Journal / l.a is still a relatively cheap and easy place in which to build a house

so, i recently got to visit a friend of mine in his new (to him) neutra house.
the sten-frenke house.
in santa monica.
and, to be honest, as a provincial east-sider i don't make my way to santa-monica very often.
nothing against the west side, but it's very far away (in my mind it's kind of like driving to philadelphia from new york, but i'm also prone to hyperbole and exaggeration, so it's quite possibly a lot closer).
in any case, a friend of mine bought the sten-frenke house and has done a whole bunch of remarkable/beautiful period sensitive renovations to it (currently under construction: the pool house. thus: no pictures of the pool house, as it's a construction site).
oh, a potentially rhetorical question: who are the neutra's and schindler's and lautner's and koenig's and eames' of l.a's 21st century?
l.a is still a relatively cheap and easy place in which to build a house (compared to, say, any other big city in the western world. i mean, when was the last time someone bought cheap land and built a modest modern house in manhattan?).
so, who are the l.a architects building the neutra and eames houses of the 21st century?
i know they're there, as l.a is filled with amazing architects.
maybe it's time to break out the bulldozers and tear down some beige crap 80's monstrosity houses and let l.a architects build a whole bunch of new, amazing houses.
just a thought.

neutra house

neutra house

neutra house

neutra house

moby