Many of us become aware of architecture only when superstars like Frank Gehry or Richard Meier design award-winning buildings like Disney Hall or Getty Center. But alongside these men are scores of men and women who are working away with a public fervor to bring good design into all aspects of our lives. They believe that their profession is essential to the wellbeing of society and that they are indispensable in developing livable cities and a healthy environment. This group wants all of us laypeople to think about architecture and design and to learn the difference between good design and no design. Architectural schools have always been laboratories for new ideas, but now the A+D Museum is presenting the world of design and architecture to the public in an accessible way. Longtime Los Angeles architect Bernard Zimmerman always wanted a museum to bring attention to architecture and design, says Palisadian Stephen Kanner, who trained with Zimmerman and is currently the president of the A+D board of directors,. The idea evolved from the success of a number of exhibitions over the last decade specifically dedicated to design. For instance, in 1998 Zimmerman conceived New Blood 102, which brought together 102 of the newest talents in the fields of architecture, interior design, fashion design, graphic design, landscape architecture and product design. But Zimmerman’s dream came together unexpectedly at a Passover dinner at Santa Monica Canyon real estate developer Ira Yellin’s house. Kanner asked Yellin, who at the time was the owner of the historic Bradbury Building downtown, if he had any space available for the museum. He did, and up until Yellin’s death last year, the A+D Museum, which opened in January 2001, was comfortably ensconced in that eclectic Victorian landmark. The museum recently relocated to an airy, 5,000-sq.- ft. space on Sunset in West Hollywood, where white walls and polished concrete floors provide a tabula rasa for a wide range of design exhibitions. With a home secure, the museum has gone full steam ahead booking exhibitions to the fall of 2006, including Richard Neutra’s VDL House, where he lived with his family; 2X8, an AIA-sponsored exhibit from eight L.A. architecture and design schools; and Vroom!!, a cutting edge automobile design exhibit that explores the world’s foremost driving machines. This schedule demonstrates A+D’s commitment to presenting the broadest definition of design. The current exhibit showcases recent designs for development and improvement of L.A. The projects included range from homeless shelters and daycare centers to pedestrian amenities and greenways. The way in which the show has been mounted is one key to its success. Each of the projects is presented with a full-color rendering and a short text description. These ‘packages’ of information have been photoscreened onto translucent scrims that act as partitions in the gallery. And each project is identified by a color’pumpkin for a transitional housing shelter; brown for the Gramercy Court shade structure’so the visitor can easily identify each project. The museum’s board of directors not only serves as the clearing house in scheduling exhibitions, but is also very much a working board. Director of Installations Tom Hinerfeld installed the current exhibition, and Creative Director Tyrone Drake donated the cards, posters and repro graphics for the shows that are generated by the museum itself. ‘A lot of this is work in kind,’ Kanner says.’We refer a lot of architects and designers to them.’ Kanner’s involvement with A+D is a natural extension of his dedication to the work of other architects. In 1994 in celebration of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Los Angeles Chapter, he co-chaired the 100-100 exhibition, which was an exhibit of the work of 100 high-quality architecture firms in Los Angeles. And as president-elect of the L. A. chapter of AIA, he seems dedicated to broadening the vision of the association. ‘As president I will be working to connect AIA with college and high school students and the public with exhibitions and programs at the museum,’ Kanner says. ‘The AIA awards presentation will be held at the museum in October.’ While Kanner readily accedes that he spends considerable time on museum activities’three to four meetings a week and an average of 12 phone calls a day’he is still thoroughly engaged and energized by his own architectural practice of 25 architects. ‘Although I don’t draw every line as I used to do in the early days, I still sketch the concepts for the projects,’ projects that range from one of the 34 homes commissioned by New York developer Coco Brown to occupy a unique subdivision in Sagaponac, Long Island, to the low-income housing project to be built at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and 26th St. For the Sagaponac project, architect Richard Meier was asked to choose architects who ranged in age and accomplishment’including Philip Johnson, Zaha Hadid and Steven Holl’to create an anti-tract where each house would be an expression of an individual’s vision. Kanner’s design, a simple two-story rectangle sited on a two-foot high wooden plinth, maximizes the sunlight that penetrates the dense forest surrounding the house, and reiterates the clarity, strength and optimism of his work. Kanner believes the principles of modernism continue to hold true, despite the fact that modernism is often interpreted as architecture that is cold and inhospitable. ‘It’s about light, space, materials and problem-solving,’ says Kanner, who designed the modernist home in the Palisades which he shares with his wife Cynthia and daughters Caroline, 9, and Charlotte, 3 1/2. ‘It’s an architecture that makes a good modern home feel good.’ The A+D Museum , 8560 Sunset, one block west of La Cienega, is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. Admission is free.

