With gentrification on the rise comes the not always aesthetically pleasing money-over-culture approach to L.A.’s historically rich and beautiful architecture. As a result, old craftsman homes and California bungalows are becoming contemporary buildings planted like markers of systemic racial inequalities within Los Angeles neighborhoods. However, through Art Conservation, Elisabetta Covizzi is helping preserve the culture of native Angelenos through her most significant conservation project at the world-famous Watts Towers.

Covizzi says, “When Abbot Kinney came to Los Angeles and built Venice, there were a lot of African Americans living there in these little bungalows. They were there because they helped build the canals and the Venice you see today, but just in the past ten years, people have been coming in and buying these little bungalows, taking them down, and building these cubic houses of cement and glass that are so horrible,” she notes.