La Now Volumes 3 And 4, Introduction And Chapter 1

L.A. NOW Volume Three and Volume Four A Case for Downtown Living Five Proposals UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design

proposals

introduction

00 02

14 20

volume 3 : downtown Arts District proposal DiurnalCity ElastiCity

32 34

56

94

114

134 136

156

170

184

198

case studies stadium housing

218

end

Board of Advisors Robin Blair Con Howe John Kaliski Jan Perry Ian Robertson Dan Rosenfeld Richard Weinstein Deborah Weintraub

Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Los Angeles County Director, Los Angeles Department of City Planning Principal, Urban Studio, Los Angeles Councilwoman, District 9, City of Los Angeles Robertson Company, Los Angeles Urban Partners, LLC, Los Angeles Professor, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design City Architect, City of Los Angeles

L.A. Now Jury Diego Cardoso Robert Espinoza Jeffrey Kipnis Michael Hallmark Sylvia Lavin Mark Mack Nicolai Ouroussoff Albert Pope Robert Somol Doug Suisman George Yu

Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Los Angeles County Community Redevelopment Agency, Los Angeles Professor, Ohio State University, Columbus Consultant Chair, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Professor, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Architecture Critic, New York Times Professor, Rice University Professor, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Suisman Urban Design, Santa Monica Principal, George Yu Architects, Culver City

Panel Participants, A+D Museum Neil Denari Professor in residence, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design William Fain Principal, Johnson Fain Architects, Los Angeles Scott Johnson Principal, Johnson Fain Architects, Los Angeles Merry Norris Consultant Lorcan O'Herlihy Principal, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, Culver City Nick Patsaouras President, Polis Builders, Los Angeles Roger Sherman Lecturer, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Publication Editor Eui-Sung Yi

transportation

research people & culture natural habitat

Chavez Ravine

downtown Arts District TC

volume 4 : Chavez Ravine proposal Elysian Greens Stadium City Chavez Pass

76 78

L.A. Now Volumes Three and Four Thom Mayne Project Director, Professor, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Eui-Sung Yi Project Coordinator

232 238

Director of Special Projects, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Caroline Blackburn Graphic Design Production Pakling Chiu Ken Ford (Graphic Concept)

Masako Saito Myungsoo Suh

Eui-Sung Yi

Publication Assistance Geoff Aiken Nate Chiappa Brian Davis Liang Feng

David Garnett David Grant Penny Herscovitch Jane Hyun

Jennifer Landau Alice Kimm Narineh Mirzaeian Kevin Short

The L.A. Now Volumes Three and Four project and publication are made possible through generous funding provided by American Institute of Architects Graham Foundation Richard Koshalek President, Art Center College of Design Jan Perry Councilwoman, District 9, City of Los Angeles UCLArts UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design John Williams Clark Construction, Bethesda and Costa Mesa

Volume Three Proposals

57

77 79

95

115

research natural habitat people & culture

185

Chavez Ravine

171

downtown Arts District

157

TC

135 137

volume 4 : Chavez Ravine proposal Stadium City Elysian Greens

Volume Four Proposals

33 35

Chavez Pass

199 transportation

219

Volumes Three and Four A Case for Downtown Living Five Proposals

233 239

case studies end housing stadium

UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design

21

volume 3 : downtown Arts District proposal DiurnalCity ElastiCity

L.A. NOW

15

proposals

Introduction Thom Mayne Dilemmas for our Time: Understanding L.A. Now Richard Weinstein A Case for Downtown Living Eui-Sung Yi Proposals The Discontents and Pleasures of L.A. Now John Kaliski Project Description DiurnalCity Pakling Chiu Masako Saito Myungsoo Suh ElastiCity Raffi Agaian David Garnett Narineh Mirzaeian Additional Proposals Svyatoslav Gavrilov Chaitanya Karnik Alexios Fragkiadakis Costanza Guerrini Jacob Kwan Chavez Pass Geoff Aiken Liang Feng Karen Lee Stadium City Nate Chiappa Jennifer Landau Kevin Short Elysian Greens Brian Davis Tyen Masten Nina Yu Research and Analysis Downtown Arts District Chavez Ravine / Elysian Park Natural Habitat People and Culture Transportation Case Studies High Density Housing American Baseball Stadiums

introduction

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TC

01 03

introduction

02

03

Thom Mayne

March 2006 As a frontier for urban experimentation and innovation, Los Angeles has become a paradigm for the twentyfirst century global city. Given its influential position, it is essential that the city investigate solutions to largescale urban issues beyond the current paradigms of planning and critically consider strategies for urban growth that take into account its immense complexity and constant flux. The ideas put forth in L.A. Now: Volumes Three and Four propose new directions and formulate desires for the future of Los Angeles. The methodology establishes a middle ground between the spatial, intuitive, and qualitative processes of architecture and the analytical, quantitative procedures of urban planning. The resulting solutions interrogate a broad range of socio-economic, political, cultural, demographic, and infrastructural issues in spatial and architectural terms. This integrative investigation of alternate solutions responds to the myriad exigencies of the real world, yet remains unburdened by the political and administrative status quo. As a proposition of possibilities and desires, this work is intended to inform subsequent urban planning and development and to change the very nature of the conventional planning process.