St. Matthew’s Summer Camp, celebrating its 50th summer, is inviting all past and present campers, staff and their families to a 50th anniversary celebration in St. Matthew’s meadow on Saturday, June 26 from 5 to 9 p.m. Members of the anniversary committee are hoping that all past and present campers, staff and their families will attend. Many campers have a long-term connection to the camp. Palisadian Bruce Harlan, who was a camper at the school in the 1970s, started working at the camp in 1980 as an arts and crafts assistant, then continued working at different jobs and eventually served as camp director until 1999. Harlan, whose son Kelly, 6, is entering the camp for the first time this year, is now a science teacher at St. Matthew’s School. ‘The main thing about the camp for me is that it’s one of the few things that really celebrates kids being kids,’ says Harlan. ‘It doesn’t have any fancy equipment, no video games, waterskiing or trips to Disneyland. It’s just kids with groups of friends and counselors. They run through the hills and get dirty, make up games, with no goal other than to enjoy summer and enjoy being a kid. In the Palisades, that’s pretty amazing.’ The camp, now led by Erik Warren and Katie Wood, was started in 1954. There are 16 groups of kids, divided into boys and girls, with two counselors per group and a total of 240 campers. Groups make up names for themselves, such as Road Runners, Scrubbing Bubbles and Minor Aches and Pains. In preparing for the 50th anniversary, Harlan and his co-committee members found pictures from the camp in the 1950s, and noticed that the camp activities, such as making forts and playing hide-and-seek, haven’t changed much. The campers still play games such as Ditch, chasing each other through the hills of the 34-acre property off of Bienveneda. Jolly Roger’s Cave on the campus is a favorite storytelling spot. Campers come for the entire six-week session, which Harlan says allows for team-building and relationships, more so than camps that operate two-week sessions. There is often a waiting list for campers, although the camp always reserves space for about a dozen children from the Oakwood area of Venice who attend free of charge. The counselors make the camp, Harlan says, adding that the camp receives about 150 applications each summer for counselor jobs. ‘They’re creative and energetic. It’s a really sought after job.’ The staff, many of whom were once campers themselves, often stay for several years. One college student and one teenager are in charge of each group. In addition to the planned activities’morning chapel (songs, prayers and a thought for the day), swimming at the outdoor pool and music or arts and crafts’the counselors make up each day’s activities for their group. The camp also features its own traditions’World Day with a kid-created Town Fair, Costume Day with skits, and Tournament Day with a watermelon-eating contest, relay races and water fights. ‘Gus Alexander was director of the camp most of the time the camp has been in existence,’ Harlan says. ‘He was a huge personality who made the camp the way it was for close to 30 years.’ On the 50th reunion Web site, John Meyers, who is starting his 24th year on staff at the camp, wrote: ‘The memories that I will take to the grave are of the teenagers and young adults in our community who year after year become the loving older brothers and sisters to our campers. This ‘Camper-Counselor Relationship’ as Gus defined it is the very heart and core of St. Matthew’s Day Camp… It is no coincidence that of the 50 persons we had on staff last summer, all but 11 of them were former campers.’ ‘We have an esprit de corps we’ve never seen in other camps,’ Meyers, the athletic director at Our Lady of Malibu School, told the Palisadian-Post. ‘I feel I’m very lucky to be a part of it.’ Organizers are hoping for a large turnout at the reunion at St. Matthew’s meadow. RSVP to smdc@stmatthews.com or 573-7787, ext. 6. For more information, go to www.stmatthews.com/smdc50.html.

