In the above video by The Avant/Garde Diaries, Los Angeles-based creative Aaron Rose introduces us to Simon Rodia, an early twentieth-century Italian immigrant who constructed one of the most impressive, and unlikely, manifestations of avant-garde architecture in the past century – The Watts Towers. Located in the Watts area of LA. Rodia, the towers are a vast complex of seventeen interconnected sculptures, constructed piece by piece over thirty years from mortar-covered steel and scrap collected from the nearby railroad tracks. Recognized by the United States as a National Historic Landmark in 1990, Rose labels the towers “a testament to the power of creativity itself.”