In the early 1970s, a loose-knit group of architects, artists and sociologists working out of Venice Beach began to look at Los Angeles not as a collection of buildings but as a living, breathing organism. Calling themselves Environmental Communications (EC), the collective set out to document the city’s expanding freeways, its smog-hazed skies, its vernacular Pop signage and its exuberant street culture. Their medium was the photographic slide — thousands of them — sent to architecture schools and libraries across the country to redefine how the built environment could be studied and taught.

The Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara revisits that radical moment with “Big Bang Beat L.A.” (Sept. 13–Dec. 7), an exhibition drawn from the Architecture and Design Collection and curated by Silvia Perea. Installed only months after destructive wildfires swept through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the show positions EC’s work as both a historical record and a meditation on the city’s long-standing environmental vulnerability.

“When those fires happened, we began hearing from homeowners who had lost everything,” said Perea. “It made us ask how our collection could speak to the moment — and perhaps offer a sense of hope. Environmental Communications was the perfect lens. They were already noticing the first signs of ecological stress in the 1970s, when Los Angeles was transforming into a sprawling, consumption-driven metropolis.”

Through their images, EC captured the city’s contradictions: endless car traffic and creative freedom, urban sprawl and radical self-expression. For Perea, the duality still resonates. “Their photographs show overdevelopment and pollution,” she explained, “but they also reveal how L.A. continually responds to crises with imagination and art.”