cityLAb, times 10

cityLAb, times 10 celebrates the founding of cityLAB-UCLA ten years ago as it looks ahead to the next ten years. It advances architecture as a radical urban ingredient with impacts that can be orders of magnitude greater than any individual building, by "powers of ten."

For the past decade, cityLAB has been at the center of innovative thought about the architecture of the city, particularly in Los Angeles. By bringing together research and design, and through collaborations between the university, the architectural profession, citizens, and municipalities, cityLAB models a new form of practice where prototypical projects leverage design to open new possibilities for the urban fabric of Southern California and beyond.

Rather than a retrospective, this exhibition is projective; rather than a presentation of completed works, you see a laboratory of evolving experimentation. The three cityLAB themes of desk, neighbor, and place demonstrate how multi-year, multi- faceted, unconventional architectural studies weave together to advance new design approaches. They allude to the intersections between the body, politics, and the environment, — guiding commitments for cityLAB’s practices. To pursue an even more expansive view of L.A.’s coming decade, six tactical proposals by young architects are featured.

While there are abundant issues confronting Los Angeles, architecture must pinpoint its targets. cityLAb, times 10 asks: What design ideas will spark public conversation about the future of Los Angeles? Is there an architectural portal to an unexpected future for the city?

cityLAB, UCLA February-April, 2017 A+D museum NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR architecture to reimagine the city. The exhibition This show marks the tenth anniversary of explains this way of working through three themes: cityLAB - UCLA, a design and research think tank neighbor, desk, and place. The longest and deepest formed to create architectural experiments for series of projects concerns backyard homes under the coming generation of cities. In 2006 our only the theme of neighbor. A full range of design research thought was about how to get started; we had no illustrates just how an architectural type can create thoughts about whether we would still be alive and fundamentally new urban formats. Our design well a decade later. We began with gift from Sarah interests range across all scales, as the theme of desk Jane Lind, a retired urbanist and developer, who intimates and all types of settings, from the home believed that much-needed creative thinking might to the workplace. The final theme, place, examines blossom if we invented a lab in the Architecture and one particular district in Los Angeles, Westwood Urban Design Department at UCLA. It was shocking Village. Based on voluminous research and political that a city as significant as Los Angeles, with all its interchange, a set of projects flesh out how the Village prestigious academies, did not have a design center could lead L.A. by elevating cultural institutions and to engage the future. Among the myriad issues removing automobiles. Each of these three themes are worthy of investigation, we narrowed cityLAB’s multi-year, multi-project undertakings that benefitted initiatives to these five: the postsuburban city, from multiple partners within public and private new infrastructures, spatial justice, urban sensing, organizations. and rethinking "green." From the outset, the goal has been to move iteratively between research cityLAB is a generative platform from which and design demonstrations that bring new light to to speculate about possible futures. For the coming these topics. decade, cityLAB will focus its efforts on Los Angeles and Southern California. Our city stands at a remarkable Over the next few years, I collaborated with turning point as it grows more cosmopolitan, Roger Sherman to create cityLAB as a new model transit-rich, diverse, and environmentally conscious. of architectural practice that simultaneously This transformation, however, inevitably breeds added a new critical dimension to architectural fragmentation and political turmoil. As such, there is education. Rather than a community design center no better laboratory than Los Angeles for inventive, or a service learning venue, cityLAB initiates its own culturally alert, design thinking. Toward this end, projects, mentors students, seeks its own clients in 2016 a jury selected proposals from six teams and audiences, and gathers together funds and of young L.A. architects, less than ten years out of expertise to generate design demonstrations. The school. The brief for these teams explained cityLAB’s latter, which we have called "radical increments," guiding principles, and asked them to imagine radical may be solutions to one site and set of issues but increments for L.A.’s next ten years. Their contributions are more importantly design ideas that can multiply to the exhibition stretch all of us to rethink L.A.’s near- and proliferate elsewhere. cityLAB is committed to term future. practicing design and research in this new way, so that one of its outcomes is the production of new We invite you to experience the exhibition as a work for students, architects, and firms. The show’s working laboratory of ideas rather than solutions. Put title, cityLAb, times 10, alludes to this multiplier together your own catalog from materials throughout effect, as well as the last ten years of work. the show. Join us for debate at the evening Lab Talks. cityLAb, times 10 — like both cityLAB and L.A. — is at Over those years, cityLAB has undertaken heart an ongoing, collective experiment. dozens of projects in and beyond L.A. But rather than create a retrospective, we present the Dana Cuff lab’s "operating system," that is, how we deploy Director, cityLAB

cityLAB, UCLA A+D museum SPONSORS

Jim Suhr and Associates &

Sarah Jane Lind, & David Dean Ebert Britt and Don Chadwick Founding Sponsor

EXHIBITION TEAM

Exhibition Curator: Dana Cuff, Director of cityLAB - UCLA Associate Curator: Yang Yang Exhibition Coordinator: Aaron Cayer Exhibition Design: Spinagu with Man-Yan Lam Graphic Design: Will Davis Event Manager: Herran Bekele Development Coordinator: Jennifer Kondo Exhibition Assistant: Josh Nelson Zero Gravity Chair: AN.ONYMOUS

YOUNG ARCHITECTS

Reimaging FIELD DAY Gabriel Fries-Briggs, Brendan Shea, Marc Maxey, Ellen Donnelly Nicholas Pajerski, Alison Rust WELCOMEPROJECTS Yes, In My Backyard Laurel Consuelo Broughton (And Everywhere Else Too) with Kevin Reinhardt, Brad Silling, Legg Yeung, James Janke, Ryan Hong Kodchamon Archimongkol, Cindy Yiin

First Office and Theo Triantafyllidis Office Kovacs Anna Neimark, Andrew Atwood Andrew Kovacs, Yessenia Juarez, Erin Wright, Israel Ceja, Peter Boldt, Jena Meeks, Naomi Steinhagen

JURORS Edgar Arceneaux, Artist, Studio Edgar Arcenaux Barbara Bestor, Architect, Bestor Architecture Seleta Reynolds, General Manager, LADOT Roger Sherman, Senior Project Director, Gensler Peter Zellner, Architect, ZELLNERandCompany

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Neil Denari, Heather Roberge, Roger Sherman, David Rousseve, Kevin Daly, Jeannette Mundy, Kimberley Morrison, Linda Holmes, Philip Soderlind, Jacqueline Montes, Alberto Alquicira, Geovani Garcia, Dana Burkhalter, Anne Marie Burke, Dora Epstein Jones, Nicole Bertrand, Stephan Bica, Chase Galis, Jean Michel Hirsch, Sam Gherrity, Borja Lopez, Norris Palmer, Anahita Rajesh, Kira Waller

cityLAB, UCLA http://citylab.aud.ucla.edu/ A+D museum dérive

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NEIGHBOR DESK PLACE YOUNG ARCHITECTS BACKYARD HOMES THE FUTURE OF WESTWOOD MULTIPLYING ARCHITECTURE IN WORK VILLAGE VISION THE CITY

