Do it yourself,
but not alone.
For LA, Magenta House transforms schools into incubators for engaged youth.
For students, Magenta House develops self confidence through development of hands-on projects, and effects behavior change for sustainability.
For instructors, Magenta House provides a helpful and effective framework and fun resources.
For the community, it connects education to social purpose and thickens the connective tissue between community and school.
For the world, it challenges students to take on issues that seem to be LA-specific, but whose innovative solutions can lead to global impacts.
Magenta House Team
Eugene Shirley is program director. He is president of Pando Populus and long-time social impact entrepreneur. He is a former Jennings Randolph Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Betsy Hunter heads program development. Her background is in special events, public relations and organization and is an expediter of special projects for Pando.
Alexi Caracotsios is a program producer. He brings experience in event organization, education, and writing.
John Bielenberg Sr. is architect of the Magenta House pop-up structure. He is a retired theater professor and active set designer in mid-coast Maine.
John Bielenberg is creative director. John has won more than 250 design awards in his career, including the 2013 AIGA Gold Medal for leadership in the design for good movement.
Marc O’Brien is design strategist. Marc calls himself a climate designer who focuses on creating a climate-resilient world while inspiring other designers to do the same.
The story behind Magenta House
Magenta House launched from the Pando at Maryknoll accelerator in 2018 with a pop-up structure for educational outreach, in-home makeover demonstrations, and the UseMore promotional campaign prototyped for Council District 5. In the spring of 2020, the initiative relaunched from a wholly virtual base.
The Magenta House pop-up structure was designed by John Bielenberg and built by Pasadena City College Fabrication Lab. Rain Barrels International contributed the rain barrels. LA Trade Technical College contributed student participation.
Magenta House is Pando.
Pando is a non-profit educational products and services organization that develops civic engagement opportunities for sustainability in the California Southland. Magenta House is a program we have developed for middle school.
We are named “Pando Populus” after the largest organism on Earth, an aspen grove in southern Utah made up of over 47,000 trunks and millions of leaves. “Populus” is the genus for aspen. Above ground, Pando appears to be a forest of individual trees. But underground, everything is connected by a single and vast root system. It is one tree. A one-tree-forest.
Pando is the perfect symbol for the interconnectedness of things: of our lives with one another, and the entwined relationship between education and action.
