Sure, Groundswell – the June 28 gala for the Architecture + Design Museum on Los Angeles’ Magnificent Mile – is attracting its share of internationally-known architects and designers.

And yes, they’ll be offering for auction some one-of-a-kind surf-themed designs.

And absolutely, on the runway will be surfboards, skateboards, beach chairs, and the like from Arquitectonica, Gensler, Richard Meier & Partners Architects, Eric Corey Freed, and Chadwick Studio, among others.

But the coup de foudre may come from Venice Beach architect David Hertz. The 53-year-old architect, who’s been surfing since he was eight, is offering a sustainability-minded surfboard.

It features a theme of Le Corbusier’s Modular Man – wrapped all around its front, back and sides.

“It’s an emblematic icon of architectural proportions,” he says. “On the bottom of the board is a human, but he’s on the top, side and bottom too – it’s as though he’s almost lying on the board.”

Thinking that it’s time to begin looking at more sustainable methods for producing the wave-riding vehicles, Hertz looked hard at new and renewable resources for his board. He coated a polystyrene core in a new product from plantlife called Eco-Sap, and added inlays of scrap bamboo veneer in varying colors and textures.

“There’s a spiral helix reminiscent of DNA, the spiral of an ocean shell and the spiral of the waves,” says the architect who serves on the advisory board of the Sustainable Surf Organization.

He hasn’t tried the board out yet, because he says it’s a wall-hanger kind of item. “It could be used,” he says. “But it’s just too pretty to put wax on it.”

The winning does have the right to try, however.

The gala opens at 7:30 PM on June 28.

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