1. RX FOR THE R1 1. THE FUTURE OF 1. CAR-LITE 1. DO NOT DISTURB OCCUPANTS 2. BACKYARD OFFICE WORK, DTLA 2. LIVING CULTURE FIELD DAY BIHOME 2. DESIGN FOR DEEP 3. WESTWOOD 2. THE FANTASY COMPACT 3. EXPLODING THINK BLOWS UP! WELCOMEPROJECTS THE HOME AS A 3. ZERO GRAVITY 3. PROPOSAL FOR DOWNTOWN BUILDING TYPE CHAIR ALLEYS Office Kovacs 4. CITY RENDER First Office and Theo Triantafyllidis 5. YIMBY AND EVERYWHERE ELSE TOO Yes, In My Backyard (And Everywhere Else Too) 6. HOW TO LEVEL A FOUNDATION Reimaging CATALOGUE COLOR INDEX

NEIGHBOR DESK PLACE YOUNG ARCHITECTS cityLAB OPERATING SYSTEM

cityLAB, UCLA A+D museum BACKYARD HOMES

10k site and extra-long single-family lots Credits: Per-Johan Dahl

Backyard Homes proposes an innovative, flexible, environmentally sensitive, and affordable set of architectural models for infilling the single-family residential zone in Los Angeles in order to increase the supply of housing. The tactics employed reflect both the city’s suburban residential tradition and the opportunities provided within individual neighborhoods, on specific sites, and for particular households. The approach straddles architectural and planning practices and the scales at which each discipline operates. By so doing, we can envision how a largely suburban city can evolve into a more sustainable, post-suburban metropolis. Whether called granny flats, accessory dwelling units, or mother-in- law apartments, Backyard Homes can be built incrementally on lots where they make sense. Small residential projects provide opportunities for experimentation by young, local architects. Marginally more dwelling units per acre provides a means for preserving the benefits associated with suburban living while reducing carbon footprints and providing municipal services more efficiently. With nearly half a million single-family lots in the City of Los Angeles, Backyard Homes on even a small scale would address today’s critical housing shortage. RX FOR THE R1

Single Family Residential Zoning

Backyard Homes demonstrate that zoning can be responsive to changing local needs. The re-coding of contemporary urbanism demands a new kind of flexibility, capable of supporting architectural experimentation as well as reconstituting outmoded premises of the R1, such as the preservation of functional segregation, the maintenance of low density urbanism, and the deliberate perpetuation of social homogeneity. Building upon the years of Backyard Homes research shown here, cityLAB in collaboration with local Assemblyman Richard Bloom, wrote a new state bill to promote accessory dwelling units throughout California. Assembly Bill 2299 was recently signed into law by Governor Brown, and this major achievement in housing provision took effect on January 1, 2017. BACKYARD BIHOME

BACKYARD BIHOME, UCLA Image credits: Nico Marques/Photekt

Developed as an extension of cityLAB’s Backyard Homes study, the BIHOME considers the residential lot as a biome in which the structure contributes to rather than detracts from the environment. It unconventionally deploys a standard steel tube frame with fabric envelope, making it easy, fast, and inexpensive to build. The BIHOME is flexibly designed to meet the needs of almost any household (housing for an elderly parent, a returning college graduate, a rental unit, etc.) while maintaining the benefits of easy maintenance and affordability. The environmental impact of the structure over its entire life cycle is between ten and a hundred times less than a conventional auxiliary dwelling. This prototype was constructed in Summer 2015 at UCLA’s Broad Art Center. EXPLODING THE HOME AS A BUILDING TYPE

Credits: Kevin Daly Architects

Building a Backyard Home should resemble a retail transaction rather than a standard construction process. The Backyard Home prototype must be customizable, given the infinite range of backyard site conditions and the diverse functional needs of households. The label "Backyard Homes" is used specifically to invoke presumptions about the home as a building type; privacy, greenery, family, and ownership are all part of the type. To intensify the residential zone of single- family houses, these qualities can be preserved through design if the relationship between house and garden is carefully maintained. THE FUTURE OF WORK

Downtown Los Angeles 1870 to 1945: A machine for office work MACHINE AGE Integrating the city, building, and desk through efficiency, economies, and scientific management

1890 Downtown LA 1781 1880s 1896 1903 Pueblo called California Architect and Building News makes the point, “Every By the 1890s, the economic Los Angeles First height limit “La Reyna enterprising man seeks to get as near to the center as possible and advantages firms realize by population is ordinance enacted 1909 de Los Angeles” will put up with great limitations and inconvenience rather than locating near one another 97,000 Free Speech Ban is founded leave the heart of trade and commerce.” concentrate Southern California The city CITY 1880 commerce in an increasingly 1894 Pullman Strike fathers place Los Angeles 1885 1887 bustling Downtown Los Angeles a ban on free population is Santa Fe railroad Electric trolleys speech from 1870 1877 Birds eye view of Los Angeles Executives at Machine Age firms prize 11,000 enters Southern first travel in Los 1891 opportunities for face-to-face communication, public Spring and Temple Railroads arrive in Los Angeles upon the The Los Angeles Times notes, California, setting off Angeles 1889 information sharing, and client and consumer Continental Building streets and Streets, Downtown completion of the Southern Pacific in 1876, Orange County "The geographical center of Los 1903 a rate war with access that only a central place, augmented with The 13-story Continental private Los Angeles contributing to the social vibrancy and breaks off due to Angeles is the old Plaza, but property Southern Pacific Built in the new communications technologies affords Building, Los Angeles’ first economic competitiveness of downtown by population growth that has long since ceased to be except for Romanesque skyscraper, is completed – making it a place to transport large the center of population.” the Plaza 1884-1888 Revival style a reticulated frame amounts of customers, workers, and goods Approximately 100 1886 typically associated structure for more open First oil well dug new towns are An acre of land 1876 with commercial interior space in Pico Canyon planned goes for $100 The Wainwright Building is a office spaces of the 178mm 10-story red brick office period, the Bradbury building in downtown St. Building is built in Larkin Building is completed 1887 Louis, Missouri. Designed by a period of in Buffalo -- considered the

