Alexandra Lange
Architecture & design critic

Where do you take a New York design writer who's seen everything? Orange County

A photo posted by Alexandra Lange (@langealexandra) on


An account by Carolina Miranda of our trip to Orange County, and the architecture we found there.

This week (weeks?) has been all about the Broad museum. The architecture. The art. The gala. All those Jeff Koons sculptures. Which means that flocks of national and international design critics have descended on Los Angeles to kick the tires on Eli Broad’s latest cultural venture. A lot of them are checking out other iconic L.A. architecture too — from George Wyman’s and Sumner P. Hunt’s 19th century Bradbury Building to Frank Gehry’s 21st century Disney Hall.

But only the most intrepid make it to Orange County.

My fellow writer-in-arms, Alexandra Lange, who writes for Curbed and the New Yorker, was in town to go Broading. But she also wanted to sneak a visit to that hidden Noguchi Garden that’s tucked into a corner behind a few corporate towers near South Coast Plaza. (Lange’s dissertation was on postwar American corporate modern architecture and design, and as part of that, she’s spent an awful lot of time looking at Noguchi’s work.)