2018), Bogota Webfest in Colombia (2019), winning ‘Best Drama Series’ at the Hollywood Webfest (2019), and with notable premieres at the American Film Institute and UCLA.
Ron Yeo was born on June 17, 1933 in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1959. He was officially licensed in 1960 as an architect. In 1963, he founded Ron Yeo, Architect, Inc. With his office located in Corona del Mar, he worked on a variety of projects located in and around Orange County. In 1965, he was appointed to be on the board of directors for the University of California, Irvine’s “Project 21,” which had the goal to ensure that Orange County entered the 21st century with a well-planned area. He led one of the multiple study groups titled, Open Space. He was a member of the Orange County Planning Commission from 1972-1973, and again from 1975-1976. In addition, he was the chairman of the Orange County Housing and Community Development Task Force in 1978. He assisted in the development of the Upper Newport Bay Peter and Mary Muth Interpretive Center and Back Bay Science Center, which eventually opened in 2001. He has been listed as a notable architect by Marquis Who’s Who in 2004.