2 Foreword Richard Koshalek & Dana Hutt 4 Introduction Thom

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Volume T oShaping a New Vision for Downtown Los Ang les

Seven Prop sals

2 ForewordRichard Koshalek & Dana Hutt

4 IntroductionThom Mayne

6 Project Descriptions

20 Site Map

22 Los Angeles PLAY Parkario Cipresso

38 L.A. River ParkPatrick McEneany & Susan Wong

54 HS[aRt] NetworkJoe Baldwin

70 Re:LAXEd Hatcher

86 Red Line School District Peter Kimmelman, Jae Kwon, Nishant Lall

& Andrew Scott

10 rban Housing

Paul Andersen & Maia Johnso

118 U rCitya tin Summer

13 CLA Architect ral Jury Transcript



oreword

2



Los Angeles faces rapid, continuous growth in the new century.

A rea y, t e estimate popu ation o t e city’s ive-county area—

16.15 million—is second in the United States only to the New

York City region. During the past century, the population of the Los

Angees area grew y an average o two mi ion peop e per eca e,

or over 500 people every day for the past 100 years. Even as

today’s vital infrastructure appears to be pushed beyond capacity,

t e greater metropo is wi receive an a itiona two mi ion peop e

by 2005. Los Angeles must prepare now for this growth by retooling

current planning strategies and designing and implementing new

solutions for the city.

Since the urban center serves as the connective tissue for the entire

city, we believe the revitalization of Los Angeles must begin in its

historic urban core. By applying original thought and creativity

to t e c a enges o t e owntown area, we can egin to p an now

for the real consequences of Los Angeles’s future growth.

Through this book, Art Center College of Design—as part of its “wall-

less classroom” initiative to bring new thinking to current issues

in architecture, design, art, and culture outside of the classroom—

presents proposals by UCLA architecture students, with the partici-

pation of fellow students at SCI-Arc, under the studio leadership

of Thom Mayne. These projects directly evolved from the larger

urban analysis displayed in the first volume of L.A. Now. While

these initiatives focus on downtown, they have been developed

in response to an un erstan ing o t e greater metropo is.

Designed to anticipate the future needs of downtown Los Angeles,

the proposals include a large-scale public sports park; a development

o par an s, asins, an researc an ware ouse aciities ocate

along the fifty-one miles of the Los Angeles River; a new convention

center located along a high-speed rail line; a satellite LAX terminal;

a school district that integrates the Metro Red Line; an extensive

upper-level housing and mixed-use development with rooftop

gardens; and a satellite university/night-school campus. These

proposals operate on a middle ground between idealized visions

for the city and the fiscal, infrastructural, and socio-political realities

of urban planning. The students bridge these seemingly opposing

concerns with rigorous analysis of the city’s existing conditions

an anticipate growt ; speci ic ows o popu ation, commuters,

resources, and capital; feasibility studies and projected revenues;

and careful consideration of precedents. As a result, we believet ese proposa s are ac ieva e an we wort consi ering in ig t o

the profound growth and change projected for Los Angeles by 2020.

As a series of next steps to these proposals, we strongly recom-

men t e ormation o a unique tas orce o t in ers an civic an

community leaders to develop discrete programs of urban ideas

that can be implemented in the near future. We propose, as one

of many such programs, the following twelve ideas (with thanks

to Dan Rosenfeld for providing the first draft): (1) implement the

plans for Civic Center Mall—Los Angeles’s “Central Park”—and

Gran Avenue rom t e new cat e ra to t e Centra Pu ic Li rary

with additional cultural and entertainment activities; (2) create a

parkway along the Los Angeles River and rescue Taylor Yard, the

largest parcel of land currently threatened by unsympathetic devel-

opment; (3) restore El Pueblo as a vibrant cultural and commercial

center; (4) extend the subway down Wilshire Boulevard to the

ocean and down Ventura Boulevard to Woodland Hills through the

San Fernando Valley, connect LAX to downtown via rail, and imple-

ment the continuation of the El Monte bus line to LAX via the I-110and I-105 high-occupancy vehicle lanes; (5) develop 10,000 new

residential units downtown; (6) plant trees that provide shade for

downtown sidewalks; (7) cover the Hollywood/Santa Ana Freeway

from Hill Street to Alameda, linking El Pueblo with downtown

Los Angeles; (8) develop the Staples Center/Figueroa Corridor

entertainment zone; (9) install historic street lamps through-

out downtown; (10) develop the Central Avenue Art Park around

T e Museum o Contemporary Art at T e Ge en Contemporary,

Japanese American National Museum, and the proposed Children’s

Museum; (11) develop a new Justice Center to replace our outdated

poice ea quarters; an 12 resurrect t e Re Car sur ace tro -

ley and its route from Chinatown through downtown to Exposition

Park.

It is our great hope that the architectural proposals presented here

an in t e L.A. Now presentation events wi stimu ate a citywi e

debate on large-scale urban design initiatives. The encouragement

of such discussions will provide the means for civic and governmen

ea ers, eve opers, p anners, arc itects, stu ents, an citizens

to consider long-range solutions for the next twenty years.



ntroduction

4

But there is also a culture…that, in the moment of f luidity and decom-

position leading toward chaos, is capable of generating instants of

energy that from certain chaotic elements construct—out of the pres-

ent and toward the future—a new fold in multiple reality. That whichwas many folds over on itself, manifesting an any than can arrive at a

one…. conjunction whereby the lines of a limitless itinerary cross with

others to create nodal points of outstanding intensity.

Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Differences: Topographies of Contemporary

Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997), 102.

Jean Baudrillard once observed that Los Angeles is but a collection

of points connected by a series of freeways. Although downtown is

t e eart o Los Angees in many respects— ot y its in rastruc-

ure and by virtue of the political and economic interests headquar-

tered there—targeting it as a site of research should not be con-

strue as an e ort to privi ege or prioritize. L.A. is a city o mu tip ecen ers, and one center cannot be addressed in isolation from this

larger network. So although we were commissioned to develop urban

designs for downtown, we found that proposals could not be effec-

tively formulated without first considering the city’s interconnected

nodes of intensity.

The dynamics of urban phenomena, the emergence of complex

or ers, an t e notion o permanent c ange as a in o new con-

s an carry within them the need for the nature of urban planning

to evolve. If we acknowledge that the very models on which urban-

ism is organize are vu nera e to eing outmo e , t en we un er-

stand that conventional tools of planning have also lost their prima-

cy. Rather than force process, formal determinations, or legislation,urban design might turn to continually reappraising the contemporary

city’s transactions, interactions, and exchanges. The result of these

reassessments would be the evolution from ideal geometry to multi-

dimensional systems.

T ese urgeoning systems e y, ragment, an interrupt Euc i ean

projections, yielding new organizational frameworks that supercede

plan-oriented strategies which privilege order over contingency.

Programmatic an spatia a jacencies, an t e y ri s t ey engen er,

call for a more three-dimensional organizational matrix that pro-

motes interconnectivity and allows the manifold logics of the city to

a vance, rece e, an co ere.

These were our premises as we developed urban proposals fordowntown Los Angeles. In a two-quarter-long studio at UCLA’s

Department of Architecture and Urban Design, we undertook the

project o un erstan ing Los Angees an eve oping ur an propos-

als for its downtown. From the research and analysis compiled in

volume one of L.A. Now, we designed interpretive strategies that

wou accommo ate t e city’s ragmentation, eterogeneity, emer-

gent orders, and non-linearity. The resulting projects have optimis-

tic and ambitious aspirations, but they are not utopian in ideology.

Operating wit oun ogics, t ey engage tactics t at promote

fluidity, flexibility, and interaction of economic, social, and financial

forces.



Piggybacking the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, Los Angeles

PLAY Par procures ur an recreationa spaces or oca owntown

communities. Subsidized by professional organizations both in land

and capital, recreational parks are inserted downtown on land owned

y sta iums an pro essiona eagues. PLAY Par an t e city ave

symbiotic goals in this respect: the bid mobilizes capital to initiate

a flagship PLAY Park, and PLAY Park creates the appearance of L.A.

as a socia y responsi e can i ate since t e procee s rom t e games

will stimulate the social welfare of downtown’s inhabitants.

In L.A. River Park an open space the size of Central Park is grafted

onto downtown, its transplanted configuration inflected by the local

conditions of Los Angeles. The resulting park links existing parks

through a green spine that follows a “liberated” Los Angeles River.

By excavating the concrete lining and re-greening the paved basin,

ris o oo ing is rastica y re uce an t e now- arren river

becomes a vital, green public-recreation corridor.

Taking the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s mandate for public art

and radically expanding it, HS[aRt] Network inserts cultural institutions

such as museums and galleries into transit stations. Comprising

three tiers of transportation—high-speed monorail, Metrolink,

and Metro Rail—this system democratizes access to art and culture

and stimulates the use of public transportation in the Los Angeles

agglomeration. A proposed convention center located downtown

is the hub for these systems, stimulating economic growth and mak-

ing owntown a vita point o cutura an geograp ica interc ange.

Re:LAX takes up Baudrillard’s observation of L.A. as a city of points

connected by a network of freeways. This project assesses the points

an ines t at comprise contemporary Los Ange es an strengt ens

the connection between two points that, in an era of radical sprawl,

risks falling out of the perceived constellation. A monorail between

downtown and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)—with the

attendant relief of infrastructural responsibilities on LAX—links two

Los Angeles centers and asserts the primacy of their relationship

to the welfare of the city.

Re Line Sc oo District ta es as its premise a potentia or sym io-

sis between the MTA and the Los Angeles Unified School District

(LAUSD). Subway stations become educational gateways, housing

more sta e components suc as omerooms an acu ty o ices

while the rest of the curriculum and associated resources are

navigated through sites along the subway line. This proposal radicallyconsolidates the distribution of space, resources, and programming

of the LAUSD, making the requisite expansion a more effective

and manageable prospect. L.A.’s metro system benefits from greater

use—and increased safety—while the school system becomes

a more integrated network of learning centers.

Urban Housing challenges two issues of contemporary urban

planning—sprawl and an unfeasible preoccupation with order—

in a proposa t at ta es a vantage o ow-occupancy ui ings an

inserts housing into their upper, abandoned floors. By implementing

vertical fill rather than horizontal expansion, the project provides

enough residential units to house a town the size of Hermosa Beach,

Ca i ornia. Imagining a itiona e evate oor p ates o program,

to be developed within a system of contingency and indeterminate

development, the project surrenders structured order to the itinerant

nature o ur an growt .

In the UniverCity project, downtown becomes home to a University

of California (UC) campus to meet a burgeoning student population,

stimulate local exchange and investment, and reap the windfall

of the social and educational programs that typically extend into

a university’s vicinity. Reversing the flow of people, investment,

and cultural capital away from sprawl mode and back toward down-

town, the project examines the contemporary UC landscape

in order to strategize and extrapolate a series of social, educational,

and economic permutations in downtown.