Acknowledgments L.A. Now: Volumes Three and Four continues the investigations of my research studio at UCLA ’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design, which grew out of discussions with Art Center College of Design president Richard Koshalek, on developing proposals for downtown Los Angeles. Our initial vision could never have been realized without Eui-Sung Yi’s sustained energy and deep commitment to the project. I would also like to acknowledge UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Chair, Sylvia Lavin for her support, and my students’ vast, masterful and probing efforts in collectively undertaking such an ambitious endeavor.

introduction

INTRODUCTION

introduction

04

05

Richard Weinstein

This third and fourth volume of L.A. Now poses several important dilemmas for architects who want to think about cities. To begin with, most architects of significant talent have focused their energies on singular structures, and the critical debates in theory have largely supported these design investigations and failed to formulate as productive a discussion of the city at a larger scale. The work on L.A. Now and the provocations of Rem Koolhaas are lonely exceptions. The New Urbanists at this point dominate the field with those who promote transit-oriented development. So far, an alternative contemporary urbanism is best at criticizing commodification, theming, sprawl, and New Urbanism, and not so good at formulating a plausible alternative—much less one that is capable of influencing development nationwide. A second dilemma is the emerging body of information on population growth, inadequate infrastructure, environmental degradation, and traffic. Somehow, the growing urgency of these problems has so far failed to mobilize the best thinkers, but the pressure is mounting, and it is hardly possible or honorable to continue in denial. A third dilemma is, how does one begin in the face of infinite information? How does one locate the facts around which it is possible to improvise a new theoretical position that could lead to constructive change, or even to a new vision with formal implications? And to what extent would the means of implementing such a vision feed back into its very formulation, or would such an operation undercut the enterprise?

A BEGINNING To make the work on L.A. Now possible, the chair of UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Sylvia Lavin, had to invent a studio format that lasted for a full school year, which she titled the “research studio.” This provided the time to gather information, document the site, attempt to understand it in the context of change in the larger city, and formulate design proposals. The pressure to consider the urban situation as a problem for design came from Thom Mayne; his attention to such issues is rare for an architect who is well established as a creative force. Whatever shortcomings can be identified in L.A. Now: Volumes Three and Four arise from the clash between high aspirations and the unfamiliar territories that Mayne and his team of students set out to cross. From time to time, the project was reviewed by a “board of advisors” consisting of city officials, real-estate developers, and others familiar with the community and large-scale developments—a reality that rarely intrudes with urgency on the education of an architect. These meetings served to model events as they might occur, identify limits, and make a plausible case for circumventing those limits when necessary. At the same time, the research phase provided an opportunity to define the problem with a quality of information that decision makers are not usually presented with and that may alter the way in which they view an urban situation.

A PROJECT The subject area of the research studio is a large territory, and its future should be taken under serious policy review. The studio has the capacity to “game” the future of the site to explore alternate outcomes freely—but within the limits of plausibility. As such, the resulting designs represent an unexplored middle ground between unconstrained speculation and overdetermined, timorous public urban design. The L.A. Now project is an emerging model of how the resources of a university, directed by a major architectural talent, can interface with an enlightened business and political establishment to anticipate what could happen if a strategic intervention occurred before vested interests so limited the range of opportunities that optimum change was foreclosed in favor of business-as-usual. And it is business as usual that has brought us to a flash point of urban problems that require exactly the kind of anticipation and innovation represented by L.A. Now: Volumes Three and Four.

