Cara Mullio and Jennifer Volland
2023 Community Design Advocate Award
Long Beach, a metropolis of almost a half a million residents and larger than the cities of Atlanta, Miami, and New Orleans gets very limited architectural press due to its proximity to Los Angeles. Cara and Jennifer have contributed three important publications that highlight the design profession within Long Beach. These include:
Frank Bros.: The Store That Modernized Modern, 2017. This book describes how one furniture store in Long Beach influenced a post war lifestyle that educated the public on good design across the entire country.
Edward A. Killingsworth: An Architect’s Life, 2013. Architect Edward Killingsworth whose office and many of his projects were in Long Beach, had been an unexamined genius of Southern California modernism until the writing of this book.
Long Beach Architecture: The Unexpected Metropolis, 2004. Beginning with an illustrated essay on the history of the built environment of Long Beach, it documents one hundred of the city’s most important built, unrealized, and demolished architectural projects.
Cara Mullio is principal of Root Development, LLC, a real estate development company based in Long Beach and is a freelance writer and curator specializing in contemporary architecture projects. She teaches at the University of Southern California and is invited to lecture on intersections of architecture, urban design, and real estate development. Cara holds a Master of Real Estate Development from the University of Southern California and a Master of Arts in Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Jennifer Volland is an independent curator, writer, and researcher whose projects have chronicled important moments in the cultural history of California. She has been researching the life and work of ceramicist Edith Heath. Jennifer’s previous research focused on two architectural typologies: the cabin and the hotel. In collaboration with the Vancouver Art Gallery, she co-curated two exhibitions Cabin Fever (2018) and Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life (2013). Volland received her Master of Arts in Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles, and she is currently completing her Master of Library Information Science from San José State University.