Eac o t ese projects wor s wit in t e roa er context o LosAngeles. They draw connections to the city at large and should be

received in light of their interpretive abilities: taking information

from the L.A. Now research and formulating strategies for downtown

to draw latent potentials and connections. The academic context

of the studio allowed for the emergence of urban proposals incon-

ceivable within the logic of conventional planning and development.

In the initial research phase, programmatic and spatial adjacencies

were unearthed and revealed. The Red Line School project is a perfect

example: how might the needs of the local transit authority (MTA)

and school district (LAUSD) be found to coincide and overlap with

the desires of urban planners or developers, thereby producing

a mutually beneficial and symbiotic relationship?

Wit t e age o arge-sca e ur an master p anning e in us—

the requisite land mass swallowed up by prolific development, and

the socio-political support too contingent and contentious any-

way—urban strategies must take current conditions as its starting

point. Challenging urban practices of contextualism and utopianism,

which both operate under the misguided convictions of fixity and

stability, our studio favored the metamorphosis of existing realities,

accepting fluidity, complexity, and discontinuity as possible points

of departure. These exigencies are the genesis of urban design.

Gauging and schematizing rather than inventing and imposing,

t ese proposas wor wit t e un o ing trajectories o t e city.

Schools of architecture are necessary to the production of much-

needed innovation and inspiration in the planning of our cities.The intent of the L.A. Now proposals is to invigorate interest

in Los Angeles as a project, promoting downtown as a territory

for investigation. We are concerned with projects that instill this

interest, from which other ideas will follow.



rojectescriptions

6

Los Angeles PLAY Park

MARIO CIPRESSODowntown Los Angeles currently has the least amount of public open space of all major

American urban centers. This condition contributes to a shortage of quality playing fields

for youth and adult sports at both competitive and recreational levels. The situation is further

aggravated by the increased “privatization” of public parks: private teams and organiza-

tions pay premiums for field rights at public parks, depriving the general public of adequate

facilities. By mandating that professional sports clubs “adopt” their local community, quality

playing fields for the public could be subsidized. This would require an expansion of the way

arenas are currently programmed to allow their fields and courts to be used beyond the

limited seasonal hours of professional play, and to fund additional parks on existing club-d and operated land.own

ngeles PLAY Park is a working model for a subsidized hybrid park. Integrated withLos A

ional, privately owned arenas, PLAY Park systematically knits public fields with pro-profes

alfession facilities. Utilizing a weave technique, the project creates an interplay between

green and hardscape that more effectively binds the sports arena to its downtown sur-

roundings.

Further incentive to implement this project is the city’s bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympic

Games. The Olympic selection committee considers a city’s existing infrastructure and itspotential for accommodating the projected demands of the games. More importantly,

it considers how the resulting flow of subsidies and revenues could benefit the commu-

nity. Los Angeles PLAY Park and the bid for the summer games have symbiotic goals in this

respect: PLAY Park could be an exemplary project in the eyes of the Olympic committee,

and the city’s mobilization of resources for the bid makes PLAY Park economically feasible.

PLAY Park initially targets as its flagship site the Los Angeles Convention Center and

the Staples Center, located at the juncture of several freeways and major public transportation

routes. The Convention Center’s 800,000 square footage is inadequate by current standards,

and the tight site adjacencies preclude any further expansion. The Staples Center is onlyactive the few hours during which professional events are conducted. PLAY Park proposes

to demolish the convention center and replace it with a National Football League stadium,

a professional soccer arena, commercial development, and, most importantly, a park for

public recreation.

The flagship site capitalizes on close proximity to the intersection of several freeways

and public transportation lines. The site is directly accessible via the upper deck of the Harbor

Freeway, known as the Harbor Transit Way. This artery is restricted to high-occupancy

vehicles and currently terminates just south of the downtown area. The Metro Blue Line,

located just east of the site, offers direct access to existing parking infrastructure located

>>see pages 22–37



in the financial district to the north.

Once these projects find a suitable venue, PLAY Park will quickly be self-sufficient, even

profit generating. Local tournaments can generate considerable amounts of revenue

and attract spectators from all regions of California. While a small tournament may bring

in $200,000 over the course of a weekend, more significant tournaments create an even

greater financial impact. For example, the city of San Diego organizes two annual youth

soccer tournaments that recently earned $700,000 in team fees, attracting 468 teams

and 100,000 spectators. An economic-impact study found that the tournaments poured$10.5 million into the local economy, the equivalent of a regional NCAA basketball tournament.

The myriad youth clubs and state and national sports leagues in Southern California have

already proven to be lucrative, revenue-generating enterprises, garnering both profits

and corporate sponsorship. PLAY Park provides downtown leagues with quality local venues,

allowing them to generate profits for their communities and local businesses. The playing

fields are not exclusive to leagues and tournaments, but are also made available for public

recreation.

The realization of PLAY Park dovetails with L.A.’s bid for the 2012 Olympic Summer Games.

The bid for the Olympics presents a genuine opportunity to ignite development and interestin downtown. The Olympic Village would require housing and associated amenities in the

South Park area of downtown, a district already identified by the Community Redevelopment

Agency as needing subsidized housing. One can look to Barcelona’s Olympic Park, built

for the 1992 Olympics, as a model of housing and parks developed in tandem with hosting

the games. PLAY Park and the Olympic bid could symbiotically benefit the local communities

in downtown and the city at large. Having hosted the 1984 Summer Games, Los Angeles

has proven its professional and financial acumen by being the first city to earn profits from

hosting the games. Mobilizing parks and housing, and further maximizing the resources that

have been made available for the bid, would only strengthen L.A.’s prospects on the meritsof the social improvements and community welfare that hosting the event would produce.

Ultimately PLAY Park fills downtown’s large deficit of green space for its residents. On a

bigger scale, it provides infrastructure on a regional level for sports organizations without

the resources to adequately support their constituencies. And finally, Los Angeles PLAY

Park engages in economic feasibility as it piggybacks the Staples Center and situates its

initial venture within the 2012 Olympic Bid.



rojectescriptions

8

>>see pages 38–53L.A. River Park

PATRICK MCENEANY & SUSAN WONG

Compared to other major cities, Los Angeles has a paltry amount of open space: ten percent

of the city compared to New York’s twenty-seven and San Francisco’s twenty-five.

As a means of testing how more open space would transform the city, this project begins

by grafting New York’s Central Park onto downtown Los Angeles. The transplanted .A.

River Park is programmed with three major components: open landscapes, drainage basins

for the Los Angeles River, and industrial roofscapes. The resulting 900-acre project reclaims

abandoned industrial areas and links two of L.A.’s largest parks, Elysian Park and Griffith

Park, via the landscaped and expanded banks of the Los Angeles River.

.A. River is a fifty-one-mile-long concrete channel that ends at the Pacific Ocean.

ghout most of the year the river is dry and unsightly, resembling a barren freeway.Thro

trast, during the wet season 183,000 cubic feet of water rush into the Pacific everyIn co

, fourteen times the flow rate of New York’s Hudson River. Because the riverbedsecon

ced in concrete, and because sixty-percent of the city is paved, water cannot

percolate to the ground, exacerbating the threat of floods during heavy rain. Unfortunately,

the historic response has been to raise the river walls with more concrete. Before flood-

prevention measures were taken, 215,000 acres in Los Angeles were at risk of flooding.

However, as a result of flood prevention and the subsequent paving of river walls, 325,000acres of the city and ten million residents are now at risk. The next flood of the 100-year

flood cycle is now overdue, and porous surfaces, not paved ones, will be more effective

in mitigating the hazards of these rains.

Installing drainage basins can improve the efficiency of the river, and the resulting channel

could be transformed into an iconic green spine connecting all of Los Angeles and its open

spaces. This project proposes to widen the L.A. River, remove parts of its concrete bottom

and walls, and create more drainage basins along the riverbanks. The basins would fill

and filter into aquifers during the cyclical rainfalls, and serve as open landscapes during other

times of the year. The river and its adjacent recreational paths would connect Elysian Parkwith Griffith Park, allowing cyclists and joggers to navigate the city and its parks along

a corridor of greenery.



In March 2000, voters approved Proposition 12 ($2.1 billion) and Proposition 13 ($2 billion)

in support of parks and clean-water bonds. Of these funds, $83.5 million was allocated

to redevelop the L.A. River. With this money, L.A. River Park could be implemented.

While one million square feet of existing industrial space would be displaced to provide room

for the basins and open park space, three million square feet could be relocated to adjacent

industrial-park zones, giving these areas a healthy density that doubles as substructure

for a roofscape park. The money for this portion of the project could be privately funded

by industries and through tax incentives for environmental preservation.The new landscapes go vertical to green existing office buildings and rooftops and to cover

structures erected to promote inter-building connectivity. Roof meadows, roof gardens,

vegetated roofs, and eco-roofs capture and store rainwater in cisterns and dry wells built where

pavement has been removed. The system is designed to absorb water quickly and release

it slowly, producing multiple beneficial effects. Planted with native grasses and plants that

absorb, filter, and store rainfall, the rooftops double as an acoustic buffer. The heat emitted

from the asphalt is cooled by the evapo-transpiration of the planted foliage. Once this system

is implemented in twenty percent of the urban district, passive cooling would have a sub-

stantial impact on the urban heat-island effect characteristic to cities packed with darkrooftops and pavement.

By grafting New York’s Central Park onto downtown Los Angeles and intervening against

the paved banks of the L.A. River, downtown becomes a vital connection in a newly realized

Los Angeles park system. Additional benefits of this strategic transplant include the commer-

cial district’s consolidation and interconnection, natural cooling, and the virtual elimination

of flooding due to overflowing riverbanks.



rojectescriptions

10

HS[aRt] Network

JOE BALDWIN

Taking the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s mandate for integrating public art and radically

expanding it, HS[aRt] Network inserts cultural institutions such as museums and galleries

into transit stations. Comprising three scales of transportation—high-speed monorail,

Metrolink, and Metro Rail—this system democratizes access to art and culture and stimulates

the use of public transportation in the greater Los Angeles agglomeration. At the heart

of this project is a new convention center for downtown Los Angeles. Compensating

for the limitations in the size and scope of Union Station and the city’s current convention

center, a new convention center would create a cultural, financial, and transportation hub.

esis of this proposal stems from two observations about Los Angeles. The first is that

ral facilities such as museums and galleries are largely inaccessible to certain economiccultu

s in the city, particularly those who rely on public transportation. The second observa-class

tion hat Los Angeles has increasingly become a decentralized city, which also makes cul-is

gagement an unlikely and inconvenient prospect to those who live within the city’s

sprawling edges.

In an effort to rethink how the Los Angeles public can enjoy greater exposure to the arts,

this project proposes locating galleries, museums, and other cultural institutions within

transit stations. The introduction of a high-speed monorail connecting Los Angeles toconvention centers, cultural institutions, and parks in San Francisco, Sacramento, and San

Diego would establish a great economic and cultural web. The local Metrolink would then

connect galleries, recreation centers, theaters, and parks within the Los Angeles agglomera-

tion. Similarly, the Metro Rail would link “boutique” galleries, installations, and small parks.

