Based in Venice Beach, CA, an epicenter of nonconformist energy in the 1970s, Environmental Communications (EC) was a collective of architects, artists, and sociologists who championed an expanded understanding of architecture—one that encompassed not just individual buildings but the entire urban environment. To that end, the group documented defining traits of the then-booming consumerist society and the vibrant counterculture pushing back against it, primarily through photographic slides.

Challenging the architectural pedagogy of the time, which viewed architectural history as the evolution of styles through isolated buildings, EC distributed their slide sets to architecture schools and libraries across the country, offering a real-time and sweeping lens through which to teach the discipline.

Los Angeles—a crucible of market-driven ambition and anti-establishment spirit—became a central focus of EC’s visual inquiries. From smog-choked skies and sprawling suburbs to garish street art and Pop architecture, their slide sets captured the era’s cultural contradictions, evoking a sense of systemic unraveling while L.A. emerged as a beacon of radical freedom and creativity.

Including hundreds of slides, along with dozens of booklets and videos, the collective’s legacy stands as one of the most comprehensive and electrifying visual records of 1970s L.A. The presentation of EC’s materials from the Architecture and Design Collection here, following this year’s devastating fires in the Palisades and Altadena, serves not only as a poignant reminder of the city’s environmental fragility but also as a tribute to the extraordinary urban creativity that has fueled its resilience over the past five decades.

Big Bang Beat L.A. is organized by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara and is coordinated by Silvia Perea, curator of the Architecture and Design Collection. The exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the AD&A Museum Council. Exhibition furniture has generously been provided by Fatboy.