BLDG An acre of land Dankmar Adler and Louis optimistic growth goes for $1,500 first purpose-designed office Sullivan, the Wainwright is a for downtown office environment for a specific 1879 Telephone highly influential model for space. Typical of its organization. The innovation The telephone, once the office buildings, and was period, the Bradbury Fully integrated of the central atrium most common (and among the first skyscrapers Building features within an establishes a neutral, essential) business in the world. The Wainwright office spaces that architectural hermetic space with The punch clock appliance, supports a 1891 building features identical are discretely workspace and minimal distractions and Wainright Building fragments office wide-ranging network "honeycomb" plans to express segmented into surrounded by visual links to the exterior, workers' lives into of economic relations in architecture the autonomous units the latest thereby increasing efficiency public and private parts. An entirely new building type underlying economic for individual or technology, the and greater worker The office becomes a Holcomb specifically devoted to knowledge-based relationships whereby small-scale work worker becomes 1904 identification with the firm; 1906 Acoustic downtown worker's 1879 work accommodates the explosive growth owners and investors seek entities a component of a Larkin Building workplace as family Stenotype: Created a Telephone 1893 Globe Co. Office 1860s second home in managerial and business service the greatest possible revenue system that 1901 whole new segment of Bradbury Building 1896 Furniture Typewriter: Separated from both the domestic 1880s activities with the least possible integrates the Numerical Keyboard: administrative Made writing 1870 Calculating Machine sphere and industrial zones, the Frederick W. Taylor promulgates outlays space, the tools Early form of the workers who could more efficient & defined The calculating machine is marketed as office carves out new places in the methods to quantify human and and the user calculator and transcribe quickly in the modern keyboard a marvel of mechanical construction city, where business planning and mechanical processes to streamline equally computer, allowed for short hand, and it is and a time-saver for the daily routines of administration, as opposed to and enhance overall productivity quick tabulations still used

DESK financial institutions business itself, took place 1780 1860 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910

Downtown Los Angeles 1870 to 1945: A machine for office work Integrating the city, building, and desk through efficiency, economies, and scientific management Black Tuesday MACHINE AGE World War I Great Depression

1910 1913 Projecting forward to 1930 Pershing Square is 1911 1920s 1924 1950, this futuristic 250,000 vehicles renovated in the Updated height This business The Hall of Justice, the Japanese Union 1920s Plans for the vision of the city is 1920s a day pour into 1930s Beaux Arts style limit ordinance of property map Church, Great Western Savings, the Sun California is the Hollywood Freeway based upon a vertical Banking is centered in downtown. downtown Los Numerous very old and favored by City 150 feet is passed shows the Drug building, the Westinghouse largest petroleum officially begin layering of functions in The Spring Street Financial District Angeles historic buildings in Beautiful reformers commercial Electric and Manufacturing buildings, industry in America, the name of increased home to Bank of America, the Crocker downtown are demolished CITY density of and the Roosevelt Office Building are headquartered in speed and efficiency, National Bank, the International to make way for 1911 downtown and erected in downtwon Los Angeles downtown Los even as Los Angeles Savings and Exchange Bank and the Downtown Los Angeles: street-level parking lots The “Great Merger” occurs: the potential Angeles 1924 and many other US Los Angeles Stock Exchange 1930 Broadway at Seventh Street Frank Lloyd Wright's Southern Pacific Railroad opportunities for Frederick Law Olmsted’s, industrial cities The largest electric railway in the world at Johnson Wax Building purchases most of the future Jr., and Harland continue on a path of its greatest extent, around 1925: the Pacific 1920 1920s 1929 was designed to clearly Pacific Electric Railway development Broadway & 5th The Spring Street area Bartholomew's 1924 Major decentralization that Downtown Los Electric Railway or Red Car system connected 1925 impart and reinforce stock above Olive St. in downtown downtown LA becomes Street Traffic Plan for Los begins as early as the Angeles has the downtown employment centers to worker “May Live to See” corporate values, creating Street Los Angeles the banking center Angeles is published late 1920s 130 buildings dormitory suburbs in Los Angeles and Orange 1936 The Urban Land an architecture of work ten stories or Counties, and beyond to San Bernardino Institute is founded - based upon the creation of taller (as many County and Riverside 1925 1926 publishes the Office a particular identity of 1912 Los Angeles' 41% of the as Detroit, Portable Typewriter: Becomes Development 1939 work with its lack of any Pacific Electric population Philadelphia or Johnson Wax Building more widely available and Handbook, which is reference to the exterior Subway opens enters the CBT Boston) increasingly used in business 1922-1923 disseminated widely beyond the space of work. administration Biltmore Hotel, Ritz 1920s 1931 to create a broad The plan reinforces the Hotel and Astor Empire State 1913 The Broadway standardizing internalized identification Belinograph: Hotel are built in Building is completed influence of the worker with the

BLDG area is the First facsimile downtown LA central hub for corporation machine capable 1911 entertainment of using phone Fordist regimes around time, space, 1921 and shopping and the selves of workers begin lines to send Filofax Personal Organizer: Gives 1925 influencing office space, particularly basic data visual and tangible importance to Single Use Carbon Paper: Predating as firms and workforces grow larger to an organized professional life 1920s the Xerox machine, people can create a 1930 Selectomatic handle administrative functions through the organizer’s calendar copy of a document. Carbon Paper was Bleakly Brothers, Camden Courier Post Elevators coupled with typewriters Ad from the The Ediphone The standardization and 1911 Sandusky Register efficiency of new storage Edison Business Dictating Machine The worker is The office takes on Taylorist 1912 Phonograph equipment is highlighted. Typewriter Viewed primarily as promises to not only 1920s valued for his aspects of the factory floor, 1940 The question of the storage a business As had already occurred in make the process of Foot Lever Addresser Elliot Addressing Machine ability to 1932 systematizing operations by 1937 The image of the secretary appliance, telephone industry, office work is subject to dictating more The Foot Lever Addresser is described systematically of documentation remains The Principles of Indexing and coupling new appliances with new Xerography: is gradually emerging to use by women for de-skilling. Stenography, once efficient, but also to 1924 as a machine that is not only efficient replicate the one of the key links Filing is published as a guide to business systems Copying process is take a more visible place domestic use is at considered an essential skill ensure greater leisure Spiral Notebook: but also easy to use, reinforcing the efficiency of an between an increasingly office managers and workers to gain invented without beside the technological first discouraged and among professional secretaries, is time as a result, Production starts increasing integration of user and industrial era mobile work being tied to a maximum efficiency from major the use of liquid apparatuses of work, which King Vidor film then celebrated by largely replaced by "business 1921 reinforcing time as the on the most used machine within the greater aspiration 1928 machine physical base advancements in office furniture, chemicals previously had often been DESK still “The Crowd” service providers phonographs” - dictation machines Ediphone Brochure basic unit of work office notebook for efficiency like the vertical filing cabinet depicted devoid of users 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940

Downtown Los Angeles 1945-1979: A circuit for office work. Increasing the worker’s flexibility among the building and city through consolidation, decentralization, and mobility. US involvement in ELECTRONIC AGE World War II Vietnam War

1952 1940 Pershing Square is 1953 1950s The Federal Housing The first segment of 1940s City Hall remains demolished and 15% of the Numerous old and 1955 1957 Acts of 1949 and the Hollywood Numerous very old 1948 1949 downtown’s tallest excavated in 1952 to population enters historic buildings in The CRA 1911 height 1954 kick-start an Freeway opens as a and historic buildings 1946 Los Angeles is the only The GSA is building for decades. build a three-story the CBD downtown LA are undertakes the limit ordinance "urban renewal" one and a half mile in downtown LA are Zoning policies city among the 18 largest established by While strict building underground demolished to make Bunker Hill is repealed program that would