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DILEMMAS FOR OUR TIME: UNDERSTANDING L.A. NOW

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06

A CASE FOR DOWNTOWN LIVING Eui-Sung Yi

780 people

move to the Los Angeles metropolitan region daily, according to the results of the 2000 U.S. Census long-form survey. By 2020, the greater metropolis—encompassing Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange Counties—will absorb an estimated increase in population roughly equivalent to the current population of present-day metropolitan Los Angeles. Of the 3.2 million new inhabitants, an estimated 805,000 people (equivalent to present day San Francisco) will call the city of Los Angeles their home. This population increase will place a severe strain on the capacity for all levels of infrastructure—energy, transportation, water, and housing—to service the city and the region. For decades, the attraction of Los Angeles has been its cultural and geographical position in the world. The city’s enduring mythos continues to attract people from the rest of the United States and the world, especially from Asia and Central America. As a nexus of international traffic and a steward of secure middle class living, “Los Angeles”—the metropolis—is straining under its own image and promise. The California Department of Finance forecasts that the new population will be distributed evenly over the entire field of the metropolis, with minor concentrations in the secondary cities. This prediction presumes the status quo of horizontal expansion in the form of sprawl, where housing development indolently yet persistently spreads to the next piece of available land. Throughout its history, Los Angeles has taken advantage of its expansive setting, sprawling in every direction until reaching a seemingly insurmountable geological boundary—whether ocean, mountains, or desert—and then proceeding to expand further, often into those inhospitable geographies. The city is ranked in the top five nationally for unconstrained sprawl. As Los Angeles grew by three million people from 1970 to 1990, the city consumed an additional twenty percent of its orchards and farmland—in total 252,160 acres. Yet this development pattern displaces people further from the principal centers of commerce, which mostly remain in major city centers. In order to sustain a viable regional equilibrium, we must investigate alternative development strategies. For major cities, the strategy of redensification provides a realistic and essential alternative to sprawl and its associated problems. As subdivided housing development reaches a critical impasse and rural fields surrounding cities predictably transform into suburbia, housing must inevitably be developed in city centers; as the population expands and single-family residential units become a limited commodity, there must be a redistribution of housing typologies, in favor of multi-unit housing; and as population density becomes a critical reality, ideals of public transportation, sustainable energy, and public housing must be reexamined.

downtown Los Angeles

07 introduction

metropolitan Los Angeles

population 1. Los Angeles 2. Long Beach/Torrance 3. Anaheim/Garden Grove 4. Pasadena/Glendale/Burbank 5. Riverside 6. San Bernardino 7. rest of the metropolis

2000 14,300,000

2020 (projected) 17,760,000

growth 3,480,000 (or 1 Los Angeles)

3,823,000 605,000 500,000 454,100 255,000 190,000

4,628,400 1,000,000 850,000 750,100 420,000 360,000

805,400 395,000 350,000 296,000 165,000 170,000 170,000

1 4 6 5

3 2 7

4

6

1 7

5

3 2 [ ] = 5000

the greater metropolis projected population growth centers, 2020

Park La Brea

Village Green

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City of Los Angeles high density development model (zone R3, R5, CM, MR) websites: factfinder.census.gov (2000 U.S. Census) scag.ca.gov

It is estimated that fifty percent of Los Angeles County’s industrial facilities are obsolete due to their inaccessibility by larger modern trucks and an inability to upgrade to changing market demands. As it becomes increasingly difficult for the city to preserve single-family residential neighborhoods (R-1 zones) due to population increases, the demand rests on these outmoded industrial and commercial zones to absorb new residents. Los Angeles City Council’s Adaptive Reuse incentives continue to rejuvenate dilapidated industrial neighborhoods and contribute to the collateral economic improvement to the community and the region. Concentrated along the traditional fringes of the city, Van Nuys, Long Beach, and downtown Los Angeles have sustained the local manufacturing economy for fifty years. The zoning maps on the right separate the low density zones of R-1, OS (Open Space), A (Agriculture) from the high density of R-3/5 and commercial manufacturing. The third map proposes a new combined zoning strategy that locates future opportunities for high density housing. As manufacturing types change, future developments can realign to integrate Los Angeles’ traditionally separated uses, such as commercial and high-density housing. The best candidate for this development lies in the eastern half of downtown Los Angeles.

09 introduction

city of Los Angeles general zoning OS A, RA RE, RS, R1, RU, RZ, RW1 R2, RD, RMP, RW2, R3, R4, R5 CR, C1, C1.5, C2, C4, C5, CW, ADP, LASED, WC P, PB CM, MR, CCS, M1, M2, M3, SL PF HILLSIDE

R1, OS, A only

R3, R5, CM, MR only

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10

Future housing development trends will likely oscillate between suburban sprawl and urban densification. The question becomes: how can seductive amenities and spacious, autonomous lifestyles, inherent in the lure of suburban sprawl, be reconstituted within an urban framework? The projects in this volume further interrogate the problem of urban development in the context of a growing, shifting population, and begin to pose solutions to this question.

