Living in Los Angeles usually comes with a love for our very random and often insane architecture, these spaces that are symbols of eras pasts or the future to come. The city is so varied and unpredictable in general that, of course, the buildings here follow in a similar vein. Mina Chow, a USC architecture lecturer and lover of LA buildings, started a little webseries last year to tell the stories and histories of these spaces, filling us all in on the tales and work involved in creating these landmarks.

The series, entitled Brave New World, analyzes the historical and cultural significance of buildings not to mention the ideas that went into creating them. The first video in the series (and the only one we could find…) tours Downtown’s Bradbury Building juxtaposed with the CALTrans building, two spaces that are completely the opposite of each other. The Bradbury Building stands as a beacon of late nineteenth century architecture and innovation, its glass ceiling still being wow worthy to this day. The CALTrans building is a giant almost robotic jagged silver box a few blocks away the stands as a symbol of the future thinking brains behind building buildings in Los Angeles. In the video, Chow explains the two spaces, telling how they came to be and what they are used for. The videos were certainly made with all of us LA architecture fans in mind because I found myself just nodding my head “Oh. Huh. Interesting. Huh.” the whole time.

The video is pretty great albeit somehwat cheesy at points. Be that as it may, it’s an informative ten minute video that will definitely serve as your LA architecture porn for the day.