Enjoy a lunch meeting with Frances Anderton, executive producer and host of KCRW's DnA (Design & Architecture) in LA!
KCRW’s DnA: Design and Architecture explores who and what matters in our designed world – on radio, podcast, blog and at public events. For many years she produced KCRW’s award-winning national and local current affairs shows, To The Point, and Which Way, LA?, hosted by Warren Olney. Ms. Anderton is a frequent public speaker and writer on architecture and design. Her writings have appeared in many publications, including Dwell, the New York Times and KCET’s Artbound. Most recently she published a book,Grand Illusion: A Story of Ambition, and its Limits, on LA’s Bunker Hill, based on a studio she co-taught with Frank Gehry and partners at USC School of Architecture, that explored decades of flawed planning efforts on downtown’s Grand Avenue.
Ms Anderton has also produced many events and exhibits; this year she will co-curate DIEM 2014 (Design Intersects Everything Made), the annual design forum for the West Hollywood Design District; and she is currently preparing an exhibit of photography of architecture for the Annenberg Photography Space, to open late 2014.
Ms. Anderton has been featured on TV and documentary programs, including KCET’s, “Global LA”, and “Departures” series. She was featured in the documentary films Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, and A Necessary Ruin: The Story of Buckminster Fuller and the Union Tank Car Dome. The USC School of Architecture’s Architectural Guild awarded the Esther McCoy Award to Anderton in 2010, and in 2013 the Museum of California Design (MOCAD) gave her the Henry Award for Outstanding Contributions to California Design.
Raised in Bath, England, she studied architecture at University College London then became associate editor of London-based Architectural Review; her first assignment: to produce an issue (1987) on new architecture in Los Angeles. She moved to LA in 1991, to become editor-in-chief of L.A. Architect. After the Rodney King riots, she heard Which Way, LA? and determined to work on that show.
With DnA she brought her love of design and architecture to KCRW, and believes her experience with radio, politics and current affairs gives her a unique vantage point on architecture and design.