Dingbat 2.0: The Iconic Los Angeles Apartment as Projection of a Metropolis

Edited by Thurman Grant and Joshua G. Stein Published in cooperation with The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design2016. Softcover. Fully illustrated in color, 288 pages with an index.$45 | 9780983254058 | U.S. and Canada Dingbat 2.0 is the first critical study of the most ubiquitous and mundane building type in Los Angeles: the dingbat apartment. Often dismissed as ugly and unremarkable, dingbat apartments have qualities that arguably make them innovative, iconoclastic, and distinctly “L.A.” For more than half a century the idiosyncratic dingbat has been largely anonymous, occasionally fetishized and often misunderstood. Praised and vilified in equal measure, dingbat apartments were a critical enabler of Los Angeles’ rapid postwar urban expansion. While these apartments are known for their variety of midcentury decorated facades, less explored is the way they have contributed to a consistency of urban density achieved by few other twentieth century cities. Essays by Barb