>>see pages 54–69



The hub for these systems would be a new downtown convention center. By locating

the transfer system here, downtown’s cultural, recreational, and entertainment resources

gain increased exposure and use. A 2.5 million-square-foot convention center replaces

the smaller and outmoded one. Recent expansions have exhausted the old center’s real-

estate potential while its size remains grossly inferior to other regional and national centers.

Meanwhile, historic Union Station is unable to accommodate a broadened transportation

network. Located just a few blocks away, the new convention center is designed to receive

and connect these new transit systems. With its competitive size, amenities, and convenient

access, the new convention center would attract big business and revenue to downtown.

Straddling the Los Angeles River, the convention center also connects the downtown core

with the residential and industrial neighborhoods of East L.A. The transportation stations,

convention center, cultural centers, museums, galleries, housing, bicycle and pedestrian paths,

and parks transform the new convention center into a hub for the confluence of people,

transportation, and cultural forces in downtown Los Angeles.

Both as an attraction itself and as a key access point to local infrastructure, HS(aRt)

Network orchestrates downtown as a central node of culture, commerce, and transportation

in Los Angeles. The art network is especially effective in this respect—by exhibiting artwithin transit stations, the public enjoys greater exposure to the arts and is inspired

to expand upon its engagement with both mass transit and the city’s cultural institutions.



rojectescriptions

12

Re:LAX

ED HATCHER

Jean Baudrillard once observed that Los Angeles is a city of points connected only

by a network of freeways. Should we accept Baudrillard’s view, then our task as architects

and urban designers might be to insert additional, strategic connections between the few

critical points. Yet as Los Angeles continues the trend of sprawl as its principal form

of growth, the condition of a field with many centers expands and intensifies. As a result,

crucial junctions between certain centers are all but erased in the flurry of rapid develop-

ment. L.A. Now research identifies two key points in need of stronger affiliation: Los

Angeles International Airport (LAX) and L.A.’s downtown urban core. Re:LAX promotes a

practical and conspicuous transportation connection between LAX and downtown in the

of a high-speed monorail.form

ld of generally non-hierarchical centers, the monorail asserts the primacy of theIn a fi

wn/airport relationship. A monorail between these two significant but isolateddownt

would fortify an otherwise dim connection. Re:LAX challenges conventional notions

of adjacency and proximity. By giving these disparate nodes the ease and speed of access,

distances are collapsed and isolation is undermined. As a result, the performance of the city

is recalibrated.

Rather than perpetuating the necessity for all traffic to converge at LAX for departuresand arrivals, the monorail offers multiple points for boardings, easing infrastructural burdens

on LAX such as parking, shuttle service, and traffic enforcement. Re:LAX decentralizes

and diverts these space-consuming requirements to local points of connection along

the monorail route.

>>see pages 70–85



The basic diagram of the monorail strategy can be understood through two Los Angeles

icons: the Encounter bar and restaurant—a converted air-traffic control tower with

360-degree views of LAX and its environs—and the revolving penthouse lounge of the

Bonaventure Hotel, a downtown landmark. Both establishments are centers of a kind, offer-

ing panoramic views from privileged vantage points. They are emblematic of a city with

multiple centers—thematic nodes whose linkage further obfuscates the center-periph-

ery conventions common to traditional European city paradigms. The Encounter and the

Bonaventure are centers within centers, a vivid riff on Baudrillard’s characterization of L.A.

A secondary concern of this project is suturing the bifurcated downtown area. This split

is largely perpetuated by the grain of the 110 freeway, a wide swath of fast-moving bodies

through an intermittently dense fabric. The freeway has made social and economic cleavages

more pronounced: the west side is financially heartier than the failing industrial sector

to the east. Two interventions have been developed to address this condition.

First, a series of pedestrian paths weave around and wrap the 110 freeway between 1st

and 7th Streets. These routes mitigate the strong north-south grain established by the

freeway and promote slower, local movement across the fast-moving commuter traffic. The

second is an architectural intervention that functions as a gateway to downtown.This gateway is a loose constituency of programs that hover above the freeway between

1st and 7th Streets, its building mass inflected by the existing vehicular access ramps

and proposed pedestrian walkways.

Thematically, Re:LAX proposes to weave, suture, and rein downtown into the constellation

of centers that comprise Los Angeles. The high-speed monorail linking LAX and downtown

re-figures the identity of metropolitan Los Angeles. As downtown is reunited with the

metropolitan field of multiple centers, LAX is relieved of infrastructural burdens. No longer

bypassed, downtown will become a vital stopping point for travelers into and out of the city.



rojectescriptions

14

ed Line School District

PETER KIMMELMAN, JAE KWON, NISHANT LALL & ANDREW SCOTT

Historically, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s response to overcrowding has been

to bus students to increasingly far-flung city campuses. By contrast, the subway system

in Los Angeles suffers from severe under-use, alienating potential riders with empty cars

and a perceived lack of safety. Red Line School District takes as its premise a potential

symbiotic relationship between the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and the Los Angeles

Unified School District (LAUSD). In this proposal, subway stations double as “educational

gateways,” housing the more stationary components of a school system (such as homerooms

and faculty offices) while the rest of the curriculum and associated resources are distributed

among sites along the Red Line. This proposal consolidates and maximizes the utilization

ace, resources, and programs for the LAUSD, making the requisite expansion a moreof sp

tive and manageable prospect. In tandem, Red Line School District activates L.A.’s metroeffec

syste during off-peak hours and integrates it with a network of learning centers.

ging the LAUSD are the limited ways it can respond to shortages of land and resourc-

es in districts where student populations are swelling. Predicated upon traditional organi-

zational models of geographic proximity and zoning, the LAUSD typically buses students in

response to overcrowding—a solution that merely transfers the burden to another school

district. Ultimately busing never resolves the problem, as LAUSD wastes energy chasingshifting populations. As a result, schools no longer offer a distinct community presence,

eroding the relationship between the student body and the local neighborhood school.

This proposal enables the LAUSD to have the Red Line do the chasing for them. The Red Line

currently runs through the B, D, E, F, G, and H school districts. By treating these discrete

districts as one large campus and having students “commute” from core nodes to specialized

subject-based schools, shortages are essentially eradicated as the total student population

is uniformly distributed through a series of metro stations and local campuses. The school

district capitalizes on infrastructure, mobility, and access rather than geography. New

districts are formed based on their proximity to a subway station entrance, which servesas an “educational gateway” for the school system.

The gateways contain the non-mobile portions of the program: the core-subject schools,

homerooms, faculty offices, and storage. These stationary outposts reinstate the neigh-

borhood-outreach aspect of schools—a traditional means for a school to establish its

presence in the neighborhood—while simultaneously providing a portal to the under-

ground school network. Operating both conventionally and virtually, these portals lead to

an extended field of classrooms along the Red Line.

>>see pages 86–101



Each high-school campus offers core subjects—math, science, English, and social studies—

and one or two immersion-elective subjects. Students commute three times a day on the Red

Line, which shuttles them to resource-center labs, library research, recreation, and electives.

By consolidating its student body, the LAUSD also maximizes its resources. Individually,

each node begins to integrate the attributes of its local civic identity. For example, the

gateway located in Little Tokyo not only offers a core curriculum for its students, but also

specializes in Japanese studies, which is available to any student in the Red Line istrict.

Inversing the idea of the magnet school, this formulation essentially “de-magnetizes” specialprograms, making them available to all enrolled students. On a district-wide level, students

have access to more learning opportunities (languages, topics, resources) than one isolated

traditional school could ever hope to offer. In another way, major infrastructura needs such

as fields, sports facilities, and libraries that are not uniformly maintained from district

to district can draw from the financial resources of a much larger population, making the

district less susceptible to issues of land values (in the case of playing fields) or imbalanced

taxation levels.

While the Red Line School District promotes a regional and civic identity, the educational

gateways expand its presence on a local level. Potentially offering healthcare, vocationaltraining, and evening classes for neighborhood parents and constituents, the gateway sites

strengthen relations between the school and the community, parents and teachers.

Both a unified metropolitan system and a more localized presence, the LAUSD operates

in conjunction with the community along two seemingly exclusive strategies.

New facilities can develop without being dictated by local intensifications in population.

Instead, the attention can be focused on the needs of the LAUSD at large, advancing academ-

ic and extra-curricular agendas that benefit the entire system. By redirecting and collaps-

ing certain programs, the overhaul considers specific curricular agendas and local urban

conditions. Ultimately, the LAUSD can strategically distribute resources based on real-estate

prices, institutional adjacencies, and existing infrastructure. Reorganizing the LAUSD along

the Red Line will radically intensify the use of the city’s Metro system, making it safer

for all riders and increasing awareness of its routes and features. By pairing two unlikely

city and state agencies, both organizations—and the city—benefit.



rojectescriptions

16

Urban Housing

PAUL ANDERSEN & MAIA JOHNSON

During a time when the global rate of urbanization is on the increase, strategies dedicated

to cope with rapid expansion are conspicuously absent. Cities currently contain nearly half

the world’s population, compared to sixteen percent of the population in 1950 and a project-

ed eighty percent in 2025. Of the few strategies circulating in the urban scene, many are

preoccupied with order in an inherently volatile, provisional, and disorderly world. These

fascinations are out of phase with the sporadic and often haphazard fits of growth by

which cities actually develop.

Among issues most alarming to urban planners and concerned citizens alike, sprawlparamount. The trend toward a seemingly endless development of ever-widening

tskirts of land—suburbia, exurbia, and beyond—has a negative impact on naturalou

esources, infrastructure, quality of life, energy consumption, and ecology. As the factr

that fifty-four American cities doubled in population during the 1990s demonstrates,

sprawl is a persistent threat.

This urban housing proposal seeks to remedy these two pitfalls of urban planning—

sprawl and an unfeasible preoccupation with order—through a vertical thrust of develop-

ment at a flexible and adaptive pace in the center of downtown Los Angeles. Operating

between pragmatism and utopianism, the scheme imagines new programs and methodsfor the development of abandoned and low-occupancy buildings.

Through our research we identified forty-eight, largely empty masonry high-rises built

during the 1920s as ideal candidates for downtown housing. Their proximity to one another,

similarity in construction, and near-uniformity in height make them strategic targets

for redevelopment. An early Native American footpath and the locus of downtown’s first

commercial and cultural development, the site has both topological and historical distinction

as well. The top stories of these structures are largely unoccupied, while the lower floors

and sidewalks remain active through commercial activity. By inserting housing into these

upper stories, the forty-eight buildings would provide enough residential units to house

a community the size of Hermosa Beach, California.

>>see pages 102–117



As a result of this programmatic graft, housing “sprawls” in an upward direction, thus main-

taining much-needed pockets of open space and provoking further sectional investigation.