CITY In order to increase a firm’s stretch through the demolished to make that set high US cities where President Truman to height limits are lifted parking garage way for street-level Redevelopment reshape American flexible use of capital, physical Cahuenga Pass way for street-level requirements for downtown stores are make administrative in 1957, significant parking lots Project cities, including office assets are converted into above Hollywood parking lots off-street parking responsible for less than tasks for the federal large-scale office tower Early downtown downtown Los office expenses through Redevelopment in downtown LA 10 percent of the government more construction and the is driven by a 1960 Angeles, where changes to the federal tax code of Bunker Hill begin to be metropolitan retail trade efficient City Hall Building creation of a downtown desire to provide working class enacted 1951 Downtown LA skyline does not occur the CBD with housing is removed until the late 1980s suburban to make way for functional new office separations and 1950s construction levels of 1950s The widespread unfettered by earlier 1952 View from automobile The Million Dollar introduction of building height City Hall access Theater in downtown Thermopane insulated limitations 1940s The Electronic Age brings 1950s LA is converted into glass commences Downtown Los Angeles about the continual Major engineering shifts: a Spanish-language at Broadway & Olympic compression of worker’s The core and the film house 1947 appliances for increasing periphery of the building General Petroleum flexibility and portability can now be held in BLDG Company Building is tension reducing the completed in number of interior columns thereby further downtown LA Scientific opening up the office management building floor plate This continues to seek 1958 supersecretary 1950s the integration of Hughes Products All Steel Equipment Inc ad consolidated Techniplan - To Get Things Done ad human operators 1957 Face to Face ad The relationship many of the 1948 1949 Through ergonomics, with their Completely de-spatialized, between flexibility functions of a Magnetic Tape Audio Rotary Phone eases use the desk is re-formed business the worker and his and worker secretary into Recorder: Replaces of traditional dial 1950s to wrap around the appliance, technology appear in an efficiency is a single the phonograph as methods with the rotary Eberhard & Wolfgang Schnelle worker, collapsing focusing at the abstracted, spatial void. assumed not to compact, choice technology phone’s rapid-spinning develop the Burolandschaft or the immediate needs scale of gesture Here attention has been occur at an urban mobile piece of for audio recording dial-face “office landscape” in Germany in of his work from the rather than the focused entirely on the or even building 1940 machinery response to the open-plan offices of scale of the building Letter inhabitation of direct interaction between scale, but at the LIFE Magazine. 1956 Matic ad A female telephone 1945 1940s America down to the scale of office space the worker and his tools at scale of the room operator in a Bell Supersecretary the desk the scale of the desk

DESK Systems advertisement 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960

Downtown Los Angeles 1945-1979: A circuit for office work. ELECTRONIC AGE Increasing the worker’s flexibility among the building and city through consolidation, decentralization, and mobility. US involvement in Vietnam War

Giuliano's Bunker Hill House 1973 Downtown LA 1960s 1960s 1970 1980 Polycentric 1963 The live/work loft first takes Numerous very old and The early luxury housing of Bunker The longest redevelopment project in LA map Last LA streetcar hold with artists in the Soho historic buildings in Hill had been subdivided into smaller Los Angeles history, the renewal of The decentralized urban goes out of district of New York City downtown LA are flats for low-wage workers. Their Bunker Hill sees a new skyscraper or fabric allows for increasing service demolished to make 1969 removal through urban redevelopment two completed every year. In 1999, 1970s accessibility and CITY The Burolandschaft way for street-level Reyner Banham notes, largely programs evacuates downtown of commercial office vacancy rates Live/Work lofts are automobility from home to office landscape is parking lots based upon his observations of residents, pulling the rug from under downtown reach 26%, one of the transplanted and various work clusters imagined as Commercial real estate Los Angeles, the widespread downtown retail in the process highest in the nation for that time re-interpreted by artists non-hierarchical practice is restructured to phenomena of system integration in Los Angeles’ Venice space in which accord with tax code changes M. Hulot, the in his book Architecture of the Beach area collaborations could and urban renewal incentives, protagonist in Jacques Well-Tempered Environment easily be formed and resulting in the speculative Tati's 1967 film As urban agglomerations reformed as office as the primary mode for Playtime, is produce dispersed Herman Hertzberger 1969 economies, desires for necessary. Signaling delivering office space continually frustrated 611 Place is completed – first Los expressed his interest in The 62 story Aon Center is 1962 speed and mobility trump 1970s The GSA is asked to write Burolandschaft a shift away from downtown by the endless Angeles bundled tube skyscraper designing an office completed making it the the Granada Building in Los desire for access, resulting recommendations for the 1963 Office Landscape Taylorist ideas of repetition of office complex that was based tallest building at the time Angeles near Lafayette in the dispersed, Ad Hoc Committee on industrial efficiency cubicles. The drive around the concept of in Los Angeles. The exterior Park is converted to a 1969 polycentric city At the outset of the Polycentric 178mm Federal Office Space. the Burolandschaft As tax laws changed in the towards flexibility in 100 story John Hancock Centre adaptability. Constant of the building behaves as live/work space Electronic age, the 1980 Los Angeles Photo GSA’s “Guiding Principles focuses on the early to mid-1960s, both office operations is completed in Chicago change is intended to be an iconographic branding for worker’s machines and The Wilshire Corridor embodies the for Federal Architecture” flexible and strategic American corporations and International accommodated in the the corporation. The image desk space have evolved dissolve of the monocentric city in document is released; deployment of human began gaining financial Style architecture basic infrastructural 1967 Andrea Branzi of the space of work, in to a point of increasingly lieu of more polycentric arteries these standards influence resources and the advantages by leasing office Jacques Tati. increasingly produces 1969 No Stop City plan system of assembled many cases, eclipses the liquidated mobility, which mixed with residences and offices and are eventually management of space, rather than financing Playtime film still a bland, featureless The office landscape 1970 modules. Herman necessity for the actual is continually evident in integrated within private worker-to-worker, as and building new and standardized is re-imagined as an The American School Construction Hertzberger’s Centraal office space in terms of the cityscape, as well as sector speculative office opposed to headquarters or offices on space of work infrastructural Systems Development Project Beheer offices in the Aon Center corporate functionality. In the building plans 1972 1973 Not only is this construction opertator-to-machine their own. This change matrix that could develops widely adopted internal Herman Hertzberger Netherlands feature the name of efficient spatial technology interactions sparked a fundamental allow for a strategy of climate control standards, which Central Beheer Office repeating cube modules. flexibility, the core is 1966 advertised for its separation of services Brunswick Building is completed in endless flexibility serve to homogenize office Hertzberger believed that maintained as distinct from

