Frances Anderton Projects

Books and articles include Common Ground: Multifamily Housing in Los Angeles (2022). This is an alternative history of housing in Los Angeles: connected, mostly rental, centered on shared open space. Frank Gehry, architect of the apartment building that inspired the book, calls Common Ground a “beautifully written…part architectural memoir, part call to arms."

I co-wrote Awesome and Affordable: Great Housing Now, for Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles (FORT: LA), a new media project that explains and elevates low-income housing in Los Angeles.

I write a regular newsletter about design and architecture for KCRW. Other recent texts include an essay in Architecture is a Social Act, a book about the work of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) and articles for Sierra magazine, The New York Times, Metropolis and AD magazine.

Past books include Grand Illusion: A Story of Ambition, and its Limits, on LA’s Bunker Hill, based on a USC class I co-taught with Frank Gehry and his partners; and You Are Here, on the work of the late Jon Jerde.

From 2002 to 2020 I hosted DnA: Design and Architecture, aired on KCRW public radio station. DnA was described by Metropolis magazine as the "voice of the city" and regularly made “Best Of” design podcast lists. The DnA series, Bridges and Walls, won the 2019 LA Press Club award for investigative reporting.

I co-produced Wasted, a series aired on KCRW’s Greater LA. It explored “neat solutions to the dirty problem of waste” in California. It won a 2022 Golden Mike award for Best Feature News Series Reporting.

From 1998 to 2013 I produced KCRW’s current affairs shows Which Way, LA? and To The Point, both hosted by the incomparable Warren Olney.

I have produced videos for the affordable housing developer Community Corporation of Santa Monica, and Venice Community Housing, both in collaboration with the videographer Hans Fjellestad.

I edited and wrote scripts for Rodeo Drive: The Podcast and Desert X 2019 and 2020, both for Lyn Winter.

I produce and curate events, talks and exhibitions for various institutions.

In collaboration with Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles (FORT: LA) and Wyota Workshop, I co-created an installation for the US Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, entitled The Angeleno Porch: Six Social Spaces Shaping L.A.’s Affordable Housing. It illustrates the theme PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity. I work with FORT on many programs, including Awesome and Affordable: Great Housing Now!, Architecture Uncorked, and, following the Eaton and Palisades fires of 2025, Heart of Los Angeles.For Helms Design Center at the Helms Bakery District I helped create exhibits including Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture; In Harmony With Nature: The Architectural Work of James Hubbell; Low Rise, Mid Rise, High Rise: Housing in LA Today, in collaboration with partner organizations SoCal NOMA, Cal Poly LA Metro, Ilan Lael Foundation, LA Forum and more.

For the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in 2022, I co-organized Art for Earth’s Sake, a series of five public conversations about the art world and its environmental footprint.

I have co-hosted the Monterey Design Conference, with veteran MC Reed Kroloff.

In collaboration with Alan Hess, I co-produced Stories Untold for Palm Springs Modernism Week, about under-recognized architects of the midcentury era.

In 2015 I curated Sink or Swim: Designing for a Sea Change at the Annenberg Space for Photography – about resilient buildings, captured by Iwan Baan, Stephen Wilkes and other leading photographers.

I teach a seminar on urban housing at USC School of Architecture, and have served on reviews at USC, UCLA, Yale, UNLV, and SCI-Arc.

I have no gift for music but my life partner, Robin Bennett Stein, does. He teaches guitar and spins, under the moniker DJ Caviar, with a knack for finding sounds that evoke a theme or style. He routinely provides the ambience at design events and exhibits I’m involved with.

I am a recipient of a 2025 Santa Monica Artist Fellowship. Other honors include the 2020 ICON Award, awarded by LA Design Festival in recognition of “iconic women who have made an indelible mark on Los Angeles, culture, and society in general;” and the USC Architectural Guild's 2010 Esther McCoy Award for educating the public about architecture and urbanism.

I am very involved with the life of the LA region. Recent commitments include serving as a juror for the 2020 City of Los Angeles’ Low-Rise Housing Challenge. I am on the boards of Palm Springs Modernism Week, and the Community Corporation of Santa Monica.

Goat Wisdom To Go, is a pet project in the pipeline. When the news broke in 2020 that I was leaving my staff position at KCRW after 22 years, I ran a tweet saying I would likely continue covering design and architecture, “unless I go start my fantasy goat farm.” The remark about goats got such a big reaction — clearly, a lot of us like goats! — that I decided the next best thing to becoming a goat farmer was to create a podcast in their honor.

The concept is to talk to a smart person — often on the older side, having garnered some wisdom that is worth sharing — about their lives and challenges they have overcome. At this point in life, they have acquired some of the goat-like ability to see through the miasma of overthinking that pervades human life, and distill things down to the fundamentals, like munching on weeds while not doing much else. Goats also like butting heads, which I, a Capricorn, am born to do — with affection, of course.