Having inserted housing in the upper levels, the project introduces support programs—

necessary for a successful residential environment—through additional floor plates that

are built along the housing levels. The development of this space can respond to local

conditions and is not forced to comply or cohere with a larger urban vision. Soft commercial

zones, landscape, and circulation paths throughout the vertical grain of the project engen-

der a connective tissue of new textures, integrating these discrete towers into a more

cohesive urbanism and procuring the critical mass of density and diversity necessary for a

healthy social ecology.

The elevated floors are developed by the constituent parties that occupy them. The top

surface is programmed according to emerging exchanges and forces, such as the desire

for daycare in lieu of a convenience store, while the underside is exploited with graphic

treatments and ambient/tectonic devices. The eventual extension and linking of plates blurs

the formerly distinct boundaries between interior and exterior, public and private, occupa-

tion and circulation. A rich mix of uses and the emergence of new programmatic and spatial

typologies result, calibrated to the specific desires percolating on each site.Departing from conventional hard-planning methods, this strategy pursues smooth

transitions in downtown’s development that resist specific programs in favor of zones

of indeterminate development. Free program—the result—is more inclined to address

the city’s use and growth over time. The soft organization of the built areas breeds

a hybridization of activities and events that are compartmentalized in typical urban-planning

methods. Sprawl in this scenario is not simply a radical densification along a vertical axis,

but a tactical insertion of vertical layers around which local constituents can cluster,

organize, and develop.





Introducing a university to downtown L.A. would counteract many of the entropic, even

repelling, forces currently in effect. UC-Downtown would attract the very white-collar class

that migrates out of the city at the end of each workday, recapturing the attendant resources,

capital flows, and social and cultural exchanges in the process. Interaction between

the night and day populations is thus facilitated, collapsing distinctions as the local base

becomes better educated and educated people are more attracted to downtown. Growing

alongside the traditional university would be a series of continuing education and evening

programs, local outreach chapters, and clinics for language and computer skills. The result

would transform the cultural, financial, and civic fabric of downtown. One can begin

to imagine a condition in which a university population forms the critical mass necessary

to retain a skilled, educated class of people in the downtown community while raising

the standards by which the local, formerly industrial labor class lives and works.

Recently, major American cities have been identified as locales for study-abroad programs

that redirect students’ time, energy, and creativity to the political and socio-cultural polem-

ics of urban design and planning. A critical aspect of this proposal would be the designation

of downtown L.A. as a destination for students studying “abroad.” In this context, down-

town becomes an interdisciplinary studio for the study of transactions within recentlyblighted areas; solutions for stimulating exchange and activity; and the reversal of the

urban-sprawl trend. With a greater metropolitan area population of 13.1 million and a pat-

tern of growth common to many post-industrial American cities, Los Angeles is an exem-

plary case for this kind of projective research, the results of which have potential national,

and even global, ramifications.



ite Map

20


Mario Cipresso

>>see 6, 22-37

Re:LAX >>see 12, 70-85Ed Hatcher

Red Line School District >>see 14, 86-101Peter Kimmelman, Jae Kwon, Nishant Lall & Andrew Scott

Urban Housing >>see 16, 102-117

Paul Andersen & Maia Johnson

L.A. River Park >>see 8, 38-53Patrick McEneany & Susan Wong

Project Site Map



HS[aRt] Network >>see 10, 54-69Joe Baldwin

UniverCity >>see 18, 118-133Martin Summers



os AngelesLAY Park

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os AngelesLAY Park

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os AngelesLAY Park

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os AngelesLAY Park

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os AngelesLAY Park

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.A. River Park

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.A. River Park

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.A. River Park

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.A. River Park

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.A. River Park

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.A. River Park

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Excerpts from the

ranscript of the final UCLAArchitectural Jury

22–23 March 2001

22 March 2001Jury Members

Joseph Giovannini, critic and architect

John Kaliski, architect

Rick Keating, architect

Sylvia Lavin, chair, School of Architecture, UCLA

Greg Lynn, architect and professor, UCLA

Eric Owen Moss, architect and professor, SCI-Arc

Merry Norris, art consultant

Wolf Prix, architect and professor, UCLA

Richard Weinstein, professor, UCLA

Moderator

hom Mayne, architect and professor, UCLA

uryranscript

134

gut

I. Berengut



Introductory Remarks

Thom Mayne: For the few of you who haven’t been here before,

et me give you an i ea o w at we’ve een oing. T is is a two-quarter class, in which we spent a large percentage of the first

half gathering and analyzing information about the city. There have

een a series o ri ges etween a pro essiona sta an t e c ass.

Julianna Morais is here today from the professional group. She has

been working with me and directing the effort o quantify, evaluate,

and get her arms around this thing we call L.A.

Behind you are bits and pieces of a study in progress which, at this

point, evaluates the city within four parameters: people, capital,

in rastructure, an a itat. T e goa was or t e stu ents, as t ey

began their urban work, to identify a broad agglomeration problem

that was confined to what we call downtown, which all of us accept-

ed rom the get-go as one of the centers of a multi-centered mega-lopolis. This work will become part of the data that they’re using,

and you’ll see it showing up in all of the work.

T ere is a so a series o case stu ies t at serves as an appen ix.

We looked at large-scale projects around the world. The smaller end

of the scale would have included the World Trade Towers as large

arc itecture, an t e upper en o t e sca e wou e Brasí ia

or the urban work in Barcelona for the Olympics. Then the middle

might be Battery Park or Lille, France. We’ve taken those and

quantified them. We talk about their economic structure and a

basis of understanding the nature of the project in terms of scale

and construction and its relationship to uses, etc.

We were oing t is speci ica y to ring in some sort o rea ity.Because while we’re not interested in ability or reality at that level,

we are interested in what Richard [Weinstein] came up with—

p ausi i ity. It seeme i e a reasona e i ea t at t e projects

be plausible, and it’s also a grounding mechanism for the students.


MARIO CIPRESSO

Sy v a Lav n: I’m trying to get a sense o w at your sensi i ityabout this is. When you describe something that’s got 6.5 million

square feet as a humanizing element, you should at least be ironic.

Even t oug it’s not vertica , w ic we associate wit igness,

it’s still big. Your ambiguous treatment of scale relates to a per-

haps more perplexing issue. Despite the fact that your project is

in downtown, it operates on a suburban model, expansive parking

where you dump your car and unarticulated mall-structures where

you move as a pedestrian. It does not yet have the density and

complexity of an urban condition.

John Kaliski: I don’t have any problems with the idea, and I don’t

have any problems with the bigness of it. I think that Mario Cipresso

is having a real struggle figuring out how to do something this bigand still relate it to what you call “humanizing” elements, such

as the size of the population, the size of activities that occur in

downtown, etc.

In any case, 7.8 million square feet of commercial space, that’s

mostly retail is extreme and to humanize it is a challenge.

Mar o C presso: It’s retail, hotel, a mixture of everything, and office

space as well.

Kaliski: I think that’s about twice the size of South Coast Plaza

in Costa Mesa, which is the largest shopping mall on the west

coast. You must have a better sense of the scale of the operation

you’re dealing with. If you look at Costa Mesa and you look at it

as a footprint, it’s spread out. Your scheme is vertical. Vertical retail

experiences are very difficult to design successfully.

Because it is vertica , it’s very interna ize . T at’s w ere t e ogic

starts breaking down for me.

All of these events that you are suggesting should be aligned

an programme so t at t ey egin to create some type o pu ic

experience of space that’s absolutely unique. I think there is a space

that can be the generator of this in your scheme and it is under-

eve ope : Figueroa Street.

S. Latty I. Berengut



As I see the scheme right now, a lot of it is an environment that

centers on itself, as opposed to finding a civic locale that is activated.

My suggestion wou e to go ac to eac o your e ementsand relate it to the site and surrounding streets in a more effective

manner. The diffuser bar for example would have to really be

a i user. T at oomerang wou some ow ave to ump out on

the street and should in plan and section be designed in a much

more amazing way. The soccer fields and the health club could be

related to Figueroa Street.

I do really love your bringing the Harbor Transit Way right into

the project, which I think is a zoomy and public idea. I think that

wou e un, a great e-tic et ri e.

I’m not so convinced about the need to remove the convention

center, though I understand from a practical standpoint, you probably

t oug t, “How can I possi y put a t ese soccer ie s ere?”I suspect you could just basically drive the structure right through

the convention center and put the platform over it.

Richard Weinstein: Do you feel any responsibility, when you’re

building something that is basically the size of the existing down-

town, to think about what would happen to downtown if you did

this? Have you thought about that as an issue, or have you just said

from the beginning that you’re going to focus on a programmatic

intervention of this kind without regard to its influence and impact

on t e territory surroun ing it?

ipresso: I definitely considered that. The idea was that this area

right now is only alive for about two to three hours at any given

time when there’s a sporting event at Staples Center, and Staples

Center is basketball and hockey, which is seasonal during one part

of the year. Football runs at a different time and soccer runs during

t e summer. T e i ea or Los Ange es PLAY Par is t at t e activities

that happen here would activate the area year-round. I know for

a fact that the fields at Balboa Park are running until late at night

every ay, an t e on y reason w y activity stops is ecause t ey’re

not lit. If the facilities were lit, they’d be active till midnight.

This area here is already zoned for housing. The CRA redevelopment

association is already looking at this as housing, and I look at this

as the catalyst to begin this development, looking out this way.

Weinstein: But everything you’ve said has to do with what you’redoing. It doesn’t have to do with what’s happening adjacent to you,

including the point that the CRA has zoned that for housing. Anyone

who has the nerve to put an intervention of this size in there also

has the obligation, I would claim, to say, “Is that the best use of the

area to the east?” Why don’t you question it and decide yes, that

should be housing, or maybe it should be something else. In other

words, I don’t see any effort to assess the influence that this could

have on a big piece of L.A. I think all of your thinking is basically

confined to the enclave that you’ve created.

If you did something this big, it would have enormous consequences

or everyt ing wit in mi es, an an un erstan ing o w at t ose

consequences might be would, in turn, influence what you would

do. There would be a kind of reciprocal relationship between what

you’re doing and the influence it would have, and then you might say,

I don’t want to have that kind of an influence, and that might change

the way you would program the space and even make the shapes.

Mayne: T at’s interesting. T e asic strategy rom ear y on was to

use two broad formal or conceptual devices to deal with the problem

of connection. The line and the idea of blurring the infrastructure

of movement with the infrastructure of buildings was one, and it wasabout a radical connectivity, and with that there was a kind of porosity

that worked against the grain because of the linear nature of it.

T e secon one was t e p ane, an t e ea ing wit t e ayering

of both these things had to do with the suppression of the freeway

and its singularity as a first growth or primitive early development

o t e city, an to attac t e oun ary con it ion an t e singu arity

of the freeway and to make it much more secondary as a condition.

Greg Lynn: I think Mario’s analysis has taken him to discover

t e act t at par ing is t e t ing t at rives every sports sta ium.

Every team owner only comes in on the construction of a stadium

if they get the parking concession. It’s the thing the city always has

to pay or, not t e sta ium. T ey ui t e par ing an it rivesthe whole thing.