500,000 workers – roughly equivalent to the population of Washington, D.C. or Las Vegas – commute daily to downtown Los Angeles. It is estimated that by 2020, the average freeway speed will be 20 mph for 8 hours daily. (Note that 20 mph is slower than the 25 mph speed limit for most residential streets.) The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) reports that cumulative hours spent in congestion have increased by 60% from 1990. The annual cost of lost time and fuel is currently $129 million. The Commuter Origin diagrams (pg 208) outline the dispersed and decentralized areas where the 500,000 downtown commuters live. Judging from the driving patterns, a critical mass of the population sits amidst gridlock on a daily basis heading to their jobs downtown. Yet the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) states, “there is very limited ability to add more highway capacity” due to right-of-way, financial, and environmental issues. The city’s recent failure to get approval to expand the 101 freeway and lengthen the 710 freeway is just one recent setback. The current proposal to address the anticipated 30% increase in traffic is to add more High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes: an additional 206 miles to the existing 380 miles. However, HOV is merely a stopgap measure—a method of buying time while commuting culture is re-addressed. Even the miles of HOV lanes may well prove inadequate for the onslaught of over 3 million additional inhabitants. Clearly, commuters need a realistic, viable alternative route to work from the major residential centers of the Metropolis. Recently, the public transportation infrastructure servicing the greater metropolis has seen a remarkable rise in construction and use. Ridership on the Metrolink has increased annually, and the Blue Line to Long Beach, the new Gold Line to Pasadena, the westbound Exposition LRT and resurrected Redline subway, and the two new Metro Rapid bus lines are all promising. Though no one believes this public transport system will afford a family in Los Angeles complete car-freedom, the elimination of one car (in a typical household of two cars) and/or the reduction of a car’s use during weekdays can substantially reduce the burden on existing freeway infrastructures.

City of San Diego sprawl control Transit Oriented Development Case Study: San Diego From 1990 to 2000, San Diego has undergone a remarkable boom in housing construction and commercial revitalization, as the region grew by 316,000. By 2020, the regional population is projected to increase by 785,000 persons, almost equivalent to the increase for the city of Los Angeles. By 2030, a total of one million additional persons will live in the region, creating a critical population-density crisis.

In anticipation of the population influx, San Diego has implemented an urban development plan, named REGION2020.The strategy will “limit sprawl from 600,000 acres to 200,000 acres by focusing most of the growth in incorporated cities near transit stations and major bus corridors, in mixed-use cores, near employment centers, or in redevelopment or infill areas.” The San Diego zoning maps (right) have been

amended to match the zoning on the Los Angeles maps, to indicate the concentration of potential high-density housing. The high-density residential zoning absorbs the commercial and manufacturing districts located along the industrial waterfront. The appropriation of these areas, and their connection to an emerging vibrant commercial downtown, lays the foundation for multi-unit urban housing in San Diego.

Los Angeles

population 1. downtown 2. Van Nuys 3. Northridge 4. Eagle Rock 5. Hollywood 6. San Pedro 7. Venice 8. rest of the city

2000 3,823,000

2020 (projected) 4,628,400

growth 805,400 (or 1 San Francisco)

36,000 163,000 40,750 24,000 222,030 72,150 38,000

250,000 233,000 100,750 79,000 267,030 94,150 50,000

214,000 70,000 60,000 55,000 45,000 24,000 12,000 375,400

2

1

3 5 4

8 7

6

2 3 4 8

5 1

City of San Francisco

7

City of Los Angeles

downtown Los Angeles 250,000 persons

City of Los Angeles projected population growth centers, 2020

R1, OS, A only

6

R3, R5, CM, MR only

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12

Transit oriented development (TOD) serves as a model of a housing strategy that ensures access to the public transit system. Both the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and the MTA have encouraged densification as a strategy to address the housing and transit crisis. The public has asked the MTA to review TODs, with the first proposed project located near Long Beach. It is worthwhile to note that the rail companies historically earned their revenues from development along their routes, not from ride fares. As most of the freeways were laid within old existing rail right-of-ways, TODs or “Transit Villages” seem an appropriate return to the union of these two franchises.

L.A. Now projects a maximum population of 35,000 for either the downtown arts district or the Chavez Ravine site —fourteen percent of a potential market of 250,000 downtown residents. The 500,000 commuters to downtown represent 1 million residents, assuming an average of two persons per household. If housing opportunities can be made attractive, a substantial percentage of these commuters could live within blocks of their workplaces. Assuming that half of these two-person households have alternate workplaces that make moving prohibitive, the other half—250,000—can become a housing force within downtown. This potential halving of the load of highway commuters to downtown would reduce 7 billion vehicular miles, save 220,000 hours of commute time, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 million pounds annually, and save 500,000 gallons of gasoline daily. As the culture of downtown residential neighborhoods evolves, the infusion of major commercial and retail developers will provide another thrust of investment and growth in the next decade. With new transportation and recreational amenities conveniently located within blocks of the project sites, these sites have the potential to become principle anchors for downtown.

Hancock Park

downtown

population 1. manufacturing 2. South Park 3. Arts District -project site 4. Little Tokyo 5. historical core 6. Bunker Hill 7. financial core 8. Fashion District

2000 36,000

2020 (projected) 250,000

growth 214,000 (or 1 Barstow)

1,700 730 570 7,000 18,000 8,000

45,700 40,300 35,000 41,000 50,000 38,000

44,000 39,570 34,430 34,000 32,000 30,000

3

6

1

7 5

2

4 8

= downtown Los Angeles

Washington D.C.

