Even if Frances Anderton had never set foot in an architectural office, she would still have a superabundance of talent for her job as producer for distinguished public affairs news moderator Warren Olney on KCRW public radio. Always engaged and sympathetic, excited by the world at large and culture in particular, everything about Frances from her eye-popping wardrobe and her rich BBC accent to her cascade of blond hair and equally cascading laugh give her instant entree to the hearts and minds of all who encounter her.
Newly wed to movie auteur and collaborator Robin Bennett-Stein and mother of seven-and-a-half year old Summer Grace, Frances is also producer and on-air moderator of her own show, DnA, airing every third Monday at 2:30 pm. Back issues of the show can be found at KCRW.com, filed under arts and culture.
Frances’s career in architecture began with enrollment in the Bartlett State School in London. She had begun by studying art history and French prior to that, but was repulsed by the idea of being one more female English dilettante in Art History. Architecture school actually had both sexes studying, and this appealed far more to Frances’s desire to be a full-fledged professional and citizen of the world. In addition, a gap year following high school in Florence, Italy, had introduced her to the wonders of architecture—she finagled a job restoring an old farmhouse while there. The fourth year of architecture school required six months in an architect’s office and six months on a building site. The site turned out to be a housing estate in east London in need of an overhaul. The six months in an architect’s office turned into a year. While at the office, Frances met a friend who was going to Jaipur to study the typology of courtyard building there. The more Frances saw of the non-English world, the better she liked it, the origin of her status as a dedicated expatriate.
The fifth year at the Bartlett was supposed to be more school courses, but Frances didn’t want to go back into the classroom. Instead, she took a job running the 9H architecture gallery in London. By that point, she had written an article for the Architect’s Journal about being on a building site and how different the reality of that was from anything taught in architecture school. While working at the gallery, she received a call from the Architectural Review, a distinguished journal of world architecture, because of the article she had written for the Journal. She was hired on as an editor, and her first assignment was to cover architecture in Los Angeles. It was love at first sight. It would be difficult to say who was more charmed—Frances, or the Los Angelenos who met her, hooked and bemused by her enthusiasm, her passion for what turned out to be her new home. In 1991, she became the editor of the AIA Los Angeles house organ, L.A. Architect. In 1999, she began regular contributions to the “Currents” column in The New York Times, running on Thursdays.
The Rodney King riots galvanized the city in 1992, along with the architectural community. Architects and planners were keen to have a role in rebuilding. It became evident, however, that they did not have access to the wider community and were not well placed to implement their ideas. Frances found Which Way L.A., a show of local current affairs, to be the single best podium for discussion in the city, and she volunteered for the program in 1994. The volunteer gig turned into a full-time job, eventually working with moderator Olney on both Which Way L.A. and To the Point, a national current affairs show. In 2002, Frances went on air with DnA, a show intended to give architecture and design a higher profile. Her programming ranges from doggie fashions to Disney Concert Hall. It is the only show devoted entirely to design and architecture on a radio station in the U.S.
So how did Frances’s architectural education and training contribute to her ability to do what she does best? “What you get from the study of architecture is a broad introduction to a broad range of subjects, from engineering to art,” explains Frances. “It’s a subject that is scientific, artistic, and practical at the same time. Architecture and building are extremely important to the human condition. Yet, the architecture world is very insular, and architects and planners tend to become marginalized.” DnA is an opportunity to give architects and planners access to the larger community, to be heard and understood. Guests on the show have ranged from rocker David Byrne to architecture diva Zaha Hadid. Frances’s greatest satisfaction has been getting e-mail from culture-loving members of the general public who have an appreciation for architecture, but have not had access to other venues for design discussion.
The big challenge with DnA is to make it accessible to the general public, to get the content across while eliminating the jargon that might mystify listeners. Frances has been able to take her architectural training and combine it with the journalist’s ability to convey the sense of complex occurrences. Her architectural education has given her the deep understanding of design that allows her to communicate the subject to a general audience. She is the complete architectural insider with the know-how to reach the person on the street.
Author John Leighton Chase, Assoc. AIA, is Urban Designer for the City of West Hollywood and a member of the arcCA Editorial Board.
Originally published 2nd quarter 2005, in arcCA 05.2, “Other Business.”
