Trails Advisory Committee Member
Frank Escher, trained at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH, Zürich, Switzerland), is a principal with the Los Angeles firm Escher GuneWardena Architecture, whose work ranges from small, conceptually rigorous projects to ecologically and socially innovative urban design proposals. Frank Escher and partner Ravi GuneWardena’s interest in contemporary art has led to collaborations with artists, such as Sharon Lockhart, Mike Kelley, Olafur Eliasson, and Stephen Prina, and the installation design of dozens of exhibitions in American and European museums. Escher GuneWardena’s work on historic structures includes the restoration of John Lautner’s Chemosphere, Phase 1 restoration work of the Eames House (in collaboration with the Getty Conservation Institute), as well as houses by A.Q. Jones, Richard Neutra, Paul Williams, and Gregory Ain.
Escher is the editor of the monograph “John Lautner, Architect”, was the administrator for the John Lautner Archive (1995-2007), and serves on the boards of the John Lautner Foundation, the Julius Shulman Institute, and the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Escher has taught at the University of Southern California, he and GuneWardena have been visiting professors at Cal Poly Pomona, at the University of Oregon, and at the Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland) for the 2016-2017 academic year, where they taught as part of the school’s Technique et Sauvegarde de l’Architecture Moderne (TSAM) program. In June of 2017, Clocks and Clouds, a monograph on Escher GuneWardena was released by Birkhäuser.