Project Site +10,000-28,000

6 7

3

4 5

2 1 8

downtown Los Angeles projected population growth centers, 2020

Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw

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introduction

14

volume three: downtown Arts District volume four: Chavez Ravine

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In a metropolis comprosing multinodal communities, the ability to connect these urban nodes determines the future sustainability of these communities. The twentieth century saw infrastructure grow proportionately with the growth of the urban fabric. But in the first decade of the twenty-first century, infrastructure can no longer accomodate its users by dividing, splicing, splintering and branching. Rather than locate a new footprint and secure land rights, infrastructure has to enhance and exploit untapped or poorly conceived existing connections.

cultural institutions F Walt Disney Concert Hall G Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels H The Museum of Contemporary Art civic institutions C Department of Water and Power D courthouses E U.S. Bank Tower financial districts I office towers commercial and entertainment A Staples Center B department stores / hotels / clubs

E

Gr an d

Flo

St re et

downtown connections core amenities

Av e

we r

St re

et

B

website: A usc.edu/dept/geography/losangeles/lawalk/spark/index.html

0 0

100ft

500ft

1000ft

1/3mile

1/2mile

C

F

G D

I

Fi gu ro a

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1 mile

H

17

Dodger Stadium 569,069 sq. ft. 0.94% Downtown Los Angeles

Chavez Ravine and Elysian Park 1,932.8 acres 84,194,467 sq. ft. 0.76% metropolitan area

volume four site: Chavez Ravine 323.47 acres 14,089,963 sq. ft. 0.013% metropolitan area

downtown Los Angeles 1,390.3 acres 60,469,042 sq. ft. 0.54% metropolitan area

volume three site: Arts District 227.7 acres 9,916,923 sq. ft. 0.09% metropolitan area

site comparison downtown Arts District and Chavez Ravine

websites: zimas.lacity.org/ navigatela.lacity.org/index01.htm

introduction

The proposals here examine the potential of Flower Street, Grand Avenue and Figueroa Street as connective spines between Chavez Ravine and downtown Los Angeles. A new set of commuters with less than ten minutes of driving can serve downtown and infuse the current cultural and commercial institutions with increased patronage and revenues. This becomes the seed from which a continual co-dependency can build between those living on the hill and the services at the bottom of the hill. Eventually, downtown Los Angeles can shed the stigma of being an empty urban center after work hours and, like all great metropolitan downtowns, become a new nocturnal destination.

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Chavez Ravine and Elysian Park, 1958

Bunker Hill downtown Los Angeles

Cesar Chavez Boulevard

Chinatown

Dodger Stadium under construction, 1961

Chavez Ravine

Dodger Stadium top of Chavez Ravine

Elysian Park 110 Pasadena Freeway

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proposals

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proposals

proposals

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THE DISCONTENTS AND PLEASURES OF L.A. NOW 22

John Kaliski I was a bit surprised to receive Thom Mayne’s invitation to follow the progress and work of the students who participated in L.A. Now; a project Mayne organized and led through his research studio at the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design. For twenty years, from the perspectives of both the private and public sector, I have argued for and attempted to practice an urban design and architecture that is different than the underlying ideas, forms, and desires of the projects represented in L.A. Now. When I worked as the Principal Architect of the Community Redevelopment Agency of the Ctiy of Los Angeles, I was always struck by vast amount of input from a multitude of voices that each project generated and how that input guided projects towards less density, smaller scales, more open space and greenery, and respect for traditional city forms. In general I believe, based upon this experience and the built evidence of the contemporary city, that when architecture is defined as largescale infrastructure, poor urbanism invariably follows. In contrast, in the UCLA projects, whatever fascination there might be with the small-scale and organic citymaking is more than overcome by powerful fascinations on the part of both teacher and student with the “XL.” As a corollary, when faced with urban-scale challenges, the protagonists of this studio too often for my tastes responded with building—or buildings as topology—solutions. While the student work was in my opinion attuned to the present program needs of Los Angeles, the relentlessness of the horizontal and vertical carpet of building propositions that were promulgated metabolically obviated any sense of human scale. I suppose Thom purposely wanted someone contributing to the studio criticisms that would bridge this gap, who was more comfortable with an urban design that grapples with design strategies that grow from understandings of building-by-building incrementalism, typological coding, and landscape urbanism. I also know from his comments during the studio and from his work that for Thom, his interest in the XL does not negate an interest in urban-design tactics grounded in the reshaping of the existing public common, the streets, sidewalks, open spaces, and adjacent envelopes that frame these places. During the course of observing the progress of the L.A. Now work, I even suspected that the students felt that their massing diagrams were in keeping with many of the principles that form the core of my personal belief systems. Still, the emphasis in this studio on big architectural solutions, its consequential costs, need for heavy-handed land acquisition tactics to ensure implementation, and unspoken reliance on now standard joint public-private sector development strategies became too easy a capitulation to a type of real-estate economics that ignores too many of the pressing problems of the American City such as affordable housing, requirements for economic restructuring to assist with job production, and the creation of well-appointed and maintained common spaces.

