Mere months stand between you and Dwell on Design, a veritable feast of modern design in the form of thousands of products, oodles of presentations, modern home tours, and demonstrations galore. This year’s ideas- and inspiration-fest takes place June 21-23 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Among the highlights in store for the eighth Dwell on Design is a keynote address by architect and product designer Michael Graves (have you tried his tweezers?), who will share his insights on universal design and design’s direct influence on quality of life, and a series of panels–featuring speakers from organizations such as the Getty Conservation Institute, MOCA, LACMA, and Architecture for Humanity–tackling issues in the areas of design innovation, sustainable design, and the business of design. This year’s show also features the first Dwell on Design artist-in-residence, Tanya Aguiñiga. The Los Angeles-based furniture designer, craftsperson, and community activist will create a living exhibition of upcycled furnishings that after being displayed on the show floor will be donated to local shelters.

Dwell on Design is back. The West Coast weekend of modern design events—from seminars and discussions to exhibits and self-guided tours of modern homes—kicks off on Friday in Los Angeles with a keynote address by William McDonough. The architect, designer, and author will describe how Cradle to Cradle thinking about design, architecture, and industry can create a future that is “more good” rather than “less bad.” Also part of McDonough’s discussion of the future of dwelling: the non-profit Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. Other featured presentations at Dwell on Design will focus on landscape design, sustainability, and what it’s like to live in an Airstream (we’re thinking more good and less bad?). On Sunday, Architecture for Humanity will cap off the three-day confab with a regeneration-themed Pecha Kucha. Ready to seize this opportunity to donate your heartbeat to a good cause and meet Ed Begley Jr.? Tickets are available here. Enter code DWELLUNBEIGE83 to receive $15 off Conference Plus and $15 off Exhibition Plus tickets.

Attendees check out the IQ Haus at Dwell on Design.

Dwell on Design, the magazine’s signature trade show, took place this weekend in Los Angeles. This year’s event was focused on the environment—eco design, green living, and sustainable food.

Dwell’s corner of the massive LA Convention Center was filled with an art installation curated by designboom, interior design vendors, pre-fab houses, and two stages for presentations and discussions about design innovation and sustainablility. The most popular spaces, however, were the outdoor living exhibits—green patches that simulated backyards, with plant life, outdoor lounge chairs, and hammocks swinging from leafy trees.

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Hockenberry at Dwell on Design: What percent of this conversation about sustainability will be permanent vs. fad in 10 years?

Geoff Manaugh: We won’t need to talk about sustainability issues because they’ll be the norm. 89%.
Frank Harmon: We’re losing the battle, houses are treated like a box of cereal. 5%
Lorcan O’Herlihy: There’s a way to go. 50%.
Gwynne Pugh: There’s been a fundamental paradigm shift. 30-40%
Reed Kroloff: It depends on the people in the press, to change public opinion. 30%. It also depends on the government to create a tax incentive and energy costs have to keep rising so Americans keep paying attention. And, it depends on you.

That’s a good way to end this episode of Dwell on Design, and also, by starting to think about the next one: June 6,7 & 8, 2008 in…Los Angeles (woohoo!).

All our Dwell on Design coverage.

Coverage from Life Without Buildings, PrairieMod [Day 1] [Day 2], BLDG BLOG, Inhabitat [Day 1] [Day 2]

Frank Harmon at Dwell on Design: Dwell likes to write about prefab homes and we have plenty of prefab homes in North Carolina. This is one of those North Carolina Dwell homes. Except we like to call it a trailer.

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So they’ve mushed together the final speakers at Dwell on Design, making for a kind of “greatest hits” panel on regionalism. Michelle Kauffman is not here, but we do have Reed Kroloff, Gwynne Pugh, Lorcan O’Herlihy, Frank Harmon and Geoff Manaugh, whose BLDG BLOG gets major Hockenberry praise. (PS: The noise from the exhibition space surrounding the conference area just got deafening as we’re over time and it opened to the public at noon.)

After Frank Harmon’s fascinating slide show of his North Carolina projects, Reed Kroloff (former dean at Tulane) gives a report from New Orleans on the challenges of defining a new and appropriate regional architecture for the city. Look for the Sundance Channel show Architecture School that chronicles the school’s projects. Now for the Q&A.

