Architecture

If you're thinking of visiting a Disney park in Anaheim this summer, be warned that the price is about to jump by between $7 and $150 depending on the ticket deal. The annual summer price hike for tickets to Disneyland and the Disney California Adventure Park were announced Friday and take effect Sunday. For example, a ticket for one day at either Disneyland or California Adventure had cost $80 for parkgoers who are 10 or older. The new price, starting Sunday, will be $87, up nearly 9%. The biggest increase will hit people who buy the premium annual pass that includes parking.

PHILADELPHIA - Copies of famous paintings are everywhere: on dorm-room walls, on computer screens and lately pouring forth from Chinese art factories, which can churn out a hundred passable Rembrandts in a week. Architectural copies, on the other hand, remain rare, especially at full scale. Las Vegas and the original Getty Museum aside, it's not often you see an important building, in whole or in part, rebuilt in one location to match the original in another. The Barnes Foundation, in moving its spectacularly deep collection of postimpressionist and early Modern art from suburban Merion, Pa., to the center of Philadelphia, will on May 19 open a high-culture, high-stakes experiment in the second kind of duplication.

Mark and Cindy Evans make the rounds of Southern California flea markets early, before most shoppers have gotten out of bed. Their favorite stops: The Groves Antique Market Held the first Sunday of the month from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Irvine Valley College, 5500 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. Admission and parking are free. Dogs allowed. (949) 786-5277. Pasadena City College Flea Market Also held on the first Sunday of every month, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Due to a scheduling change, the market happens to be open this Sunday.

Robert Miles Parker, a free-spirited artist who sparked an architectural preservation movement in San Diego and translated the personalities of Los Angeles and New York into distinctive pen-and-ink drawings of their buildings, has died. He was 72. His partner, David Van Leer, said that the cause was unknown, but that Parker, who died April 17 at his home in New York City, had numerous health problems since being diagnosed with AIDS 20 years ago. Parker published three collections of his drawings, which include "Images of American Architecture" (1981)

PHILADELPHIA - Copies of famous paintings are everywhere: on dorm-room walls, on computer screens and lately pouring forth from Chinese art factories, which can churn out a hundred passable Rembrandts in a week. Architectural copies, on the other hand, remain rare, especially at full scale. Las Vegas and the original Getty Museum aside, it's not often you see an important building, in whole or in part, rebuilt in one location to match the original in another. The Barnes Foundation, in moving its spectacularly deep collection of postimpressionist and early Modern art from suburban Merion, Pa., to the center of Philadelphia, will on May 19 open a high-culture, high-stakes experiment in the second kind of duplication.

There's so much to praise in the blissful Broadway revival of "Follies," which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre on the heels of its numerous Tony nominations, but let's pay homage first to the sheer sophistication of the show itself. After experiencing "Follies" again - an adult entertainment if ever there was one - I flat-out refuse to accept any more jukebox substitutes. One doesn't often talk about architecture when writing about musicals, but the most impressive thing about "Follies," beyond Stephen Sondheim's bejeweled score, is the ingenious way it is constructed.

The new Matthew Marks Gallery in West Hollywood isn't just the first ground-up building by the 42-year-old Los Angeles architect Peter Zellner. A clean-lined, windowless stucco box on Orange Grove Avenue just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, it is also almost entirely free-standing. Attached on one of its four sides to a mortuary, it is otherwise visible in the round, making it one of the most conspicuous architectural debuts to appear in Southern California in a number of years. At the same time, Zellner's design operates in large part as the straightforward and accommodating backdrop for an artwork by the 88-year-old artist Ellsworth Kelly.

It started with gray water, then escalated to chickens, composting toilets and rain barrels. I'm talking about the two years I've spent transforming my humble California bungalow into a test case for sustainable living ? an experience that's cost me hundreds of hours of my time and thousands of dollars, an endeavor that has tested the limits of not only my checkbook but also my sanity ? and my DIY capabilities. When I launched this column, the idea was to look at environmentally promising home improvement projects through the eyes of a budget-minded consumer.

Ramona Cowley wakes most mornings to the gentle murmur of voices and the chink and clink of dishes and flatware being shuffled onto tables in the outdoor cafe below. The rich aromas of thick, black coffee and spicy Cuban breakfast sausages waft up the 20-foot staircase that leads to her landing.

In 1949, Eugene Kinn Choy built his family a home in Silver Lake. Deftly set in a narrow hillside lot, it was praised as a model of modernism, photographed by Julius Shulman and its merits noted in national architecture magazines. And yet the house might not have been built at all, if not for Choy's ingenuity and resolve. When racial covenants had threatened to keep him out of the area, he went door to door, seeking neighbors' permission before he moved in. "Even after he got an OK to purchase the land, no mainstream bank would offer financing," says Steven Y. Wong, the curator at the Chinese American Museum.