Yet, despite the critical and intellectual differences I might have with Thom and this studio, I would hardly reject this work as irrelevant to the making of the city and architecture; the opposite is true. The L.A. Now project cannot be dismissed, for it constructively fascinates the mind and the eye of all that see it, and as such attracts critical notice and interest, both negative and positive. It is in essence a productive exploration into the means by which urban design will be practiced in coming years and thus a force for urban contemplation and discussion and change. Why this is the case is worth exploring. I sense that the interest in the fantastical urbanism that is seen here lies in the subliminal optimism of the studio’s design methodology, a reliance on a design as opposed to planning process for the production of urbanism. Residing within the unimplementable gigantism of the architecture of this design studio is a manifold that realizes brilliant urban design propositions. True, the students raced towards overwrought building ideas, but they also, in the process of generating these ideas, grounded them in acute urban design recommendations. Each project contained an idea that moved me; a linkage of Los Angeles City Hall to the Los Angeles River via a network of open space; a sectional zoning that attends flexibly to emerging patterns of contemporary everyday life; a Figueroa Street parkway that directly connects for the first time downtown with the Golden State Freeway; a residential “Stadium City” placed over the vast parking scrim that mars both Los Angeles’s iconic baseball stadium and its surrounds; a reinvigorated Elysian Park that actively serves and gathers the masses that surround it. The power of a design vision as opposed to planning process is the former’s heightened capacity to synthesize otherwise unmanageable data and social inputs into acute concepts that are easily understood—precisely because they are visual. I believe the L.A. Now project garners continued interest because it well demonstrates the unique capacity of design to generate clear ideas and consequent debate at the earliest stages of planning.

proposals

I tried to contribute to the studio the thought that contemporary urban design must wrestle with the democratic urbanism of the contemporary city, the tussle of community meetings, and the political forces that shape the city to realize both consensus and form. No doubt as a professional expert Thom invited me to make these points, even as he pursued with the students architectural schemas that I was at first glance bound to disagree with. As a critic with a different point of view, I was a poor substitute for the polyglot mix of voices that will inevitably shape the most innovative—in the sense that they are responsive to the voices of everyday life—cities in industrialized countries.

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23

introduction proposals

24

A second aspect of this studio that I think is critical to any discourse regarding the design of cities at this time is its insistent integration of informational databases and new visualization technologies. At each step of the studio, Thom urged the students to fold the data flows that shape contemporary urban life into the techniques of design in a digital age. Whether traffic- and transportation-based, census-based, flood plain-based, open space-based, economic-based, or otherwise-based, the sustained research into the actual conditions of the city produces results that are a reflection of the possibilities of present everyday life seen through the filter of to the range of pressures, fluxes, and opportunities that impact the contemporary city. The City of Los Angeles, under simultaneous demographic, economic, and building restructuring, is seen as needing an architecture and urban design that is hyper-responsive to an immediately present future. While one can argue with the formal results, for me the L.A. Now process suggests that the architect can place him or herself in a position to tap the broadest range of knowledge systems at work in the city today without resorting to a simplistic and sentimental urbanism of image as opposed to substance. More important, I believe the method and results fascinate a broader public well-versed in the use of I-Pods, Nintendos, Play Stations, and Sim City because they trust that the digital architectural tools of the present, which allow for instantaneous public visualization and discussion of the broadest range of alternative futures, work better and more deeply than the tools of the past and thus lead to a better and more livable future. Unlike normative city planning and urban design that now always looks to a singularly defined and supposedly golden past—and as a result at best realizes an urbanism of quietude—these projects bespeak a progressive optimism about controlling and directing the dynamic forces at work in the city today. Given Thom’s roots in a late 1970s postmodernism of representation, interest in “dead tech” in the 80s, and his formal and craft-based explorations of the 90s—all pursuits that looked to architectural tradition to realize architectural futures, his interest in projecting present urbanism, as exemplified in the L.A. Now studio, also explains an essential aspect of the vitality of his recent work, which is at times overlooked. Whether at Diamond Ranch High School, the University of Cincinnati Student Recreation Center, the Caltrans District 7 Headquarters, or any of numerous other efforts, Morphosis utilizes a process parallel to that of the UCLA studio. These buildings combine research and advanced visualization to project humanism in contemporary urbanism, and thus realize a critical architecture that at once captures the imagination of both the profession and the public. Perhaps at times this architecture suffers from the same gigantism and lack of human scale that marks the UCLA projects, but it is always forward-looking and infinitely more satisfying in its complexly ameliorative posture towards the struggles of daily life than any architecture or urbanism that turns its back on the present. Thom Mayne is always full of questions, transmits his love of critical questioning to co-workers and his students, and through this positive criticality will, I trust, be among the first to both glimpse and realize the inspired and technologically based human-scaled urban incrementalism that the L.A. Now studio does not yet fully realize—yet anticipates with great vigor and delight. Even as this Pritzker Prize-winning architect creates forms that test conventional understandings of architecture and urbanism, and barrels forward with sometimes uncomfortable built propositions, he always takes the time, whether with his colleagues or in the educational design studio, to ponder, absorb, transform, and bridge contrary positions and ideas into new expectations for architecture and urban design.

