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Work Culture Second Home, the buzzy European coworking space for creatives and entrepreneurs, is officially launching stateside: its LA location opens in September. With thriving locations in London and Lisbon, Second Home has spent the past five years fine-tuning the coworking model to embrace the aesthetic and culture of its locations. In July, ahead of the LA opening, Second Home brought the iridescent 2015 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion by Spanish architecture firm SelgasCano, which also designed the new coworking space, to the La Brea Tar Pits as a bit of catnip for what is to come.
Intended to echo quintessential LA design, Second Home Hollywood embodies the city’s history, environment, and fastpaced lifestyle. It taps into the typology of the city’s early-20th-century bungalow court residences, with 60 oval studios wrapped in curved, transparent acrylic walls surrounded by more than 6,500 plants composing the lush exterior gardens. The design also pays homage to local architectural legend Paul Williams, whose iconic designs include the Ambassador Hotel and the LA County Courthouse. He was the first African-American member of the American Institute of Architects. “We referred to the history of LA by refurbishing one of Paul Williams’s buildings,” says Rohan Silva, cofounder and co-CEO of Second Home. “What
better way to respect and continue the architectural history of the city?” The project, which includes both collaborative workspaces and private studios, has been in the works for three years. Like most coworking spaces, membership is necessary at Second Home, but the public will have select access to certain parts of the space through cultural programs that include an auditorium, post-production facilities, a restaurant, outdoor terraces, and a bookshop. “There are two gardens intertwined with the workspaces,” Silva explains. “We wanted to take the buildings out into nature.” —Teaghan Skulszki with Rachel Gallaher
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Girl Power The Guerrilla Girls, a group of anonymous activist feminist artists, emerged in the 1980s to unmask gender and racial inequities in the art world—but their work still isn’t done. This August, Girlfriends of the Guerrilla Girls, an exhibition at Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art, explores the group’s ongoing practice and legacy by showcasing a selection of their politically charged posters alongside equally charged work by nine other feminist artists. According to artist Ann Leda Shapiro, who helped organize the show, other biases like these “have not changed enough over time.” Artists in the exhibition
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explore ever-present issues of sexism, bias, autonomy, fertility, and gender fluidity. Cecilia Concepción Alvarez’s paintings of strong Chicana/Latina women address themes of entitlement and poverty, while E. T. Russian’s graphic works on paper foreground disability, queerness, and self-reliance. All artists featured are based in the Pacific Northwest and do not have gallery representation—a conscious choice for Shapiro, who wanted to create a counterpoint to the commercially driven Seattle Art Fair, whose run overlaps with the start of the CoCA presentation. » —Alexxa Gotthardt
COURTESY SECOND HOME. DEBORAH LAWRENCE, MARCH OF THE COSTUMES (2013). COURTESY CENTER ON CONTEMPORARY ART
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