It’s also where you spend most of your game. I always spend two

ours in t e par ing ot tai gating. One spen s an our an a a

in the game, and usually leaves early to go back to the parking lot

again. So parking is the thing, not the stadium.

In terms of urban design, you’re really close to a lot of experiments

like Paul Rudolph’s in the 1970s, in which New Haven was thought

of primarily as a problem of getting off the freeway, through a parking

garage, to filter into the city. So I think all that is very good. I think

your parking garage is big enough now that it could start to contain

a lot of your sporting fields, a lot of your functions.

I think everybody’s pointed to the fact that it’s probably too big

from a development standpoint, but from a massing and urbanistic

standpoint, it’s got some good things going for it.

uryranscript

136

tty



So I would say that instead of thinking of this like Berlin, where

you make space through building mass and that the interior of the

building just gets filled up with malls or retail spaces or parking,

that you really should think of this thing as a landscape surface

and think of parking as not just a building mass but as a surface

you occupy.

You’re going to have to work out—which Rudolph never did—

how you get from the ten-story parking garage down to the city,

which is why New Haven didn’t work. But I’m sure, if you came up

with techniques like you’re doing with some of your ramps and

shoots circulating from that big, hulking mass through sporting

fields down into the city, it’s going to work.

Also, as far as I know about downtown, the big problem is parking.

You can rent a space on the 20th floor of a tower for a dollar per

square foot, but then you end up paying $300 in parking feesfor everybody that works for you. So there’s no economy in being

downtown till there is more parking. The Staples Center parking

doesn’t work for offices because of the overlap of the games.

So clearly, downtown needs parking facilities on this scale. The free-

way needs an address, and you’ve got a lot of techniques for devel-

oping open ur an space. But I t in a your pieces nee to e one

piece. Like your stadium, your garage, and the boomerang need to

be one system rather than three figures that frame an urban public

plaza.

Lavin: Don’t you think it would be fair to say that he actually needs

a landscape strategy? The least developed part of the project is

t e istri ution o p aying ie s t at are not esigne ut a an oneto a grid. Without being activated, the landscape, as a kind of design

factor, isn’t working productively.

T e project nee s a range o interme iary sca es, i e a secon ary

transportation system to get you from where you park to where

you play. A landscape strategy doesn’t preclude operating on a

ig sca e, ut can activate a o t e ot er sca es t at wou wor

together to support the big one.

Weinstein: But the big scale isn’t working well enough. I don’t

complain about the big scale. If you took the parking garage

and integrated it with the freeway, which is the big-scale element

in L.A., you could double the capacity of the freeway for the length

o t e par ing garage y simpy aving a turno into t e garage.

Kaliski: It’s true that if you built 6.5 million square feet of retail

space and all of this other stuff in one place, you’re just simply

delaying the revitalization of the rest of downtown because you’ve

sucked all the development energy into your little corner of the city.

Maybe the project should not be quite as big as you put it—maybe

it’s only 2 million square feet of retail space instead of 8 million.

Mayne: I t in t e i ea o it, t e strategy, as to e exi e anelastic enough to absolutely challenge the uses, because I don’t

agree at all with the uses. I think the uses should be flexible,

an t ey ave to e in terms o t e way cities eve op to ay.

This isn’t linked to a particular use.

I didn’t mention this, and I have to say it, at least in a general way.

T e init ia i ea a to o wit a con ition t at’s ta ing p ace to ay,

one that’s coupled with the demise of urban studies as a discipline

and the reality of the increase in scale of projects.

What I was interested in was finding a space between the analytical,

information-laden approach of the planner and that rationale, and

the more spatial, intuitive, and qualitative sensibility of an architect

an in ing a seam etween t ose sensi i ities.

Lynn: I think if the parking deck and recreation deck and slab worked

flexibly, we would just say this is great. It’s a street, it’s a parking

garage, it’s a playing field, and it’s a place to tailgate. It does all

these things in a flexible way where we could redevelop it through

a kind of hybrid strategy.

Lav n: That’s the problem with having so much green space and

having no landscape strategy. If you’re going to mention Lille,

for example, you have to recognize that when going from the train

station to the shopping mall or from here to there, you can’t

differentiate when you’re on a street from when you’re on a public

plaza, and when you’re in a parking lot from when you’re on a playing

field. All of those things exist simultaneously. Lille develops a design

strategy that deals with the multiple programs and events that can

happen on thick horizontal surface.

L.A. River Park

PATRICK MCENEANY & SUSAN WONG

Kaliski: I’m looking for the image of this project to become more

plausible, in the sense of seeing more variety in the type of strate-

gies of keeping old things and introducing new things.

For instance, another strategy within certain portions of the flood

plain might be that you’re not allowed to build unless you build upon stilts. Vegetal roofing might be another strategy. There might

be strategies that allow existing buildings to basically stay right there

where they are within the flood plain. For instance, berms could be

built around buildings instead of the river. When the flood comes,

the water moves around the buildings.



I can also imagine, as opposed to doing this project all at once,

completely reinventing that landscape over twenty, thirty, or forty

years with a series of architectural and landscape strategies

that are quite incremental in nature which, when added up, would

actually be quite significant.

An t en t e ast t ing I can imagine is t at i you are approac ing

this project incrementally, you could become more discriminating

about, as you put it, the point at which the scraping occurs, because

I have no doubt that you would want to do some of that. But right

now the proposal seems indiscriminate.

I think that you’re introducing a concept of amenity into an industrial

zone t at oesn’t typica y exist ut is ecoming more an more

important. And I think that’s what I’m curious about in your scheme,

when amenity becomes overarching design strategy versus incre-

mental design tactics.Mayne: I think they were able to find three layered problems that

had to do with very different scales. One had to do with he infra-

structure o t e river, an t e act o exp oring a potentiaity t at

already had a funding source of $1.5 billion. Another had to do with

the immediate issue of use and the revitalization of an essentially

nineteent -century in o a oc structure t at wou t en e

moved into some sort of a modern condition.

The third one was the park and the idea of actually returning,

o scraping an su tracting an in ing open space t ere. T is

production of a park has micro-environmental implications and,

although it is somewhat tertiary here, it is an important local issue.

But it’s absolutely strategic and it’s tactical and it’s organizational

for sure. The development has some sort of coherent idea that deals

with complex problems.

Lynn: I think there’s something sinister and provocative about

the urban-renewal aspect of your scheme, which says that the way

you do development—which everybody knows is the way to do

development but nobody admits it—is you go in and you demolish

a lot. You introduce schools like SCI-Arc or whatever to gentrify

the demolished areas, and then it develops. It’s a cycle of running

neighborhoods down then investing in in them while their value

is diminished to make a profit in redeveloping them.

I think if you thought of this in terms of cycles, there are a lot of very provocative things about your scheme. Starting off with the

fact that your design does not address development but demoli-

tion. We’re going to target an area of the city. We’re going to start

to demolish it. We’re going to do it in a way that plugs into master

narratives of ecology and green space so that that image is an

arresting image, to see this big sweep of green and water flowing

through the city. It makes demolition and urban renewal seem really

friendly and good.

It’s fabulous. And if you look at Detroit, the major industry in Detroit

for five years was brick recycling because they were demolishing

buildings, cleaning and dusting off bricks, and reselling them for

new construction and shipping them to other places in the U.S.

I think that your agenda of transforming buildings into sewage

rea men , c emica recaiming, an ot er etoxi ying uses is a mis-

take, as probably every one of these buildings is so toxic and polluted

already that you have to abate every section of soil ten feet below

them before you put a house on it. Say this is part of a thirty-

year cycle and it’s going to be sensitive and progressive in certain

aspects.

But it’s an urban-renewal recycling preparation for a development

scheme rather than saying, well, we’re going to put two million square

feet of industry here. I find that actually naïve.

I think that if you just took the kind of urban-renewal track you’reon and said, well, this is part of a pattern, and it’s going to generate

development in other places, it’s going to generate jobs, it’s going

to generate ten years of work demolishing the city: that’s an inter-

esting proposal. Like what do we do downtown? Let’s make fifty

million dollars tearing down and recycling an area. And it actually

plugs into plausibility and reality in a way that we already know.

This is the way cities develop.

Weinstein: It also creates the basis for housing downtown because

without a move of this magnitude, you’ll never get the kind of housing

development in the downtown area that, at least from one point

of view, is desirable.

T e ot er t ing t at wou strengt en t e project wou e to runthe green space from the Music Center all the way down. It practi-

cally ouches the boundary that you now have. This is the biggest

unuse green space in L.A., a o t is. A t e way own to ere is

basically green, mostly green and mostly unused. So just one more

block and you’re in your park.

HS[aRt] Network

JOE BALDWIN

Wolf Prix: I’m intrigued that you guys are so against density. For

me, urban projects entail dealing with density, basically. Maybe it ’s

because I’m a European architect. In Europe now, train stations arethe most valuable areas you can build on. Everyone at every train

station is building big shopping and commercial centers. They mean

to densify on a minimum amount of space a lot of buildings. Never

would we do a convention center in this valuable area. So I’m asking

why. Where does this come from?

Joe Ba w n: T e strategy is to ta e a vantage o t e potentia or

bringing people from San Diego to San Francisco to meet in this area,

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S. Latty



where literally they don’t have to get on a bus to go to a convention

center. They’re in the convention center once they get off the train,

and it’s an efficient way for business transactions to happen

at the convention center. It’s a connection for the agglomeration.

It becomes a way to bring it all together.

Lynn: W at ma e you put a t ese pieces toget er? I’m sorry

that I keep trying to move your project so many miles away,

but you could make this project denser at LAX than you could

in downtown, and that’s why I would move it there. If you put this

thing at LAX, you could put hotels, convention center, shopping,

big-box warehouse sales.…

Ka s : You mean in LAX?

Eric Owen Moss: The premise of the project is completely different.

The premise of the project has to do with building up downtown and

sustaining an a ing to w at owntown is.

Lynn: I just think this keeps slipping out.

Pr x: You can ring LAX to owntown.

Lynn: In London you check your bag downtown at Victoria Station

then get on the train, and your bag gets on the airplane mysteriously,

which is how a lot of the airports do it.

Rick Keating: Why would you set up something with such extreme

programmatic centrality over on an edge?

Lynn: Because the edge is denser than the center.

Kaliski: No, it’s not.

Lynn: In L.A. it is.

Moss: The answer may be the center, and that’s the point.

T e question is w et er t ere’s a center ere an w et er you

ought to sustain it.

Lynn: The whole premise of this studio is how do we make the cen-

er behave like a center with density?

Moss: In other words, how to make this a conventional city, which

it isn’t. It’s essentia y compose o mu tip e centers.

Lavin: Except you can’t deny the fact that downtown, even if you

say it’s one of many centers, is uniquely determined by the desire

to e t e sym o ic center. Moreover, it is important to ac now e ge

that the desire for centeredness frequently intrudes on discussions

about Los Angeles.

