Barbara Bestor / Principal, Bestor Architecture, Los Angeles / Chair, Graduate School of Architecture at Woodbury University

John Chase / Author / Urban Designer, City of West Hollywood

Teddy Cruz / Principal, Estudio Teddy Cruz, San Diego / Associate Professor, UCSD, Visual Arts Department

Dana Cuff / Director, cityLAB – UCLA/AUD

Neil Denari / Principal, NMDA, Los Angeles / Professor, UCLA/AUD

Joshua Prince-Ramus /Principal, REX

Barbara Bestor

Barbara Bestor is the principal of Bestor Architecture, a Los Angeles office for progressive architecture. Currently serving as Chair of the Graduate School of Architecture at Woodbury University, she has previously taught at UCLA, Harvard College and Sci-Arc, and is a graduate of the latter two schools. Her work includes a wide range of projects, from commercial spaces such as  Intelligentsia Coffee, Trina Turk and Stussy; new experimental houses in Venice, Silverlake, Santa Barbara and New York City; and a variety of non-profit installations including local schools, billboards, and an art bouncy house. She is also the author of ‘Bohemian Modern, Living in Silverlake’ (Harper Collins 2006), a book dedicated to the suppressed narrative of  informal and eccentric modernism found in Silverlake’s rich domestic architectural history. Bestor is a former member of the LA Forum Board of Directors.

John Chase

John Chase is an author and for the past 14 years has been the Urban Designer for the City of West Hollywood. His book, Glitter Stucco & Dumpster Diving, received a PEN nomination for best book on the visual arts in 2001; his essay from the book, ‘The Stucco Box’ is one of the definitive writings on Dingbat apartment buildings, and is included in it’s entirety in the Dingbat 2.0 Competition Field Guide to Dingbats. Other books include the LA Forum publication Everyday Urbanism, with co-editors John Kaliski and Margaret Crawford, and Exterior Decoration. He also contributed an essay to another LA Forum publication Experimental Architecture in Los Angeles. He is a former architecture critic for the San Franciso Examiner, and former Disney Imagineer. Mr. Chase has also worked in various architecture and design offices in Southern California and has had his own design firm. Chase is a former member of the LA Forum Board of Directors.

Teddy Cruz

Teddy Cruz is the principal of Estudio Teddy Cruz, a research‐based architecture practice in San Diego, California. He obtained a Master in Design Studies at Harvard University and is currently an associate professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego. He has been recognized internationally for his urban research of the Tijuana‐San Diego border, and in collaboration with community‐based nonprofit organizations, for his work on affordable housing in relationship to an urban policy more inclusive of social and cultural programs for the city. In 1991, he received the Rome Prize in Architecture; in 2005 he was the first recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture On The City Prize, by the Canadian Center of Architecture and the London School of Economics; and in 2008 he was selected to represent the US in the Venice Architecture Biennial.