Everyone thinks collecting is autobiographical, which it is to a great extent. The collection forms a narrative. If you’re reading it the way it’s intended, you’re learning something very personal about us,” says Alan Hergott, one of L.A.’s leading entertainment lawyers, a partner at Bloom, Hergott, Diemer and Cook. In 1996, Hergott and his companion, writer Curt Shepard, commissioned L.A. architect Michael Maltzan to design a house. “We gave Michael a list of things we wanted the house to do_We said he should think about Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, and Carl Andre.” Featured in the 1999 exhibition “The UnPrivate House” at New York’s MoMA, the space is perfect for displaying their expanding art collection. Among the upcoming exhibitions Hergott is looking forward to are “Public Offerings” at L.A.’s Geffen Contemporary, featuring the breakthrough works of the current generation of young artists; “BitStreams,” a digital-technology show at New York’s Whitney Museum; and Bruce Nauman’s work from the 1980s at New York’s Zwirner & Wirth gallery. “Nauman not only speaks to all my concerns as a collector, he seems to be able to hit every important conceptual, artistic, formal, forward-thinking mark along the way—his influence is overwhelming.” Two Los Angeles architecture projects have also caught Hergott’s eye: Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Jose Rafael Moneo’s cathedral, Our Lady of the Anby Gi|ber+ & George, at gels. What else is Hergott excited about? Discovering the unknown. “What I’m most looking forward to their home in Beverly Hills, seeing is something I haven’t seen before by an artist I’ve never heard of.”

A. M. HOMES

WORLD BEAT

Aqua Dining (Paul Street at Northcliff) is built over, one of Sydneys oldest swimming pools —

Scoozi (160 Soi Sri Bumphen), one of Bangkok's best new restaurants is housed in a condominium

and Zamas (Km 5a Carreterra Boca Paila), the place to eat in Tulum (on the Yucatan Peninsula), is solar-powered.