It seems to me that one of the reasons you’ve placed this here

is you want it on the river in order to produce the visual centrality

provided by a skyline. This project is driven by the effort to give

a formal identity, a skyline-type identity, o downtown L.A. That

may be a terrible or at least nostalgic idea, but it’s nevertheless an

idea in which much of downtown urban design in this city has been

invested.

Moss: So for whom is it desirable? Who is pushing it? Who wants

the development of downtown and downtown as a center?

Ka s : W i e I agree t at part o t is is po itica wi —“ ecause

it’s there, you have to make it there”—part of it is also the fact that

the entire transportation system of the region literally dumps into

owntown. I t in t at you can ma e t e argument to ta e etter

advantage of this situation. What I would argue is that you were

correct in noticing on a gross basis where the infrastructure was

going an using t e ig -spee rai to rein orce t e opportunity

of this centrality and density.

However, I think understanding where to maximize its impact once

you are owntown is not reso ve . I t in it’s somew at o t atyou slipped the project down river from where Union Station is.

I think that if you are going to do this, part of the justification for

oing it is to create t e type o ense experience or yper- ensity

that doesn’t exist in downtown. I also think your effort is an

opportunity to create a type of destination that’s a California/

Neva a Arizona-type o estination t at oesn’t exist anyw ere

else on the west coast.

Re:LAX

ED HATCHER

Lynn: How muc cargo goes t roug LAX?

Ed Hatcher: $207 billion.

Lynn: An in terms o vo ume in num ers, ow many ta eo s an

landings? What percentage—it’s big, right? It’s not half, but it’s big.

Hatcher: It’s in the belly of the plane itself. Something like sixty-five

percent o t e cargo t roug LAX is carrie in t e cargo o s

of passenger planes.

Lynn: One tends to see airports near things like shipping-container

ports and rail lines. So wouldn’t downtown be the perfect place,

where goods are moving in and around, to put them on something

like a monorail that would move it out to LAX? Wouldn’t this be a way

to revita ize existing cargo capacities owntown?

Mayne: The issue was that by anticipating the doubling of passengers

to and from LAX, the problem as a delivery system had to do with

parking or accessibility. The requirement was the redistribution or

decentralization of that problem. It’s exacerbated by the airport

being on an edge and that you’re only getting half the radii, and then

by any number of topographical conditions causing infrastructure



problems in terms of automobiles.

The idea was to distribute the parking link. One link was moved

to t e mi point etween LAX an owntown, creating a two osolution that decentralizes the parking problem while creating

an increased linkage to the downtown area. So downtown became

an o vious u or t e eve opment o commercia ote s, etc.

One was able to locate exactly how far one was from the hub,

say in terms of minutes away as opposed to miles away. The idea

becomes an extension of the light-rail systems used in places like

Atlanta, except it extends the connective tissue from a mile or two

miles to seven or eight miles.

Lynn: It’s c ear t at an arc itect cou intuit a new in o typoogy

that connects cargo containers, train lines, air traffic, hotels,

convention centers, housing—any number of things. It’s so in the air.

Every architect in the world is trying to put his or her finger on whatthis typology is.

You go to every city and you find, next to the port, next to the air-

por , a ig I ea wit a ote , wit a sports comp ex, wit a t ese

things, and they’re all sitting in a kind of suburban stew, and L.A.

seems like the perfect place to put one of these hybrids downtown.

The thing I’ve been trying to grasp on every project is where does

somebody make the architectural proposal that says by putting all

these things together in a low-density urban core you get this new

in o arc itectura type.

Lavin: I have a question about the growing nodes that combine all

of those multiple functions and programs. It seems to me that they

operate on the following logic: they captivate me because I’m cap-

tive at the airport. I’ve got a four-hour layover or a one-day layover.

They don’t seem to be about getting from here to there or about

trave or even a out mo i ity. T ey are a out stasis, an t e question

for architecture is how can stasis be generative.

These emerging typologies are borne from pressures that are

already producing an audience, but this audience has not yet

been captured by architecture. The question is, how do you make

it into an audience for architecture. How do you turn waiters into

architectural consumers?

That’s why I’m thinking I’m not sure this is being articulated in the

right way, one that makes it interesting to architecture. Somehow,those typologies have a lot to do with other pressures that are already

producing this audience that has never been captured. It’s sitting

there with nothing to do. You’re turning waiters into consumers,

which you may have some negative feeling about.

Kaliski: There is always going to be a captive audience at LAX or any

airport t at wi eman care an consi eration.

There’s also another type of traveler who goes on a trip that doesn’t

necessarily need or want to spend time at the airport. If you think

a out a t e i erent unctions t at you o at t e airport t at cou

be decentralized in some way—check-in, ticketing, luggage handling,

security, etc.—it’s possible that one could begin to shift these

unctions o t e airport property an istri ute t em t roug out

the region—almost an emptying out of the airport.

I could also imagine that many people want to get the optimum

flight in terms of time, cost, etc., and that within a region with

many airports like Los Angeles, there might be some demand

for a type of centralized airport hub that isn’t necessarily at any

one airport ut is an a junct to a o t e area’s airports. T is mig talso be a justification for this kind of program.

Lavin: To try to think about it in the terms that Greg was describing,

as a fundamentally new kind of typology that operates on a scale

that is unprecedented, that produces this hybrid, heterogeneous

condition which has to deal with the fluid movement of people

and goods and commerce and entertainment and so forth; that seems

to me already an enormously rich and provocative problem. Even

if LAX is not located in the ideal place, it’s already a really interesting

t ing to try to so ve.

Lynn: There is something that happens when you analyze things

on a typological level. HOK Sport was asked to do their first

convention center, along with a stadium. By looking at the typology

of the convention center and the stadium and combining it with the

problem that you can’t have natural grass in an air-conditioned

sta ium, t ey came up wit t e i ea o ro ing t e grass on a concrete

pad on oil rollers out into the landscape and using a subsurface

for the convention center, so that by building one building instead

o two an so ving t e pro em o t e grass, t ey cou ou e t e

use of space.

But that’s a thing you would never come up with through regional

planning or statistical analysis. You’d only do it by looking at the

typologies and saying we need to move goods in this end, we need

to move athletes in that end, we need to seat here, we need to

circu ate t ere. Now t ere’s a y ri type t at cou o ot

convention center and football stadium with a new technological

initiative and a new real-estate and economic plan.

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atty I. Berengut



Joe G ovann n : I think Sylvia’s notion of stasis is an interesting one

that would enable you to move toward an architectural solution.

There seem to be a number of constituencies in the airport. You might

have the twelve-hour guest, but you might also have the convention-

eer who’s going to be here for five days. So you can capitalize on

these constituencies that want to stay in place—perhaps at the

airport ecause t at is, a ter a , a port. It’s a p ace o arriva .

Conc u ng Remar s

Mayne: Last comments? Closing comments?

Lav n: I ave to say I’ve een rea y surprise an impresse .

You began by describing how urban design as a profession was

disintegrating, but the students have actually done a great deal

of the labor associated with traditional urban-design professionals.Quantities, sociologies, logistics, and statistics have been front

and center.

T at’s a itt e it worrisome in some ways. It’s enticing to pro uce

provocative statistics, but hard to translate them into something

that’s compelling. I would encourage this project to step back

rom its tec niques o imp ementation an esta is a stronger

theoretical perspective on this new urban center that has been

produced collectively.

T e iscussions ave een rea y speci ic an ocuse on particu ar

moments of, for example, the intersection between this street and

that street. And while those locations may well be where design

tec niques are most e ective, it is equa y important to conceptua-ize what motivates your collective vision of the new possibilities for

the city—what makes it different from other visions of metropolitan

cu ture t at ave existe e ore.

Keating: I would add that I think the projects break into a couple

of categories. There are those that I think will happen inevitably,

one way or anot er. T e L.A. River some ow, some way, wi e

different from what it is today, because I don’t believe the Corps

of Engineers can continue to build concrete walls. And eventually,

ecause o t e centra ity o owntown, we wi ave more an more

urbanization that focuses on potential residential spaces. So it’s

a matter for the architect to get in the way and try to make it bet-

ter, to take that inevitability and really transform it. I think that’s abig deal. I think that’s absolutely true also of the high-speed rail.

There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to happen.

But it’s i erent or t e O ympic proposa , an it’s i erent or t is

one off the tracks. So I think there’s one other ingredient you could

add, and that is that the architect, often without power but with

vision, needs to latch onto those with power to control the inevitability

of what will happen. That’s the premise that’s also hidden in this,

and it’s really a good one.

But t ere is a s ig t i erence etween t ose t at are going to

happen anyway in some form, for us to get in and channel it towards

a greater success, and those that are somewhat dreamy or vagary.

Ka s : I was struc wit t e notion o ri ging. How o you ri ge

or create metaphors for information that end up being architec-

ture? And conversely, how do you take architectural forms

an un erstan ow to en ow t em in some way wit in a iaogue

about information? I think that’s what all the projects struggled

with, and I think it’s what architects increasingly have to do.

In a o t e projects, t e in ormation a o a su en ma es a eapinto form, and this is always a leap of faith. That leap of faith, I think,

is the architectural act. I think you’ve done a very unusual and good

ur an arc itecture stu io, an I’m impresse .

Weinstein: Political influences, community politics versus institu-

tionalized political policy issues, issues of implementation, are

necessarily connected to the economics that Sylvia mentioned,

and all of those things, when understood, if we can ever understand

them, will affect the way form is made. The way you implement

a project o t is sca e an un erstan p ausi e ways to imp ement

it will then feed back into certain formal decisions and strategies.

Mayne: It has also made me extremely aware of the degree of intu-

ition by which one works. I’ve always hovered between operations,

being somewhere in the middle. I don’t belong in either camp because

I can’t go even close to somebody like Frank O. Gehry in terms

o is intuition. I’m muc c oser to Peter Eisenman or some o y

in terms of an interest in operational strategies.

But finally, when you work, you realize you’re just who you are, and

I realize how intuitive I am and that that intuition starts failing you

on this scale because you no longer can bring a group of people

along collectively nor can you solve necessarily the types of problems

you have to solve at this scale which still seem operational, even

for large architecture.

Lynn: For me, with some of these projects I would have driftedfor a minute into big-scale topologies—like looking at a nineteenth-

century train station, a twentieth-century train station, and an

airport—and asked where is the typology going and what are its

V. Stump V. Stump



strategies. In this project, a kind of regional urban planning, which

is sensible, for me falls down when it loses its statistical information

and pattern. The minute there are no patterns, a plan has stopped.

It suddenly loses a certain kind of force it could have had if it had

a typology.

So or me, I wou n’t actua y say it’s intuition versus strategy

but mostly just where you discover a typological diagram and where

you can modify and reinvent a topology. Because urbanistically

speaking, all these are questions of spatial adjacency, distance,

corridor, access—it’s all there. But then, when you get on a site,

they suddenly just turn into empty boxes.