This is getting to be a pattern. Every time a major rail line opens in Los Angeles, my reaction tends to unfold in two distinct parts: excitement tempered pretty quickly by a sense of disappointment, of opportunities missed. The $930-million Expo Line is the latest example. The excitement flows from the way new transit lines are remaking - genuinely, thoroughly remaking - the civic, cultural and architectural map of Los Angeles. Running south and then bending west from downtown, skirting the campuses of L.A. Trade Tech and USC before reaching the corner of Jefferson and La Cienega boulevards, the Expo Line's first phase, with its eight stops, has brought the city's light-rail network to the doorstep of the dense Westside.

Talk about raining on your own parade. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority coaxed Renzo Piano from Paris, Ban van Berkel from Amsterdam and a bunch of talented local architects from the far Westside and brought them together Wednesday afternoon at Union Station. The occasion was the unveiling of six conceptual plans for Union Station and the surrounding neighborhood. Metro bought the historic landmark and an attached 40-acre parcel of land last year; it holds entitlements to build as much as 6 million square feet of new shops, offices and housing there, and it is running an international competition to find a master-planning team.

SAN FRANCISCO - Its decaying architecture, fluorescent lighting and kitchen prep sink wedged next to a toilet have served as fodder for a ribbing by comedian Conan O'Brien . Its 3 a.m. closing time made it a favorite for late-night club hoppers But most of all, the Sam Wo Restaurant in the heart of Chinatown was a haven for unassuming regulars and curious tourists - who for decades streamed through the cramped kitchen and up a narrow staircase...

On a cold and gray recent Sunday afternoon, a standing room crowd of more than 100 residents packed the community center of this small seaside city to observe an unusual job interview. Five architects made presentations to a design jury, hoping for a chance to design a replacement for the local middle school, heavily damaged a year ago by the earthquake and tsunami that killed an estimated 19,000 people, including at least 58 here, and destroyed more than 120,000 buildings. Kumiko Inui, a 42-year-old rising star of the Tokyo architecture scene, ultimately won the competition with an impressive design featuring tall glass-wrapped classroom wings paired with smaller wooden pavilions in a lush tree-covered landscape.

EVENTS Partake in an 11-day celebration of mid-century modern design, architecture and culture in Palm Springs. There is nothing quite like the look and feel of the clean and simple design that crowned the desert during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Learn all about it through architectural tours, films, lectures and parties held in mid-century modern homes and boutique hotels. Palm Springs. Times, prices and locations vary. Thu. to Feb. 26. http://www.modernismweek.com.

High in the mountains of Serbia sits a fairy-tale village full of wooden huts built in a style that hasn't changed in 300 years. You'll find French legend Isabelle Huppert and Cannes general delegate Thierry Fremaux hitting the slopes and Belgium's Dardenne brothers discussing the origins of a story with a young director after screening their latest, "The Kid With a Bike. " Iran-born "Persepolis" director Marjane Satrapi enjoys a cigarette at the Visconti restaurant, surrounded by adoring fan boys praising her new film, "Chicken With Plums.

With water supplies dwindling and sustainable design gathering steam, Janet and Larry French of Hungtington Beach gazed out at their front lawn and decided to replace it. With what, they didn't really know. So they hired Culver City architect Adam Wheeler to brainstorm a smart alternative. Wheeler, who worked for Frank Gehry before starting his firm six years ago, recognized the flat, featureless lawn for what it was: wasted space that could be more functional and attractive as an extension of the interiors.

On this city's western edge, Richard Meier, a New York modernist architect, recently unveiled his latest creation, a gleaming white corporate headquarters building on the banks of the Seine. Meanwhile, in Bercy, on Paris' eastern edge, Los Angeles avant-garde architect Frank Gehry broke ground last year on a whimsical, new American arts and cultural facility that will be finished in 1993.

In 1949, Eugene Kinn Choy built his family a home in Silver Lake. Deftly set in a narrow hillside lot, it was praised as a model of modernism, photographed by Julius Shulman and its merits noted in national architecture magazines. And yet the house might not have been built at all, if not for Choy's ingenuity and resolve. When racial covenants had threatened to keep him out of the area, he went door to door, seeking neighbors' permission before he moved in. "Even after he got an OK to purchase the land, no mainstream bank would offer financing," says Steven Y. Wong, the curator at the Chinese American Museum.

The new Matthew Marks Gallery in West Hollywood isn't just the first ground-up building by the 42-year-old Los Angeles architect Peter Zellner. A clean-lined, windowless stucco box on Orange Grove Avenue just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, it is also almost entirely free-standing. Attached on one of its four sides to a mortuary, it is otherwise visible in the round, making it one of the most conspicuous architectural debuts to appear in Southern California in a number of years. At the same time, Zellner's design operates in large part as the straightforward and accommodating backdrop for an artwork by the 88-year-old artist Ellsworth Kelly.