BLDG ability to improve The increasingly 1966 between the design of Chicago – first bundled tube and mobility within environments it was the architect's the open floor plan, allowing The strategic Alcoa Building worker efficiency, widespread corporate office buildings skyscraper provides open free spans its standardized task, not to provide a total for spatial customization on deployment of human San Francisco, 1964 but now the focus deployment of the Architect: SOM and corporate interiors – and system solution, but to provide a a mass scale resources begins to raised floor further Interiors: Gensler led to the related basic framework within of this efficiency is redefine the facilitates the advancement of workplace which users could operate increasingly being post-Taylorist worker 1970s untethering of the interiors as a design flexibly according to their tied to worker from an operator to a Planning and Designing the worker as their specialty changing needs mobility. The office team collaborator 1964 1968 Office Environment is published - is reduced to the mobility at the scale of Herman Miller develops the Action Office Planning and Design (1968) by Michael Saphier is Inryco In-Floor outlines steps towards Digi-Log size of a briefcase the flexibility of the Electrical Office as the first modular business published -- one of the first books in the U.S. to discuss and determining HVAC systems and Briefcase that can travel desk was strategically 1976 1978 Distribution ad furniture system, laced with low guide the reader in designing the open office; one of the most industry standards for lighting Portability with the worker encouraged

DESK partitions and flexible work desks important steps noted by the author is to interview employees 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980

Downtown Los Angeles 1980-present: From Center of Command and Control to Neighborhood Firms deploying digital technologies to expand work space and time The Los Angeles Riots: widespread looting, assault, arson, and DIGITAL AGE Rodney King beating murder occurred causing over $1 billion dollars of damage to the city Northridge Earthquake

Without transit, LA’s poly-nucleated form relies 1993 1997 1999 on freeways and cars. Traffic congestion and 1980s 1990 The Metro Red Line opens The City of Los Angeles legalizes The Los Angeles City Council passes an smog denigrate Southern California's quality of All the large The light rail Metro downtown Los Angeles to home-based businesses, Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance -- encourages the life, and the public clamors for alternatives while department stores Blue Line opens in North Hollywood, via requiring them to register with redevelopment of buildings in the downtown seeking to protect suburban idylls from of downtown LA 1990 at a cost of Hollywood and the the city in order to pay city 1998 core that are either of “historic significance” increased density. Metro opens 22 years after the along Broadway US$877 million, Mid-Wilshire district business taxes The 1903 or “economically distressed.” CITY Having completed One Continental streetcar system closes. Its wheel-and-spoke are closed 1987 connecting downtown service pattern increases access to the former California Plaza, Two Moss vs. US Tax Court Los Angeles to Long Building in downtown is CBD while creating transit oriented development California Plaza opened with 1980s establishes the ability for Beach 1999 Downtown Los Angeles converted into 1980 opportunities near outlying stations only 30% leased space, at a New financing vehicles commercial tenant 1995 Staples Center Conceived of as an office interior that lofts time when the downtown New modes of communication are developed, which improvements to be Downtown is re-imagined through Sports Arena 2000 could morph into a myriad of vacancy rate hovered around and rapid transportation allow backing from a expensed as necessary 1980s the mixing of luxury residential opens The 1906 San Fernando Building in configurations, the conceptual 25%--among the nation’s services support 24-hour wider array of sources – operating cost repairs David Harvey’s “the high rises, green spaces and office downtown Los Angeles completes 1981 Gehry's design framework behind the interior of this Economic Recovery Tax highest. Given the lack of global markets where including the newly rather than capital regime of flexible towers, reversing both early zoning its conversion to lofts -- one of the for Chiat Day in advertising firm’s office relied on Act is enacted - demand for downtown office knowledge spreads quickly, developed commercial expenditures, and are thus accumulation” and later redevelopment efforts to first to take advantage of the 1999 Venice, Los correlating increased productivity encourages construction space, construction of new capital circulates rapidly, -backed-mortgage- exempt from prohibitive begins – more readily create a homogenous corporate Adaptive Reuse Ordinance Angeles is with an enhanced control of one's by allowing developers office buildings in the area and relationships span security taxation levels and widely available As all kinds of resources landscape in the CBD. Civic leaders unconventional, own working environment. Taylorist to deduct taxes from 25% 1983 would come to a halt. The great distances capital pools and and information become and downtown boosters abandon One California Plaza as is the new concepts of efficiency are abandoned of the value of their construction hiatus would 1985 accumulates itself in more mobile, management 1993 efforts to re-establish the CBD and persist for a decade. Built as The LA Times reports that the form of of the firm becomes Chiat Day, system of as office work is increasingly seen as project Frank Gehry instead follow the cues to changing hot-desking that 1998 moments of collaboration, speculative office space, the 75% of downtown LA’s speculative real increasingly a question of housing preferences among a small Hayden Tract: estate Chiat day TBWA/Chiat Day information sharing, problem solving 1999 Umbrella Building generic, open floor plate is major properties are foreign logistics. As the friction of group of downtown residential introduces, and reflection, each of which Designed by Eric Owen as flexible and owned investments – a large distance is dissolved by pioneers, planners and developers. whereby no requires a discreet environment. Moss, the Umbrella accommodating as office proportion backed by increased mobility and Downtown is transformed into BLDG space architecture can be specific This office interior is conceived to Building, in Culver City’s Japanese investors enhanced access, DTLA by the addition of 15,000 employee has a accommodate a range of Hayden Tract, is one of a downtown’s importance is housing units less about its character as particular or configurations, allowing the workers series of Westside office 1991 a place than about its individual desk to customize office environments to buildings seeking to satisfy Through digital Prodigy The telephone is now subsumed Ad for Radio Shack functioning as a node on their preferences a burgeoning market for technologies, firms Service ad With limited demand for into telecommunications, data 1987 Lightweight Handheld various networks “creative offices;” colonize the domestic and downtown office space, the 2000 management and transmission New technologies increase the commercial spaces that Micron PC ad public realms as new notion of downtown as CBD is devices. The drive to unplug efficiencies of communication 'World Wide What?' news page seek to catalyze innovation, This advertisement workspaces, and lengthen largely abandoned. A through cloud computing, and transportation, and make Sophisticated yet affordable technologies curiosity, and risk-taking, to claims that in order 1981 the workday beyond its neighborhood emerges wireless communication, and Honeywell. 'What the Heck is Electronic Mail?' ad instant interaction in distant encourage office workers to stay connected to the challenge the status quo to work, all one traditional 9 to 5 bounds contactless energy—not the Long the iconic office appliance, the telephone is now 1980s places possible. These 1989 office even when they are not physically there, 1996 1997 among employees by needs is a more flexible raceways subsumed into telecommunications, data management and LA City institutes an Artist in technologies also produce the Regus hotel offices and provide firms with new forms of technological DEGW publishes its “Workstyle Cisco Systems offices in San creating fully immersive computer, a website advertised here—ultimately transmission devices. Desks and offices become temporarily Residence program - encourages expectations of 24-hour are founded in control over office workers. Controlling the 2000” - workplaces were to be open Jose opens - every employee office experiences and a company car- expands firms’ spatial and cluttered with digital age appliances and infrastructure as some initial live-work reuse in commerce, on-call access to Brussels - seeks to technology and access to it, firms expand the and non-territorial, with no cellular has a tablet computer or a suggesting the temporal reach over workers and workers are increasingly disciplined through office the downtown area on a small, employees, and mobile fill the niche for accountability of office workers beyond the offices. Telecommuting and notebook computer, and no one ideal worker is a 1980 flexibility in managing them technologies experimental scale productivity. the mobile worker bounds of the traditional workday as well as working from home is encouraged has a designated personal desk nomad