Ka s : Forget t e orm or a secon , ecause you can a ways

do it in different ways. For me the point is that I don’t think twenty

years ago anyone would have understood how to successfully design

a large infrastructure in the middle of L.A. Yet, twenty years later—whether you agree with the details of the design that’s there or

not—the systems, checks, balances, and will exist to successfully

digest huge chunks the city. That absolutely did not exist twenty

years ago.

I think that dealing with the design of giant infrastructure is now

a type o arc itectura c a enge. T e type o conversation t at

we’re having here about how you bridge these incredibly complex

systems of statistics and information is no longer about singular

engineering concepts or land development schemes but architectural

ideas, metaphors, and concepts.

Mayne: I spent the morning making a first presentation to a cli-

en o a airy comp icate project, an I’m in ing t at in a o ourwork, there has to be a consistent idea towards multivalence, that

no one today can produce work that deals with singular ideas. It has

to ave over apping, para e possi i ities t at expan investment,

expand energy, etc.

The proof of one’s intelligence as an architect, one’s viability, has

to o wit t at. So i I want to construct t is an ma e it rea,

I have to do it within cultural terms, political terms, economic

terms, tectonic terms, grammatical terms…

All it’s doing is using an intelligence that I think we’re prepared

to bear as architects/planners/urban designers/thinkers, and

to bring that intelligence to uproot opportunity, to make use

o atent possi i ities, an to roa en t ose possi i ities wit in

humanistic terms.

Kaliski: I think that there is a type of new information-knowledge

base that exists. When this knowledge is brought to bear early

enough within the context of a project it will likely shift what the

ultimate form agenda is going to be.

I would further argue that sophisticated cities, corporations, publics

and developers understand more and more clearly, earlier and earlier,

t e nee to ormu ate an exp ore t is now e ge ase at t e very

beginning of the design process and want to include the contributions

of architects in this work.

Mayne: O ay. T an you very muc or your time.

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atty V. Stump





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144

Excerpts from the transcript

of the final UCLAArchitectural Jury

22–23 March 2001

23 March 2001Jury Members

Frances Anderton, “Which Way, L.A.?,” KCRW

Dana Cuff, professor, UCLAPhil Ganezer, Metropolitan Transit Authority,

Los Angeles

om Gilmore, real-estate developer

Joe Giovannini, architect and critic

Con Howe, director, Los Angeles City Planning

Department

arta Male, visiting professor, UCLA

Nicolai Ouroussoff, critic

Dan Rosenfeld, real-estate developer

Robert Somol, professor, UCLA

Anthony Vidler, professor, UCLA

Richard Weinstein, professor, UCLA

Moderator

hom Mayne, architect and professor, UCLA

V. Stump . Stump



Red Line School District

PETER KIMMELMAN, JAE KWON, NISHANT LALL & ANDREW SCOTT

T om Mayne: T e system essentia y over ays an existing in ra-structure with multiple layers of education programming and,

in doing so, more than doubles the capacity of the infrastructure.

T e i ea was t at eac sc oo wou e irecty in e to t e su way.

The rule is that there had to be an exit from the subway that led

directly to the school campus. There was no middle ground. And

what they’re showing you, as the second part of the study, are three

specific sites and how you would approach the idiosyncrasies and

the contingencies of these different sites.

N co a Ourousso : But is t e asic i ea t at t is is one sc oo

in four pieces, or is it four different schools? How often does a stu-

dent travel, for example, between schools if they take English

classes at one and social studies at another every day?Andrew Scott: There can essentially be three or four major move-

ments in a day. Students could specifically go to each core-subject

sc oo , ecause t ere’s enoug transition time in etween eac

class for them to go in and access the system. The largest distance

being to an athletic field, say, out in North Hollywood, at a maximum

trave time o twenty-nine minutes.

Ouroussoff: All these schools use the same athletic field in North

Hollywood?

cott: Well, it’s not limited to North Hollywood. We have athletic

facilities at North Hollywood, Universal City, and MacArthur Park,

those being with the largest fields. Each school in itself will still

provide an enclosed athletic program, such as a gymnasium harbor-

ing volleyball and basketball and exercise or weight-lifting pro-

grams.

Joe G ovann n : At what age do the students start coming?

cott: They can start between grades six and eight with more

o t e specia e ective programs. But t e core movement oesn’t

really begin until high school.

Dana Cuff: So you don’t imagine that you’re running special cars

on the Metro system as if they were school busses? The high-school

kids are going to get on the Metro with everybody else?

cott: Right.

Robert Somol: You said that the sports are somewhat broken up over

the remaining sites, but are different subjects taught at each site?

cott: The main difference between the schools would be the work-

room itself, where you get immersed in a subject-specific area.

All schools would generally provide all the subject matter, but we

would require that at least once a day, the students would go

to this workroom immersion, where they’d either access some

programs in the surrounding vicinity or they would get it within

the school itself.

Somol: Like magnet schools.

Richard Weinstein: What is the workroom? Does it belong to a place,

or is it anyw ere on t e net?

Ouroussoff: It’s a freestanding resource center. One of the most

important parts of it is that it attaches to existing institutions.

The workroom is the kind of magnet.

Weinstein: I think what we’re unclear on is what some of us per-

ceive as a con ict etween ta ing c asses in t ree or our geo-

graphically separated places. And then when we ask you that, you

say, “Well, no, everything is available in each of the locations.” And

then you say, “Well, we’re going to require them to take a certainnumber of classes so that they have to ride on the subway.”

So the question is why is it on the subway? What advantage is it

to orce upon a stu ent t e necessity o trave ing in t e su way?

What is the advantage that the subway offers that you wouldn’t

otherwise have? And if the only way you can take advantage of it

is y orcing t e i s to ta e a su ject t ey cou ta e in t eir own

building ten minutes away—either I’m not understanding some-

thing or there’s a problem with the idea.

Jae Kwon: Eac o t e ig sc oo s ave t e asic requirements

for a typical, generalized high school. But for advanced-placement

classes, for example, or a student who wants to specialize in athletics,

one can get on t e Metro an ta e t e c ass at w erever it is onthe Metro Line without spending two hours trying to get to the

North Hollywood site from the downtown area.

Cu : I t in t is i ea is wor ing in many o t e ways you’re saying,

but you could take it a step further programmatically. Imagine a

slightly different kind of education system where there’s no reason

a stu ent wou go to t e socia-stu ies center w en t ey’re

thirteen and stay there until they’re eighteen. Why should they?

That only happens at magnet schools because there’s no fluidity

etween institutions.

But in your Red Line School District, you could specialize one year

in social sciences and another year in sciences and each time be

immerse in a cu tura or a civic institution t at wou give you

exposure to that form of education that you couldn’t have otherwise.

Then the possibilities of moving through this all the time seem

muc more possi e an t e returns seem greater.

Mayne: The big idea, though, that hasn’t been clarified is the idea

of the relationship of the school district programmatically

to the infrastructure of the Red Line. It gives an elastic solution

V. Stump S. Latty





Gilmore: I actually buy in to what Bob’s saying. I prefer that more

radical theory and that concept to the middle road. I think the middle

road is truly the most unacceptable road in all of this, and you are

either going to do something that is inherently urban and inherently

urbane, or you are going to do something that is entirely anti-urban

within an urban context. I can live with those two ends. It’s the middle

part I ate t e most.

What I do love about this—and I hate to keep making this point—

is the fact that you are treating the urbanism of downtown with

a certain respect by saying that there has to be a one and a four

and everything in between, and maybe something beyond four,

to be able to have this discussion rationally without downtown simply

being another pallet to overlay some idea on.

If downtown is simply another pallet and it is neither better nor

worse than any other pallet, then you’ve fundamentally missed theidea of what downtown and urbanism is. This gets you a little bit of

all of it. I think that your effort towards it is a very rational effort

that brings you an extremely, in my opinion, irrational end, but

that’s what I love about it. You get to a point where it’s absurd to

me, but it’s a rational path to that absurdity, and I like it.

Cu : To ma e t at poe mic c e ar, t oug , we s ou ta e t e

underlying ideas of suburbs more seriously, in the way Bob’s talk-

ing about. Moreover, you could avoid this whole question of “How

dark is it—is it like Grand Avenue?” by showing that it’s actually

Universal City Walk under there or something else that would be

another urban possibility.

Ourousso : I t in t at’s w ere t e po emica argument comes in.You have to decide what you want it to be. Maybe you want it to be

Blade Runner. I still think that the idea of accessibility is kind of key

in t is. As soon as you ma e t is in o tapestry an ay it over

downtown and say this is accessible to the people who live in these

buildings, I think that’s maybe a weird way to go and also isn’t par-

ticularly original.

On a certain level, the kind of roofscape that’s always been acces-

sible to people who live in high rises and places like that is the same

ere. I t in it mig t e more interesting i you’re trying to set up

an argumen that says maybe we give it all over to the public, that

the roofs are no longer part of the real estate. They’re public space.

We’re giving it to the public because that’s the most beautifulsuburban urban space downtown, and not only that, we’re going to

start to link it together.

V er: I t in t e question is ow you esign t e in . It’s actua y

very, very important. It seems to me it would have equal, if not more,

interesting validity if you didn’t upset the old housing in the modern

metropolis, which is that high, and if you did not accept the datum,

that that was just a middle ground, and then there were other

opportunities which allowed this to be a visual landscape for those

above ground, so that you would pop up above this thing.

Cuff: Now, the real estate around this project would rise so high in

vaue t at you wou en up wit towers a aroun t e resi en-

tial units and their open spaces, as happens around Central Park.

That’s an interesting set of narratives to go through. For instance,

would you reproduce this scheme elsewhere? If so, then Nicolai’s

question about access becomes critical. It could easily become

a totally privatized park because it would be so attractive in the

downtown area that they would feel the need to restrict access.

Gilmore: You’re at the end of this sort of odd second level of

a Corbusian urbanism where the roof level becomes the flat space

between large towers now growing on the four corners of it.Then it starts to get really odd, because now you’ve got the worst

of urbanism and the worst of suburbanism all wrapped up into one.

So this could actually be a formula for disaster if you really work it.

Mayne: That’s an excellent way to move on.

Un verC ty

MARTIN SUMMERS

Ourousso : Since t e site is critica to t is, ecause it’s a ense

program, why did you pick that site and what are you trying o stitch

together in terms of what’s around it, as opposed to having put

t e UniverCity in East L.A.?

Summers: What I’m trying to do is to bring the communities hat

are around downtown into downtown. What is interesting about

a t ese communities t at exist aroun ere is t at t oug t is

is an extremely diverse area, it’s in fact one of the least diverse

areas in the city because communities are isolated.

Vidler: What gave you the sense that a university, as a stitch, will

cause East L.A. to want to walk to West L.A. through a university?

It’s usually conceived of as a rather exclusive domain.