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PROJECT DESCRIPTION 26

L.A. Now: Volume Three: Downtown Arts District L.A. Now: Volume Four: (Take the Hill!) The Great Switch: Elysian Housing and Dodger Stadium

In the summer of 2000, Richard Koshalek, president of Art Center College of Design, approached Thom Mayne, principal of Morphosis, to direct a study of Los Angeles that would offer suggestions for its future development and growth. During a year-long intensive research studio at UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Mayne and a group of students first undertook the project of analyzing Los Angeles and, subsequently, designing speculative urban proposals for its downtown core. A large portion of this effort focused on the collection of a substantial amount of data on the Los Angeles region, given the realization that no project could be properly understood in isolation from the larger picture. This initial research was compiled into a book that was published by the University of California Press in January of 2002 as L.A. Now: Volume One. Based on this research and analysis, the students then designed interpretive strategies to accommodate the city’s fragmentation, heterogeneity, emergent orders, and non-linearity. Each of these projects established a basis for working within the broader context of the city and engaging programmatic and spatial adjacencies unearthed in the initial research phase. The academic context of the studio allowed for urban proposals not possible within the strictures of conventional, real-world planning and development. The University of California Press published these projects in January 2002 as L.A. Now: Volume Two. L.A. Now: Volume Three offers a set of proposals based on research and analysis to introduce housing into a specific site in Los Angeles’s downtown core. Bounded by the 101 Freeway, the Los Angeles River, Alameda Steet, and Fourth Street, the Arts District site lies between downtown Los Angeles and East Los Angeles. Taking into account the increasing population and the rising demand for housing in the central district of downtown, Volume Three examines the implications and viability of housing on the fringes as well. The projects take advantage of the area’s adjacency to several culturally rich neighborhoods and the Southern California Institute of Architecture, as well as the planned connection of the Gold Line from Pasadena. Though this neighborhood currently has an underdeveloped identity, it has the potential to evolve into a vital cornerstone of downtown. L.A. Now: Volume Four continues speculation on Los Angeles’s future, employing the conceptual framework established in the first three volumes while shifting focus to a different geographic node within greater Los Angeles—Chavez Ravine. Volume Four presents new research and proposals for simultaneously relocating Dodgers Stadium to downtown Los Angeles and developing housing in Elysian Park. The projects reclaim Chavez Ravine as a residential area, fusing its identity with Elysian Park and examining the hyper-densification a stadium brings into the city. The polarization of program and site spurs an intense investigation of the role of varied infrastructure systems—nature, culture, and transportation—as critical infusions into urban housing and stadium development plans. The research studio’s laboratory ethos has resulted in a valuable information base and proposals that encourage the community to rethink Los Angeles and its future. The intent of the L.A. Now series is to invigorate critical interest in Los Angeles, and to spur future ventures and projects.

introduction

1. All projects shall support an integrative policy of space and building making. All proposals and their programmatic components must react, engage and enter a physical and formal dialogue with all existing and proposed conditions. The spaces and structures should collectively intertwine to frame and enhance the other’s central concept. 2. All projects shall induce development through an infusion of critical mass. 3. All projects shall encourage infrastructure to enter a lateral rather than a hierarchical relationship with each other Infrastructure refer to transportation, service, politics and habitation systems. All infrastructure components will be developed to its final and ultimate deterministic potential. 4. All projects’ boundaries shall exist within a territory of discussions and agendas. All proposals shall establish a critical relationship with its adjacent districts via the projects’ edges and parameters. 5. All projects shall facilitate alternative modes of movement. All proposals will examine implications of reducing automobile transportation, intelligent parking and eliminating secondary and tertiary roads on the site. Not only will this promote public transportation and a healthier environment, this mandate will generate attractive real estate opportunities. 6. All projects shall pursue an intelligent use of limited resources. The project site’s size can substantially affect and contribute to an enhanced natural and environmental living conditions. 7. All projects shall support a broad notion of identity in relation to the various levels of urban scales: metropolis, city, downtown, and neighborhood. 8. All projects shall characterize, enhance and codify quantified regional data. All proposals’ merits are determined by a foundation of comparable statistics and data (demographics, economics, infrastructure). The data informs critical mass decisions and design strategies, forming the basis for a comparison to an appropriate case study. 9. All projects shall support a flexible, evolutionary and adaptable state of inhabitation and use. All proposals shall assume users, through an accretional process, will coerce, assimilate and modify given architecture and urban conditions to befit their evolving lifestyle and future demographic patterns.