DESK 1991 beyond the perimeter of the office workplace 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

Downtown Los Angeles 1980-present: From Center of Command and Control to Neighborhood DIGITAL AGE Firms deploying digital technologies to expand work space and time September 11th Attacks Great Recession

2007 2008 2009 2011 The view from the top of a renovated The LA City Council and County 39,537 residents in Although Downtown Los Angeles had a The Bunker Hill live/work downtown tower features a view 2012 2006 Board of Supervisors approve the downtown Los Angeles – a mix of uses more diverse than many Redevelopment Project that encompasses both the leisure of a pool The Grand Park 28,878 residents in $2.05 billion Grand Avenue Project 36.9% increase from 2006 downtowns, including uses not found ceases with the and the density of office towers beyond. connecting City downtown Los Angeles elsewhere in the city, this map defunding of the CRA Occupied by those seeking to attain the Hall to Bunker Hill The Los Angeles City Council approves sweeping changes illustrates it moving towards a more status of ideal workers, professionals, and is completed CITY High office vacancies and persistent in zoning and development rules for the downtown area. densely programmatically mixed Available office 2011 entrepreneurs, residents accept no work-life shortages in other real estate sectors These changes allow larger and denser developments working-living environment with 2010 space Los Angeles population Downtown separation and sideline their concerns result in the repurposing of existing downtown; developers who reserve 15 percent of their expanded retail and entertainment sectors The 2009 percentage is 3,819,702 2012 live work about work-life balance office towers, transformed mostly from units for low-income residents are now exempt from some of rising office within, to host a variety of new uses open-space requirements and can make their buildings 35 2008 Park 101 Revitalization vacancies and falling percent larger than current zoning codes allow Eschewing the concept of dense urban center formed by rents was at an corporate headquarter towers and paced according to the all-time high. Two architectural strategies are The LA City Council makes further changes to the rhythms of the work clock, Park 101 will cap the Office work did not Hayden Tract: proposed to address this Virtual Office ad 2001 Complex Plan Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance, creating greater financial Hollywood Freeway, create new park space, and provide necessarily decrease, 2012 emerging condition of work as it incentives to pursue such projects downtown it was just redefined The imagery of contemporary

BLDG an important amenity for adjacent housing developments. Near revitalized downtown Culver relates to global real estate by mobility or housed knowledge-based work City, California, abandoned realities. In North America 2002 in centers outside the maintains visual association industrial warehouses are 2009 where office vacancy is high, The 1955 Superior 2003 14,561 residential units have been created traditional CBD with the Mechanical Age office. 178mm repurposed to studios and offices for Hackable Buildings proposes a Oil Company The 1949 General under the adaptive reuse ordinance This daily rental boardroom has creative industry workers like Headquarters in Petroleum Building 2003-2004 Google’s corporate base invasive method to convert the traditional trappings of graphic designers and software downtown is in downtown Ground Zero Masterplan in Mountain View, CA mono-functional office buildings 2012 corporate power even if it makes engineers. These firms in particular, converted to the converted into the The Ground Zero Masterplan 2007 is campus-like and into synergistic multi-purpose Families are planned and little sense as a place for given that their workers possess Standard Hotel Pegasus Apartments for the former site of the World The 1986 1100 highlights a casual 2008 1010 Wilshire Tower entities. In Asia where new middle class and upper class interactions that take place rare skills and are not easily Trade Center in NYC includes Wilshire tower creative working In a mix of high rises, owners office building inventory is women's expectations about virtually through the Internet replaced, are interested in creating new office towers that just west of Google environment premised have maximum flexibility to low, the 600 meter Shanghai education, work force By the end of the Digital Age, work environments conducive to downtown LA is 2007 Mountain upon the campus model customize the spaces in their Tower stacks various participation, and careers re-asserts the symbolic both firms and office workers have New office technologies allow employee satisfactions and their converted to of educational live-work units; rather than programs, including office, importance of high rise office relationships with downtown office change as a result. New the space and time of the desire to establishing meaningful residential institutions, marking dividing the units with walls, US (Existing) vs Asia (New) into a vertical city buildings in America buildings, office spaces, and questions of work-life balance office to encroach upon the relationships to one’s work Google as a firm whose different areas are defined and desks that are increasingly varied arise among professional and public sphere. Longer work relationship with their linked by built-in furniture and complex. Downtown continues to businesswomen seeking to days and weeks result from employees includes elements that act as negotiate the need to function as a node manage work responsibilities the professionalization of low-height walls, preserving 2003 supporting their and a desire to replicate its 2012 Go Virtual ad and traditional household roles. wage work and the the expansive open plan The twenty-first Century self-realization as importance as place 2011 Firms with far-flung weakening of labor Office is published - 2006 creative subjects originally built in 1959 and Membership- work forces increasingly organizations. Working in refers to the branded Gensler begins a US survey of over participating in renovated in 2008 based Coffee & abandon the expense of 2012 public becomes the modal experience as a 170 companies to begin indexing an important firm 2008 Power co-office the office, relying on The “physical expression of engagement narrative, whereby the workplace trends and employee mission Gensler expands its national “workclub” rent-by-the day facilities social network” with wider urban society, and fictional aspect of the perception of workspaces workplace survey to establish the Workplace 2010 opens in Santa to provide nodes for WeWork opens the middle classes abandon brand is told through the 2007 Index (WPI), creating an industry resource iPad Monica virtual face-to-face in Hollywood Coffee shop becomes the public sphere and allow

DESK “interior journey” iPhone launched around global workplace trends Launched exchange of information. workspaces Credit: cityLAB and Gensler Los Angeles its institutions to wither 2000 2005 2010

In a multi-year effort, cityLAB and UCLA graduate students in Architecture and Urban Design collaborated with Gensler Los Angeles, UCLA I.S. Associates, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to explore the Future of Work. In downtown Los Angeles and Southern California more broadly, research-based design proposals move beyond the ubiquitous glass box of the 1960s as well as the now predictable "creative office." From desk to building to city, sites of work are reimagined to be organized around teams, situated outdoors, enriched by interactive technologies, and more mobile at the same time that space for individual work grows smaller and less private. This investigation takes place during an era of urban resurgence in the city and increased mobility in contemporary life. Office work in Los Angeles has been sheltered by multiple versions of the mono-functional office building, both high and low-rise, with little architectural innovation in the past fifty years, making the desk the starting point for transformation. THE FUTURE OF OFFICE WORK, DTLA

