This video contains two different lectures by two different architects.

Thom Mayne announces the first of a series of eight lectures about nine selected Los Angeles architects. Mayne introduces Coy Howard’s lecture “Erosion, discontinuity, incompleteness, transformation: a critical view of recent work in L.A.” Mayne warns the audience that the slides will be intentionally out of focus.

Howard recites Peter Schjeldahl’s poem“To Pico.” Afterwards, as he begins to talk about the other architects in the exhibition, a woman runs up and orders him to “Swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Howard discusses architecture as art, and art as chaos rather than order. He discusses beauty and defines the principles required for a successful creative project. He relates these goals to the works the selected architects.

At 54:38 a different lecture begins, mid-way, by an unidentified architect. Bart Prince?