Kennard Design Group

Architecture may not be part of the academic curriculum at UC Irvine, in Orange County, but it is very much on display there. Set on the rolling hills of the old Irvine Ranch are five new buildings that update the expanding campus and make for an architecturally engaging tour. Warning: University officials strongly urge you to visit on weekends, when the campus' persistent parking problem eases.

In the shade of oak and sycamore trees, Lydia Kennard spent part of her childhood fashioning make-believe metropolises out of mud, stones and sticks outside a home her father had chiseled into a hillside near Griffith Park. When she turned 14 she started working at her father's business, the West's oldest continuously operated African American architecture firm. "I started running the copy machines," Kennard recalled.

Some of Los Angeles' newest political power brokers do not work in downtown high-rise corporate suites, but behind the counters in mom-and-pop businesses across the city. As the major corporations known for their political largess and clout merge, downsize or move out of town, small and mid-size enterprises are moving to fill the power vacuum created by the departure of such corporate givers as Security Pacific Bank and Union Oil.