In 1885, the Santa Fe Railroad entered Southern a street grid eventually brought development culture that was English-speaking, largely The Rise of the Service Economy in conditions of each ten- distinct and homogeneous spheres into inti- With the rise of industrialization, specific areas in the attic or alternatively the third floor. of livingAmong are formingthe many motiv-accommodatingto broadcast a myriad theof temporary firm’s reputation and to thesymptomatic world. ofonly the limited broader understanding conception that of the common or California, setting off a rate war with the dom- south of the original settlement into what today white, and increasingly Protestant, and with it a the Postindustrial Age ant’s custom fl oor plate. mate contact with one another. Furthermore, of cities were established as mono-specialized Additionally, the Burgher House would also new proximityations expressed hybrids. for complex arrangements,Where rational and motivationsreveals the largerseek gains inthe worker postmodern peculiar condition inner-workings represented of a deepprivate business en- City [Place]

inant railway line of the area, the Southern Pac- are labeled the Civic Center and Historic Core changed culture and ethic of work. Building [Enclosure] the postmodern condition, having taken deep Building [Enclosure] zones. As a result, many of the previously mixed accommodate all storage requirements for The postindustrial economy, in fusing enter- trends of postmodernism.efficiency and Toproductivity, accommodate cultural motivationsdisjunction betweentities, asthe social particularities activities. of At place the same time, hist- Desk [Experience] ific. Competition and low fares madeTechnologically, Southern theneighborhoods. recent history In of 1891, the the Los Angeles Times The postindustrial economy of North America particular arrangements root in Los Angeles, suggests the temporality production/consumption programs of buildings the production of the craft on site. This was a prise and identity, has driven architectural form faster cycles seekof change, to leverage structural worker tectonics, comfort and emotionand the to specificitiesorians ofof time.architecture The generic, have taken only a limited California accessible to the rest of theoffice country tower in showsnoted, an initial “The push geographical towards center of Los Angeles set off a wave of demand for space dedicated of the space for off ice and flexibility of such ever-shifting arrange- in urban centers were emptying themselves of fully self-sufficient domestic/work unit. While towards increasingly complex and intertwined material separationssupport andinnovation, environmental retention, control and longevityhollowed-out of shellinterest quality in the of evolutionmany of DTLA’sof, and innovations in, a way it had heretofore never been. Newmaximum cheap structural is the and old performative plaza, but achieve-that has long since ceased to office work in the 20th century. By 1998 it ments. Set within the necessary infrastructure fabrication functions and becoming increasingly previously these mixed use buildings had been spaces of livingwork, and working. three kinds aresystems increasinglythe enterprises. manifest Symbolic themselves motivations as a areoffice about space, exemplifiedthe office interior,by the Bunker focusing Hill their re- interests instead transportation, huge tracts of availablement land, before turningto be the the focus center towards of population….While what at one was estimated that 1 in 5 Americans worked in provided by the robust office tower shells, the available to emerging professions. It was proj- often dedicated to commercial activities only on particularly common:robust but genericcreating architectural unique identities frame andof infra- positions development,for the representson office buildings, an architecture particularly that in the form of temperate weather, popular culture, itoutrageous provided – an increasinglytime most ofneutral the population landscape was north of the a dedicated office building.43 This section aims reassuring image and identity of work is main- ects such as The Burgher House in the thir- the ground floor, the rise of entities such as Building [Enclosure] Throughout the 20th century, technological structure capablefirm’s ofproducts adapting and to services the rapidly and helpingwas employ- built to accommodateurban towers—skyscrapers—as the vagaries of a building type. promotion, and avarice proved a combustiblefor horizontal userplaza, customization. during the From past thisten years 90 per cent of to uncover many of the changes in the office those stemming from tained, while the far more complex and fragile teenth and fourteenth centuries that demon- larger department stores, which increasingly achievements in office tower design have re- shifting needs,ees both to understand material and their immaterial, position within thespeculation enter- andAt the any insertion moment of in anthe unpredict- history of the office, the combination, enflaming the land boominitial that vertical was pushthe to improvements a more horizontal have push, gone up in the southern building typology and how they manifested instrumental rationality, interior condition of work is subjected to con- strated a combination of domestic and work aggregated together to form a larger whole, vealed an unyielding positivist push towards of the work prise,they shelter. thereby distinguishing their offerings—andable quantity andmotivations quality of for interior arranging of work.the space of office work the true genesis of Los Angeles’s downtown.the focus shiftedhalf towards of the the city….These performance are solid facts which it is over time in built form. The overriding shift has stant flows of change. space in an efficient striation of space based necessitated an entire building devoted only to performancethose – performance attached that was meas-to the their work environments—from competitors. may be various and multiple, with some motiva- CITY In 1886, an acre of land there went forintegration $100. of theuseless core to to the attempt periphery to ignorewithin by playing the os- seen Modernist spheres of separation, function- on a vertical organization that began to disap- DESKcommerce. These factors led to the increasingly Postindustrial Postmodernism in BUILDING These different motivations reflect the changing tions being placed in the foreground, with others ured architecturally, financially and in worker The next year it was worth $1,500. Fromthe self-contained1884 trich entity acts, of and the level-headedhorizontal property holders in desire to reproduce fi rm pear. In this case, buildings with the ground mono-functional office building. With the intro- al zones distinguished planametrically—brought the DTLAcharacter of the office worker as subject in re- in the background. The subsequent discussion floor plate. When examining these financial 13 productivity. Throughout history, each metric to 1888 roughly 100 new towns were planned, the northern part of the city are beginning to 45 31 32 culture, and those that 47 floor devoted to commercial activity—selling the duction of the elevator, the possibility of exag- into closer contact with one another through lationship to equally profound changes in terms follows the interweaving of the above motiva- and technological factors in the architectural Southern California, thus, was somewhat late to of performance pushed the other two in a and in 1889 Orange County was broken off due ask themselves seriously what is to be done to vertical layering, blending and stacking. would make fi rm symbols the business of forming downtowns. The term, craft (for example, barrel making, silver working, gerating this mono-functional stacking of office reinforcing feedback loop. As such, the history With significantof regimes swathes around of Los time Angeles’s and space between the tions in the office’s arrangement, while placing to population growth. Between 1880manifestation and 1896, of arrestLos Angeles’s or at least downtown delay the steady march of the While suburban homes “downtown,” originally intended to describe the or glass blowing) featured a wide frontage to program was taken even further. In this stage of the officefrom tower— off the icebuilding plans. form assoc- Thus thedowntown coreFordist of officeand Post-Fordist towers built industrial in the city. these motivations within the historical progression Los Angeles went from a populationoffice of 11,000 towers, comparedbusiness with section alternative from the work old to the new plaza burgeoning business district in southernmost the street. The space of production was either we can see that although the program is entire- were located far from iated mostproduction symbolically of withoffice the space autonomous and the manner late in 1970’s and 1980’s, DTLA stands as an ex- of the office interior. Underlining much of this to 97,000.7 conditions, we seeon a Sixth general Street tendency ....”8 As to- occurred in other western Manhattan, had been in use in North America on the ground floor for ease of transport or on ly non-domestic, the public face of the building which the office interior “organizes” workflowsemplar of theMuch postmodern has been architectural written about mo- how to arrange discussion is a much larger movement regarding [PLACE] wards the dense layeringand southwestern of heterogeneous railroad cities (Albuquerque, [EXPERIENCE]the homogenous concen- separation of specific function—and of the [ENCLOSURE] the top floor for maximum day lighting in the still alludes strongly to an established formal ment in whichoffice the imagework, butand theidentity interpretation of work of office the worker in the post-Fordist and postmodern since the 1830’s, a time when Los Angeles re- have been variously figured as profit-supporting, By 1889, the boom subsided, but Losfunctions. Angeles In starkEl contrast Paso, San to Diego,the Modernist and San Francisco among image of downtowns reveals a deep integra- 9 case of crafts. The second floor was often given tradition, albeit on a grander scale – foreshad- tration of off ice towers caught up withspace and and overtook the making the material of some nec- greater social or economic system—one where the worker is free tendency to planametrically separate functions, mained an agricultural market center. Some tion of tectonics,productivity-enhancing economics and labor.tools; means for had established itself. Too, prices eventually re- them), businesses and eventually residents mig- over to the domestic space of the craftsman’s owing even bigger scalar shifts to come. in central business dis- essity of officehistorical work per sense se. ofThe these quintessential spaces, has yetWe to bebegin by examiningof specific how location 20th and century an increasingly flexible the more recent history of office space sug- steps in the formation of downtown, at least reproducing and giving material presence to covered and continued to rise into the 1900’s. rated from the colonial city center to the new family. The rental component involving the postmodern takenarchitectural up comprehensively characteristic either of his- by the structuralsocial innovationasset. of office towers deve- gests a closely inter knit horizontal layering as understood by a morphologist like James tricts, new working This feedbackthe firmloop andshaped the firm’sthe architectural values; and a way to Infrastructure enhancements and the laying of center, in the process producing a new urban apprentice and journeymen would typically be toric referencessciences displaced or by in architecture. time and space There is is, in fact,loped to aid in the maximization of land-rental of working and living – bringing previously Vance—his inception, exclusion, and segregation demands and economics tendency towardstelegraph flexible both individual shells capable workers’ of status and