Summers: The idea is to layer it so that UniverCity becomes a place

for research around these ideas of community. But then on top

of that, to have another system that’s generated out of that, onethat is more related to continuing education that would provide

opportunities for people to come back and get their high-school

education and, if they decide to continue on, to get an education

that would allow them to either advance in their existing jobs

or switch careers….



ovann n : T ere’s a vector t at’s appening ere in terms o your

situating it looking east. Everything on the Gold Coast is toward

the Harbor Freeway and toward the west. There’s a huge magnetism

towar t e Westsi e, an t is is a gesture to t e Eastsi e t at I t inis very welcomed.

I do think that what all of L.A. has in common is downtown,

ecause t ere’s t e o sur ace-roa networ t at actua y con-

verges there. There’s the bus network as well. Downtown has much

more in common to many communities than most people on the

Westsi e t in . T is orientation, I t in , is appropriate ecause you

don’t want to be on the other side of the river because it becomes

ghetto-ized. It starts bringing in the Eastside.

on Howe: Another interesting thing is that this is actually

a community that is kind of isolated because of the highway here.

This is Mariachi Plaza, right?

ummers: Yeah. There’s a beautiful little area right through here

that’s alive.

Howe: At east it’s trying to in it.

uroussoff: Yeah. It’s really a shame, because it’s got kind of a

megastructure scale to it, but basically, this project relates so

completely to its immediate context, and it really would be great

to be able to see where [The Geffen Contemporary] is. If there’s

a public-housing project going up there already, that seems pretty

ey.

What you’ve done in terms of the stitching is you’ve packed it with

a program that’s meant to make that happen. So you’ve got every

kind of social condenser you could possible imagine. You’ve got

a park, you’ve got community projects, you’ve got public housing—

everything that’s supposed to bring these people together.

ovann n : It seems that the locus of invention for downtown

is on the east side of downtown, and this project brings to mind

the cornfields that are also a comparable area. The river has so

divided the city that the idea for Westsiders to go to East L.A.

is so unthinkable. I like these gestures to the Eastside because

it takes the ghetto out of the Eastside in a very positive gesture

by relating MOCA and Little Tokyo and the art district to East L.A.

There’s a blur starting, which I think is really laudable.

Vidler: It’s the only one that escapes the barrier of the freeways.

It seems to me that one of the problems that Thom mentioned

in the very beginning is that we’re stuck with downtown. It would

e nice i t e stu io just crept a itt e it outsi e t ose reeways

in order to “define” downtown a little bit differently from the maps

that define it now.

Because ony t e ig, ra ica gesture t at cuts t roug un er,

through and above, through and out of that little loop is going to

give you a downtown L.A. That’s what’s so exciting about the river,

w ic in your sc eme potentia y oes not ecome a cut. But asJoseph talks about it, it goes the other way too….

Weinstein: So one could imagine that under a different governor,

i e Pat Brown, w o initia y ui t up t is university, it’s conceiva e

that somebody could convince him that the thing to do is to put

one of the new campuses right where you put it. So that meets

a pausi i ity test.

Also, if you wanted to look at two things that would make

the downtown work financially and economically, I would say it

would be the river and this scheme. Because as I’ve said a thou-

sand times in this room, the average American has two careers and

six jobs. So it means that we’re becoming a knowledge-based soci-

ety w ere t e pro em o t e po arity o income eve s can ony eaddressed with “up-skilling” those who come in uneducated so that

they can have a chance at a decent job.

But on the upper end, it also means that people keep going back

to school—doctors, architects, lawyers. In the case of some of

those professions, they’re required to take an exam ten years after

they took their last exam. So I think if I were one of the smart

people downtown, I would support these two projects because they

both involve the investment of public money, not private money,

an w at t at oes is ma e a t e private an va ua e.

You plunk a university down next to me, it’s a $4 billion proposition,

and the river is a $10 billion proposition, and in the real-estate

business, people are always hoping that someone’s going to invest

in the plot next to theirs.

Ourosso : I wou say t at’s t e strongest aspect o t e project—

the care you took in siting it. When you actually look at the park’s

relationship to Boyle Heights and then the commercial buildings,

and then all of a sudden there’s a jump—and you even have a line

there where it changes from black to white—and then you’ve got

the university buildings and the housing on that side, you can see it

actually not accomplishing what it’s meant to accomplish, which is

bridging that gap—that actually, the parks and the commercial part

become part of this world, and the UniverCity stays part of that

world, and the connection between the two, because of the way

you istri ute t e program, is actua y very tenuous.

Weinstein: How about the fact that there are no buildings in Boyle

Heights? Wouldn’t I, as someone living in Boyle Heights, find that

problematic? You would be forced by political reality to put some

of the good stuff on the other side of the river, but more important-

ly, it would seem to me that the idealism behind the project would

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require you to think about what you could do for Boyle Heights

as part of this.

G ovann n : T is is a paterna istic siting, actua y.

Weinstein: So that’s a problem.

ummers: I oug t wit t at issue or a ong time ecause I was

trying to scale the project back at a certain point while still trying

to extend it.

Ourousso : T en t e t ir issue is t e issue o sca e, w ic you

started to bring up, in terms of big buildings in Boyle Heights.

But I think that is powerful, in the sense that the way downtown

is ai out now you ave t e muc ooser, more sma -sca e a ric

as you go further and further east. Then you’ve got Grand Avenue

with the monumental buildings at the top of the hill. To suddenly

say, “I’m going to build on that kind of scale”—and, obviously, withthat kind of investment and a different kind of program in another

part of the city—is pretty straightforward and very idealistic.

V er: You on’t ave to worry a out t at mountainous i ea istic

thing, because if you see the way the financing of universities

works now, it doesn’t work like it used to in terms of huge injec-

tions o pu ic un s. It ’s po icy to s i t t e num er o stu ents in a

number of institutions to a particular site.

But the actual building of the university doesn’t happen unless

it’s t e Rona Reagan Hospita or it’s t e E i Broa Art Center.

This university gets, what, twenty-one percent of its funding from

the state? It’s hugely private. Both Berkeley and UCLA could walk

away an e private tomorrow an not rea y su er economica y.

So in terms of what you’re talking about, this kind of thing is no more

idealistic than any development plan put forward in order to inspire.

It’s t e popu ation t at t e eve opers are oo ing at—t e s i t

and injection of a lot of different and concentrated users, consumers

and classes. That’s what’s happening.

Concluding Remarks

We nste n: If you were looking for “grand projets,” you’ve got two

here, I think, and possibly three by the freeway.

omol: “Grand projet” in the Burnham model, as you identified,right? The late nineteenth-century City Beautiful model of parks,

civic centers? I think that there may be projets here, but there are

no projects. And what I’m looking for today is a project. In other

words, let’s put aside the Mr. Fix-it problem of here’s a problem,

and it needs to be solved.

T in ing more roa y an am itiousy seems to me to e w at

speculative ideas, competitions, exhibitions, and vision plans should

bring up. How are these proposals different or similar to other sorts

of interventions around the city? What’s specific about L.A., what

can you say very polemically? What’s at stake for the discipline?

Vidler: It’s what would urbanism be if it were today? And if it’s not

Townscape, i it’s not Burn am, i it’s not Ra iant City, i it’s not

projects, and if it’s not free-for-all development, where is urbanism?

Not urban planning so much, but urbanism, thinking about the city

and how do you think about it?

Mayne: From the beginning—and I don’t think I mentioned this

in the introduction—I was interested in trying to find a seam

etween a spatia , arc itectonic, more intuitive an qua itative

approach to the architect and a more analytical, quantitative

approach to the planner. And I was looking for this middle ground.

On one an , I’m wor ing wit spatia i eas. For instance, in t ehousing proposal, I would have taken that much further into an

architectural solution because I was not interested in it just as

an i ea ut its imp ication as a arge-sca e, spatia , organizationa

mechanism of developing a new typology for the city. I was interest-

ed in weighing the analytical, the social, the political criterion with

its arc itectura potentia ity.

Ouroussoff: But part of it, I think, is actually at the other end too,

which is the analytical side, where the analysis is so broad instead

o aving a c ear point o view an t en wor rom t ere. For examp e,

to listen to ten, fifteen minutes of analysis on the immigrant popu-

lation in the city and how it’s growing and all of that, you completely

in a way miss t e point, w ic is t at, i you pai attention to t ecensus that just came out, the idea that L.A. and New York

are the centers where immigrant populations are going is totally

wrong. T at’s a very ate i ea.

Mayne: But the analysis was required to ground and locate the

problem, because no one was allowed to proceed. There was

a itmus test o eing a e to articu ate t e vaue wit in your wor

in political, economic, urban terms before you could proceed,

and they had to fight for something. If they had nothing to fight for,

t ey cou n’t e pursue . An it require in ormation, an it require

an understanding of that data, and it required it on somewhat

multiple levels in the case of, say, the school.

Somo : I t in you nee t e researc an t at empirica s i e.

I would certainly endorse the methodology. I just think that then

if the statistics are leading to “A,” your proposition almost demands

you to say t e conc usion is “B.”

Weinstein: Why is that?

Somo : Because I t in t e jo o esign is not to simp y repro uce

I. Berengut





Now, the question here, when you now focus back on downtown—

and it’s very interesting that this group was criticized because it

was bringing suburbia back into downtown, so to speak, or turning

downtown into suburbia. But according to the Banham analysis,

that’s the only thing left to do.

So at east t at’s t e in o t ing, as a orma ana ysis, t at can

reconceptualize the data in order to make the data sharper in order

to say, in fact, whether that is the only thing to do. Is there some-

thing that is a middle ground between suburbia and not suburbia?

What do you do with these old buildings that are, in fact, becoming

backdrops for Blade Runner, and so on and so forth? What do you

do with the city at night? And these kinds of questions. Is that a

form of suburbia? This is the data, right, that is both formal and sta-

tistical. And I think that’s very important.

Weinstein: And an instance of that would be the fact that Banhamregarded the freeway isolating a community into a ghetto as a plus

because it permitted ethnic subcultures to concentrate and be what

they are. He actually liked that fact.

Vidler: But he also said it’s also a way for ethnic cultures to get out

of the ghetto and go to work because, in fact, it’s a way out.

We nste n: But as a critical position, he did not want to homog-

enize and have French-Chinese food and Korean-Italian cuisine. He

was clearly against that, and he said the freeways are protecting…

I’m just saying that that was one of Banham’s observations about

the freeway. Instead of saying the freeway is terrible, he looked

at the freeway and said it’s preserving cultural identity, which is

a value that I have.

omol: So there, Jane Jacobs.

We nste n: No. T at’s a B response to an A inquiry, rig t?

Ouroussoff: Jane Jacobs actually says the same thing—you’re

wrong on that—in Boston, the freeway basically is what preserved

the north end.

omol: She didn’t seem to like it in New York.

Ouroussoff: No. But the argument you made is closely tied to her

other point.

omol: It’s important for the journalist to call the academic wrongnow and then, and vice versa.

Mayne: I thank you all for your time.

I. Berengut

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Documents

2 Foreword Richard Koshalek & Dana Hutt 4 Introduction Thom