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Host Frances Anderton looks at design and architecture from a Los Angeles perspective.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Frances Anderton connects design choices to the labor, institutions, and public decisions that give them consequence.
Design and Architecture treats the built world as evidence of public choices. Frances Anderton moves between scene-setting and interviews, connecting architecture and design to civic memory, cultural institutions, labor, and climate without losing sight of the objects and spaces…
A streetlight that dims for a full moon could change how you look at your own block.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A desert arts conversation that keeps money, politics, and ecology in frame.
Frances Anderton treats Saudi Arabia as a new frontier for American artists and designers, moving between Desert X and Neom to ask what happens when culture is folded into a government-backed future.
A San Diego mall's rise and decline meets Ian Schrager's case for hotels as public gathering places.
Horton Plaza comes through as a San Diego mall that once made shopping feel playful and public, then lost that energy as the site aged. The piece keeps the focus on that shift instead of turning it into nostalgia, which helps the whole thing land.
Wilshire's museum projects and Sweeten's contractor pitch both turn on coordination, but in different ways.
Wilshire Boulevard comes through here less as a single street than as a string of big bets that do not always feel like they belong to the same city.
A plaza renovation and tree talk about how Los Angeles gets built.
Los Angeles gets looked at from the curb up here. The Music Center Plaza renovation comes off as the sharper half, with Howard Sherman and Bob Hale laying out how gentler stairs, escalators, bright canopies, and banners are meant to make the Music Centre easier to read from…
A brisk tour of fire defense, horror imagery, and the craft hidden inside sneaker culture.
DNA Design and Architecture moves from wildfire danger at the Getty to classic movie monsters and sneaker customization, and that sweep gives the hour its appeal: public risk, visual culture, and the labor behind style.
Climate politics, luxury branding, and plastic waste meet in a brisk, revealing survey.
The episode ties together a porn company proposing an ocean-plastic cleanup, Greta Thunberg's climate activism, and Porsche's all-electric Taycan as part of a larger question about how climate-minded figures and brands reach a wider public.
A brisk arc from Ray Cappy's legacy to car color signals and Esther Choi's design-minded cooking.
Ray Cappy's death gives this Design and Architecture hour its frame, and the episode moves from his houses and environmental concerns into the ongoing SCI-Arc story.
A coastal promenade, a vacancy problem, and a larger question about who public space is for.
Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade serves as a useful test of how a coastal public space adjusts as retail habits change and vacancies grow.
Architecture talk from inside the studio.
Community radio with a wide front door.
Design conversations with cultural consequence.
Portrait craft from inside the working week.
Architecture as argument, archive, and lived space.
Architecture, patiently thought through aloud.
Henry Huntington's reach goes well past San Marino.
This episode explores the rise of co-living housing in Los Angeles, focusing on a Koreatown house converted into 15 bedrooms, and examines the sustainability claims of Bird e-scooters.
Los Angeles is shopping for a better streetlight.
Wilshire Boulevard is changing fast.
Saudi Arabia wants a cultural conversation.
Loss sets the tone.
Los Angeles is trying to make civic space feel less sealed off.
Autographs leave marks.
Eighteen housing bills set the table.
A protest starts it.
Third Street Promenade is under pressure.
Plastic trash fills the oceans.
Horton Plaza once made retail feel like public life.
Summer starts at the pool.
Fire comes first.