UNDER THE INFLUENCE 013

Ignacio G. Galán (New York) and Michael Maltzan (LA). Moderated by Maristella Casciato.

Salkin House, Echo Park, Los Angeles

Event hosted by Peter Blake Gallery.

SPEAKERS

IGNACIO G. GALÁN

Ignacio G. Galán is an architect and architectural historian. His work addresses questions of residence, citizenship, and kinship with a focus on nationalism, migration, and disability. He is the author of Furnishing Fascism (2025), editor of Architecture's Kinships (2026), and co-editor of Radical Pedagogies (2021) and After Belonging (2016). He has exhibited his work at various venues, including the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2025), the international selection of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014 and 2021), and the Center for Architecture (2022), and has also served as curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016). His articles have appeared in JSAH, JDH, JAE, modernism+modernity, and Journal of Architecture, amongst others. His work as an architect has been recognized with the Emerging Voices Award (2025) by the AIA NY and is part of the permanent collection of the Pompidou Center. An assistant professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, he is currently a fellow at the Getty Research Institute.

MICHAEL MALTZAN

Michael Maltzan FAIA founded Michael Maltzan Architecture in 1995. The architecture and urban design practice works globally across a wide range of typologies, from cultural institutions to city infrastructure. The firm and its projects have been recognized with numerous awards and have been widely featured in national and international publications, in addition to being exhibited in museums worldwide. Maltzan is a recipient of the Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture award and was elected to the National Academy of Design in 2020.

Michael Maltzan Architecture has been steadily transforming its home base, the city of Los Angeles, with numerous large and small housing commissions, particularly through its sustained collaboration with the Skid Row Housing Trust, a nonprofit developer focused on providing housing for homeless individuals.

Other recent work has included the Los Angeles Sixth Street Viaduct, Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts, MoMA’s Queens Museum, MIT’s Vassar Street Hall, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery Inuit Art Center

MARISTELLA CASCIATO

Maristella Casciato (architect, architectural historian, and educator) is senior curator, head of architectural collections at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles since 2016. During her tenure she has been responsible for major acquisitions such as Frank Gehry Papers, 1954–1988; the Papers of Paul R. Williams, Brenda Levin, and the archives of the LA Conservancy. She has co-curated exhibitions at the GRI, including The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930 (2017), MONUMENT(ALITY) (2018), and Bauhaus Beginnings (2019).

Casciato was awarded a Fulbright grant (1992) and a Graham Foundation Publication grant (2016). At the Canadian Centre for Architecture, she was Mellon Senior Fellow (2010) prior to being appointed associate director of research.

Among her most recent publications: The Metropolis in Latin America 1830–1930. Cityscapes, Photographs, Debates, co-edited with I. Alonso (2021); Rethinking Global Modernism. Architectural Historiography and the Postcolonial, co-edited with V. Prakash and D. E. Coslett (2022); Technoscape. The Architecture of Engineers, co-edited with Pippo Ciorra (2022); and the facsimile reprint of Le Corbusier Album Punjab, 1951 (2024). Casciato has been nominated 2023 Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians.

The venue: Jules Salkin first met John Lautner in the late 1930s at the Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin, where Lautner was apprenticing under Frank Lloyd Wright. Years later, Salkin commissioned him to design this home, completed in 1948. The two-bedroom hillside home is defined by its dramatic butterfly roof, an architectural gesture that showcases Lautner’s experimental approach. Rather than relying on conventional construction techniques, he employed a series of wing-shaped structural bents placed at eight-foot intervals along the length of the house. Two rows of central columns support the roof, allowing it to appear as though it floats above the fully glazed walls—an early glimpse of the expressive structural clarity and openness that would become hallmarks of Lautner’s work.

The house was restored by Barbara Bestor and currently is hosting the BLAKEHOUSE Exhibition by Peter Blake Gallery.

Special thanks to Peter Blake and Brian Linder

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UNDER THE INFLUENCE 013:

IGNACIO G. GALÁN & MICHAEL MALTZAN | MODERATED BY MARISTELLA CASCIATO