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 Metropolitan Area, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the List of municipalities in Arizona, fourth-most populous city in Arizona ...

, but raised in the Mandeville Canyon 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 force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

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

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

and

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate 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 prac ...

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 construction, constructi ...

from a combined program at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

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 structure which houses judicial functions for a governmental entity such as a state, region, province, county, prefecture, regency, or similar governmental unit. A courthouse is home to one or more courtrooms, ...

East Los Angeles East Los Angeles (), or East L.A., is an unincorporated community and census designated place (CDP) situated within Los Angeles County, California, United States. According to the United States Census Bureau, East Los Angeles is designated as ...

. 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 runs through the Hollywood, East Hollywood, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Los Feliz districts. Its western terminus is at Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollyw ...

, 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, California, United States. It runs from Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica near the Pacific Ocean to Sunset Boulevard at Sunset Junction in Los Angeles. It passes t ...

; and the conversion of a commercial building into a luxury

apartment building An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement ( Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) ...

in Hollywood called Sunset Vine Tower. The

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

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 popu ...

postmodernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...

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 restaurant in

Westwood, Los Angeles, California Westwood is a commercial and residential neighborhood in the northern central portion of the Westside (Los Angeles County), Westside region of the city of Los Angeles, California. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCL ...

. Kanner died from cancer at

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, Tertiary referral hospital, tertiary, 915-bed teaching hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre, academic health science center located in Los Angeles, California. Part of the Cedars ...

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, Los Angeles Deaths from cancer in California People from Mandeville Canyon, Los Angeles 20th-century American philanthropists