Stephen H. Kanner (July 30, 1955 – July 2, 2010) was an American modern architect who co-founded the A+D Museum of Los Angeles in 2000. Kanner was born in 1955 in

Chandler, Arizona Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). It is bordered to the north and west by Tempe, to the north by Mesa, to the west by Phoenix, to the ...

, but raised in the

Mandeville Canyon Mandeville Canyon is a small, affluent community in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Its center is Mandeville Canyon Road, which begins at Sunset Boulevard and extends north towards Mulholland Drive, though it stops short of Mulholland ...

neighborhood in Los Angeles. His grandfather, I. Herman Kanner, founded the family's business, Kanner Architects, in 1946. Kanner's father, Charles Kanner, an architect who served in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

, became head of Kanner Architects in 1953 following Herman Kanner's death. Kanner received both his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

and

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

from a combined program at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1980. Kanner joined Kanner Architects in 1983 after the family business was commissioned to design the

courthouse A courthouse or court house is a building that is home to a local court of law and often the regional county government as well, although this is not the case in some larger cities. The term is common in North America. In most other English-spe ...

East Los Angeles East Los Angeles ( es, Este de Los Ángeles), or East L.A., is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 118,786, a drop of 6.1% from 2010, when it was 126,496. For statistical purpo ...

. The firm was headed by Kanner's father, modernist architect Charles Kanner, until his death in 1998, when Stephen Kanner became head of the company. Kanner designed his own home in Pacific Palisades. His most recent projects included the Metro Hollywood Transit Village on

Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It begins in the east at Sunset Boulevard in the Los Feliz district and proceeds to the west as a major thoroughfare through Little Armenia and Thai Town, Hollywoo ...

, a lower income housing complex located at 26th Street and

Santa Monica Boulevard Santa Monica Boulevard is a major west–east thoroughfare in Los Angeles County. It runs from Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica near the Pacific Ocean to Sunset Boulevard at Sunset Junction in Los Angeles. It passes through Beverly Hills and West ...

; and the conversion of a commercial building into a luxury

apartment building An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ...

in Hollywood called Sunset Vine Tower. The

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

described Kanner as "something of an outlier among architects of his generation for the sheer volume and range of his output." Later projects were influenced by

googie architecture Googie architecture ( ) is a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, Jet aircraft, jets, the Atomic Age and the Space Age. It originated in Southern California from the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s, and was pop ...

postmodernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...

and Pop art, including a 2009 United Oil station at La Brea and Slauson evoking a

stack interchange A directional interchange, colloquially known as a stack interchange, is a type of grade-separated junction between two controlled-access highways that allows for free-flowing movement to and from all directions of traffic. These interchanges e ...

and an

In-N-Out In-N-Out Burger is an American regional chain of fast food restaurants with locations primarily in California and the Southwest. It was founded in Baldwin Park, California, in 1948 by Harry (1913–1976) and Esther Snyder (1920–2006). The cha ...

restaurant in

Westwood, Los Angeles, California Westwood is a commercial and residential neighborhood in the northern central portion of the Westside region of Los Angeles, California. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Bordering the campus on the south ...

. Kanner died from cancer at

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a nonprofit, tertiary, 886-bed teaching hospital and multi-specialty academic health science center located in Los Angeles, California. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over 2 ...

on July 2, 2010, at the age of 54. An exhibit featuring Kanner's designs was featured at the Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles in 2010 and 2011.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kanner, Stephen Modernist architects from the United States 1955 births 2010 deaths Architects from Los Angeles Museum founders UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design alumni People from Pacific Palisades, California Deaths from cancer in California People from Mandeville Canyon, Los Angeles 20th-century philanthropists