Christopher Hawthorne
Chief Design Office
City of Los Angeles
Image credit: Christopher Hawthorne
Hawthorne is Chief Design Officer for the city of Los Angeles, a position appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti. In this role he develops new initiatives and provides design oversight related to architecture, planning, housing policy, urban design, and public art across the city. Prior to joining City Hall, he was architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2018. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, The New Yorker, Architectural Record, Harvard Design Magazine, and many other publications. Hawthorne is Professor of the Practice, with an appointment in the Department of English, at the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, where he directs the Third Los Angeles Project, a series of public conversations about architecture, urban planning, mobility, and demographic change in Southern California.