Rebel Without a Clause

Let’s put aside the question of whether Of the Moment, a fifty-two-page broadsheet focused (ostensibly) on Los Angeles architecture and produced by a team including Thom Mayne and the writer and former public radio host Frances Anderton, emerged in response to the Los Angeles Review of Architecture, the NYRA sibling that made its debut this past winter. Why not consider the publication on its own terms? From the top, then: Beneath the phrase “Volume 1 No. 1,” which hints unnervingly at future editions, the cover features a murky photograph of an architectural model anchored by a slablike tower. The photo, we learn in a lengthy caption, shows a project called “A Place Models the World” by Preliminary Research Office. Is this a firm with any connection to Los Angeles? How about the tower? Is it meant for a site in the city? The reader is not made privy to any of this information, though the caption goes on to explain that “A Place Models the World is an ongoing investigation into architecture and its relationship with contemporary physical space.”