Hockenberry plugs BLDG BLOG again with a question tacked on the end but Manaugh kind of skirts it, saying he’s most interested in regionalism due to the fact that the weather’s changing–regionalism is essentially climate-appropriate architecture and it will need to adjust. He talks about a map of Europe published in the Guardian based on potential climate zones in 2071: London will have the weather of Lisbon. Now to LOH, who sees regionalism as connectivity to the area–and responsibility to take private outdoor spaces and make them public in the right way.

Then Hockenberry asks Pugh to guess which city has the highest foreclosure rate and he guesses Irvine (dude, Pugh, what do you have against Irvine?), but the answer is Las Vegas, making it the multi-faceted epitome of a non-sustainable community. LA planning director Gail Goldberg gets namechecked for her “city of villages” concepts for San Diego as a good example of a sustainable community.

There’s major blog love for BLDG BLOG again from Hockenberry but by now we think it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t read it. He asks Manaugh if he writes the blog to help people get information about how to transform their communities but Manaugh says that’s not really the intention, it’s more conceptual. Like, hello? BLDG BLOG? That’s one of them smart blogs.

More Dwell on Design coverage.

Yay, someone’s finally going to talk about LA at Dwell on Design! And he’s certainly the man for the job; Lorcan O’Herlihy has come armed with “Double Edged Density.” Of course the man is talking about the nascent urbanization of our fair city. Cry as much as you want about it but the LA single family house is no longer affordable. The LOH is gonna lay down some density solutions.

LOHA creates their residential projects strategy they call contingent planning, that physically engages the city using nine different principles. Working closely with John Chase, urban designer for the city of West Hollywood, LOHA is working on or has completed four great projects in WeHo–The Willoughby, The Formosa, The Gardner and Habitat 825, the sometime-controversial residential project next door to to R.M. Schindler‘s Kings Road House. Progress on each could be seen during a quick spin on your bike or at the LOHA website.

More Dwell on Design coverage.

MIT’s William J. Mitchell presented one of the school’s Smart Cities projects at Dwell on Design, the City Car. While not a replacement for full-size cars or trucks, it’s an easier way to get around an urban area that could be rented at transport nodes (like the bike-sharing systems in place now). It’s teeny tiny–so small there’s no room for a steering wheel, you control it with a joystick. There are electric motors in the wheels, which are omnidirectional and braking, and computerized navigational systems that can intelligently move through the city. And it folds and stacks like a shopping cart into an electric charging platform, which would hypothetically be wired into solar panels on the roof of a nearby building. It has such a small footprint that a typical Manhattan block that could hold 80 cars could hold six times that many City Cars.

When talking about a prototype folding scooter they’re testing in Taipei, Mitchell called it “our little version of Optimus Prime.” Complete with a Michael Bay soundtrack, we hope.

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Master of ceremonies (and of our hearts) John Hockenberry opened up this morning’s Dwell on Design session with a film he made for environmental entertainment website Blue Egg. In this episode he tries to stump MIT students by asking them to name five greenhouse gases. You can see all Hockenberry’s videos including a hilarious discussion of “peak oil.”

See what happens when you bring a hot tub to a design conference? Mayor Gavin Newsom jumped in after this woman led the way out to the post-programming party after his surprise speech. Blue skies and warm breezes draped over Dwell’s outdoor showroom–a refurbished parking lot with all traces of asphalt expertly converted into prefab lots and patio furnishing vignettes. There were strappy chaise lounges, shiny glass shards that crunched underfoot like shattered bottles, squares of penny tile over the bars (fabulous idea), and a DWR Airstream (designed by none other than Dwell founder Lara Hedberg Deam‘s hubby Chris Deam).

We commiserated with the Chronicle Books squad (and UnBeige readers!) Jodi Warshaw, Christina Amini, and Alan Rapp (who we wrangled into snapping these photos for us, merci). LA editor Frances Anderton introduced is to more of the Dwell crew, including pres and publisher Michela O’Connor Abrams, and editors Amber Bravo, Aaron Britt (who used to work for word god William Safire!) and new hire Geoff Manaugh, who’s adjusting to San Fran life quite nicely. He’s got the intellectual take on the conference over at BLDG BLOG. We’re also reading Emily Pilloton‘s coverage on Inhabitat but haven’t found her curled up in a Fatboy yet.

The orange human crock pot above, by the way, is by our friends at Dutchtub, comes in six colors, and yes, that’s a little skillet to sear your grass-fed bison steaks while you prune up appropriately.

More Dwell on Design coverage.