Eric Owen Moss was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles, and holds Masters Degrees in Architecture from both the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
Eric Owen Moss Architects was founded in 1973. The Culver City-based office has completed projects in the United States and around the world. There are 22 published monographs on the work of the office, and EOMA projects have garnered over 140 local, national, and international design awards. Moss has received numerous prestigious honors including: Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1999; AIA|LA Gold Medal, 2001; Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley, 2003; Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, recognizing a distinguished history of architectural design, 2007; Jencks Award by the Royal Institute of British Architects, 2011; National Academy induction, 2014; Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art from the Austrian President during a ceremony at Hofburg Palace, 2016; Beidou Master Award in Ordos, China, 2017; Arpafil Award in Guadalajara, 2019.
Time Magazine listed Vespertine as one of the World’s Greatest Places to Visit in 2018, and in 2020 Conjunctive Points – The New City was awarded the AIA Twenty-five Year Award. Per the AIA, “the Twenty-five Year Award showcases buildings that set a precedent. The award is conferred on a building that has stood the test of time for 25-35 years and continues to set standards of excellence for its architectural design and significance.” Moss has held teaching positions at major universities around the world including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. He has been a longtime professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and served as its director from 2002-2015. He received the Most Admired Educator Award from the Design Futures Council in 2013, and The AIA|LA Educator of the Year in 2006.
Courses
The New City: Which Truth Do You Want to Tell?
The project began in the mid-1980s in an area of Central Los Angeles and Culver City consisting of industrial and warehouse buildings that had been abandoned as industry moved abroad. The once vital manufacturing area was in serious decline as property values plummeted and crime rates increased.
Along with clients Laurie and Frederick Samitaur Smith, EOMA set out to develop a strategy to reconstitute the former industrial zone, utilizing its built assets, eliminating its social and economic liabilities, and imagining a constructive concept for a new model for urban revitalization. One building at a time, warehouses were transformed into venues for a wide range of creative enterprise.
Viewed individually, the projects represent a wide array of architectural and technical achievement that has been discussed, published, awarded, and studied around the world. More important (and sometimes overlooked) is the collective value of these singular architectural works as a progenitor of radical urban transformation in the neighborhood.
The project set a contemporary standard for adaptive re-use; a standard for change-in-use without substantially altering the scale of the 27-acre neighborhood; a standard for sustainability in terms of the careful remodeling rather than replacing of existing structures; and most importantly, in an area touched twice by the LA riots, a standard for job creation. Currently, an estimated over 15,000 workers are newly employed in an area that 35 years ago was empty of purpose. The unprecedented project has made Conjunctive Points – The New City a model for city re-thinking around the globe. It continues to be a subject for study in municipalities around the world and regularly hosts tours for politicians, policymakers, urban planners, and architects.
The late architecture critic for The New York Times Herbert Muschamp wrote that “Moss’s projects strike me as such a form of education. The knowing spontaneity of his forms, the hands-on approach implicit in their strong, sculptural contours, the relationship they describe between a city’s vitality and creative potential of its individuals: these coalesce into tangible lessons about how a city should face its future.”
In 2020, Conjunctive Points was awarded the AIA Twenty-Five Year award. Presented by AIA Committee on Design (COD).
Course expires 12/06/2024