(Editor’s note: This is the third of three articles revisiting World War II through the recollections of three Pacific Palisades veterans. On Saturday, the new WWII Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., will be dedicated. American Legion Post 283 will host a corresponding event to observe the memorial dedication and honor Westside veterans. See story, Page 1.) By BILL BRUNS Managing Editor ‘Out here in the Pacific we have all kinds of heroes,’ wrote Robert Garrick of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in November 1944. ‘However, only a few have stood before high-ranking military officials to be received as heroes because they have been shooting pictures.’ In Garrick’s estimation, Loran (‘Little Smitty’) Smith was that kind of hero, a Navy combat photographer who for nearly three years shot still and motion pictures from aircraft and ships across the Pacific. His daring work not only provided valuable reconnaissance information, but also appeared in newspapers, magazines and newsreels throughout the world. In early 1940, when Smith was a college student in Iowa and a part-time newspaper photographer, he drove out to Los Angeles with three friends, chronicling their adventures for Look magazine. He chose to stay in L.A., working as a photographer until he was called up as a Navy reservist in December 1941 and assigned to Admiral Chester Nimitz’s public relations staff in Hawaii. ‘I understood that meant taking pictures for publication, and I wasn’t going to get them hanging around Pearl Harbor,’ Smith recalled recently at his home in Palisades Bowl. Unafraid of flying (though untrained as an aerial photographer), he volunteered for numerous combat missions, preferring to shoot from a two-man dive bomber that would take off from an aircraft carrier. ‘I sat behind the pilot, in the turret, and we would first drop down from about 10,000 feet to deliver our bomb. I’d try to take some type of picture. Then we’d go back down a second time just to shoot still pictures, ideally flying at 100 to 300 feet elevation because it’s much harder for anti-aircraft gunners to hit a fast, moving target that close. Then we’d come back a third time so I could shoot movie film.’ Smith (5’7′ tall) had to stand up in order to shoot over the side wall. One day, while his bomber was in a dive at Truk, an anti-aircraft shell exploded so close to the plane that the blast blew Smith’s motion picture camera out of his hands and into the sea. ‘When I came out to a carrier, I had to look around for a volunteer pilot,’ Smith observed. ‘Most of them didn’t want to hang around after dropping their bomb.’ Arriving back at the carrier after each mission, Smith would hand his film over to an officer, who would have a messenger fly it on to Pearl Harbor. Alas, whenever his photos were published, Smith was uncredited; the byline would simply read U.S. Navy. And in subsequent years he was never able to track down his negatives. ‘They’re somewhere in Navy files,’ he said, ‘but I found a large number of prints that I was able to donate to the Nimitz Museum in Texas.’ Smith was the admiral’s favorite photographer and would chronicle his activities in Hawaii’everything from playing horseshoes with enlisted men to conversing with President Franklin Roosevelt during a lunch at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. In November 1944, Smith was transferred to the famed Steichen Photo Group in Washington, D.C., and finished out his duty working mostly in the photo lab. ‘I missed out on the end of the war in Japan,’ Smith said, ‘but on the way to Washington I stopped off in Los Angeles and got married.’ His wife, Audrey, died in 1991. Their two sons, Stuart and Scott, both graduated from Palisades High and now live in Montana. After the war, Smith returned to Los Angeles and worked as a contract photographer for Life magazine until 1950, when he became a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Mirror. He took one of his most memorable photos when Nikita Khrushchev visited Fox Studios and watched the filming of ‘Can-Can’ in 1959. ‘I caught Khrushchev with a big smile on his face as he watched the dancers, while his wife is next to him with her typical sour look.’ In 1962, Smith got into the travel agency business, and at 84 he still works part-time doing desktop publishing for Altour International. Despite suffering a stroke three years ago, he remains active in the Masons, the Shriners, the American Legion and the Press Photographers Association of Greater L.A., which honored him last year with a Lifetime Achievement Award.