variables 1. Large Infusion Stadium-Multi-purpose Public Center / Educational Institution / Cultural Institutions / Religious institutions / Retail Shopping Center 2. Infrastructure Organization Maximize local and regional public transport / Minimize parking density / Pedestrian infrastructure / walkways 3. Economic Configuration Public: Infrastructure / Stadium-public center / Education / Some cultural institutions Private: Housing / Retail / Hotels / Entertainment / General services / Shopping / Commercial (Offices + Production + manufacturing) / Technology services 4. Density High Density Low Density 5. Demographics Economic class Ethnic group 6. Natural Condition / Landscape River / Green spaces / Energy resources / Park Use / Pollutants

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proposals

commonalities

introduction proposals

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ElastiCity

volume three

a new zoning envelope

ElastiCity presumes to augment the traditional planning typological model via a new topological zoning envelope tuned to specific site conditions. The undulating form becomes a skin highly molded to the demands of localized conditions.

population: 35,000 total residential area: 19,000,000 sq. ft. total building area: 26,000,000 sq. ft.

DiurnalCity volume three

24-hour city Commuter evacuation after work has become a primary restriction on the level of activities available in downtown Los Angeles. DiurnalCity proposes a complex shifting of programs and uses to attract, extend and sustain a new lifestyle within downtown Los Angeles, 24 hours a day.

population: 23,000 total residential area: 15,111,000 sq. ft. total building area: 30,670,177 sq. ft.

introduction

L.A. Mall

volume three

a new green heart for downtown The L.A. Mall offers downtown its largest green park which will anchor the master plan of the Los Angeles River’s edge development toward Griffith Park. The buildings that define this green hearth are programmatic extensions of the existing urban fabric.

population: 33,700 total residential area: 18,950,800 sq. ft. total building area: 23,430,300 sq. ft.

Suburban Spill volume three

intersection of four adjacent communites By extending the surrounding neigborhood urban fabric into the site, the resulting collison of east-side suburban residential, north-side transportation, west-side culture and southside manufacturing generates the contextual quiltwork of Suburban Spill.

population: 17,650 total residential are: 8,847,780 sq. ft total building area: 20,319,000 sq. ft.

proposals

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introduction proposals

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Stadium City volume four

new village around Dodger Stadium Stadium City proposes to situate an urban community around Dodger Stadium by laying a porous housing mat over an excavated site. Open space and amenities are extracted from the mat based on programmatic necessities and historical precedents. Stadium City offers over 2,000 condominiums with large private gardens and 160 town squares linked to parks and schools.

population: 21,250 total residential area: 9,860,000 sq. ft. total building area: 18,740,000 sq. ft.

L.A.Live/Elysian Housing volume three

stadiums + convention center + Union Station This scheme proposes swapping housing wtih Dodger Stadium and recognizing the enhanced benefits of these new locations. The housing sits on the last great single site in Los Angeles and the stadium poses to challenge and contribute to the emerging vibrancy of downtown.

population: 24,000 total residential area: 21,000,000 sq. ft. total building area: 81,000,000 sq. ft.

introduction proposals

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Elysian Greens

volume four

housing on ravine edge doubles Elysian Park By concentrating the housing development on the edges of Chavez Ravine, Elysian Greens returns most of the site back to green space, thereby doubling Elysian Park. The housing concentration along the cliff affords more units with city views and provides an urban front to the city. Elysian Greens engages the Chinatown and Solano Canyon communities by extending a connective infrastructural bar and relocating the Stadium near the new Los Angeles State Historic Park, respectively.

population: 16,000 total residential area: 7,153,890 sq. ft. total building area: 8,623,390 sq. ft.

Chavez Pass

volume four

new Figueroa Express Corridor Chavez Pass integrates the grid of downtown and the topology of Elysian Park with the infrastructural thoroughfare of the new Figueroa connection. The new Figueroa extension begins with a newly re-located Dodger Stadium next to Staples Center and continues uninterrupted through Chavez Ravine and Elysian Park to connect with the 5 Freeway and the communities north of Elysian Park. population: 35,000 total residential area: 10,000,000 sq. ft. total building area:11,000,000 sq. ft.