were given a tablet or notebook computer, and and mobile devices (i.e. from coff ee shops and related communication. On the same thread, the provide those tools. This itional, cost effective approach to office layout. phases—either occurred simultaneously or in very The mix of economic concentration and easy ac- In the same period the Broadway area became Working Downtown entertainment, or even While work like this had existedWith for the centuries, rise of industrialization, specific areas in the attic or alternatively the third floor. The Rise of the Service Economy in of living are forming accommodating a myriad of temporary and symptomatic of the broader conception that 7 “Downtown History,” Downtown Center Business Improvement District, accessed October 15, 2012, http://www.downtownla.com/5_05_downtownHistory.asp. 10 no one had a designated personal desk. When mobile computer is the essential tool of produc- On the other side of flexible workspaces we have close sequence in Los Angeles. For example, cess made downtown a regional magnet for a a central hub for entertainment and shopping. principally in government, banking, and insurance, 8 Now Pershing Square. See “The City’s Growth: Marching from the Old Toward the New Plaza; The Business Section Being Forcedthe to thePostindustrial Southwest”. Los Angeles Times (LosAge Angeles,tablets), CA), 1891. have also given airports, to customer 43 Jo Allen Gause, Mark Eppli, Michael Hickok and Wade Ragas, Office Development Handbook (Washington: Urban Land Institute,further 1998) . underscores the governance. As downtown work of cities were established as mono-specialized Additionally, the Burgher House would also new proximity hybrids. complex arrangements, and reveals the larger the postmodern condition represented a deep 9 Robert M. Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 (New Haven: needed,Yale University Press,employees 2003),10 could sit at a docking station 59 tion for knowledge workers, and increasingly the spaces and accompanying furniture that can be Desk [Experience] City [Place]

Downtown Los Angeles, like other downtowns Building [Enclosure] the inception of downtown Los Angeles and the fast-growing metropolis, if only briefly. City Hall, Department stores like Bullock’s and the May was like industrial work, wage work, done in the quantity of it mushroomedzones. by the As amiddle result, of many of the previously mixed accommodate all storage requirements for rise to the nomadic Thesites. postindustrial Some economy, companies in fusing are nowenter- asking trends of postmodernism. To accommodate disjunction between the particularities of placefl exibility of the worker across urban America, represented a new kind production/consumption programs of buildings the production of the craftor aon cubicle site. This and was connect a theirThe mobile postindustrial devices toeconomy a of North America faster cycles of change, structural tectonics,workers’ ownand personal the specificities computers of are time. becoming The generic, used in any way conducive to worker productivity. boom that would exclude all but the highest other public services, schools, and newspapers Company purveyed goods to the gentry living the central business district outside of industry the 20th century, first with the increasingly rapid worker, who can work priseemployees and identity, to workhas driven part of architectural their week formfrom any- and how work can in of city making. Indeed for most social theorists, in urban centers were emptying themselves of fully self-sufficient domestic/worklarger screen unit. and While phone console.set off Collaborationa wave of demand for space dedicated material separations and environmentalpart control of the toolshollowed-out as well. shell quality of many of DTLA’s As highlighted in the Cisco example, this could be capitalized users occurred almost simultaneously were established, making downtown the city’s in nearby suburbs. As in many North American and retail activity, was primarily knowledge circulation of industrial capital, then compounded towardswhere increasingly outside of complex the main and office. intertwined Companies City [Place] City the closure, autonomy and separateness of the fabrication functions and becoming increasingly previously these mixed usewas buildings accomplished had been by severalto openoffice and work private in the 20th century.from By almost1998 it anywhere. systems increasingly manifest themselves as a office space, exemplified by the Bunker Hillfact re- be done anywhere at in the form of a rolling conference table that can in the early 1890’s. Although a few buildings administrative and government center. Agri- cities, industry was restricted to downtown Los based and centered on recording, storing, and further by the advent of consumerism. Adminis- spaceslike ofAT&T living and and Sun working. Systems have seen a large urban community and urban work, including of- conference tables with largewas TV estimated screens. that 1 in 5 AmericansThis trend worked speaks in to the knowledge worker who, be a site for collaborative or individual space. available to emerging professions. It was proj- often dedicated to Desk [Experience] commercial activities only on robust but generic architectural frame of infra- development, represents an architecture thatany time desired. from this era still stand (notably the Bradbury businesses—huge, corporate run farm industries Angeles’s edges. Unlike those cities, these uses retrieval of information central to commerce. tration and management of goods production reduction in turnover rates due to their flexible a dedicated office building.43 This section aims Then you also have more casual configurations fice work, locates the industrial city differently ects such as The Burgher House in the thir- the ground floor, the riseCisco of entities couldsuch as fi t more as a population of our economy’s workforce, Building [Enclosure] is structure capable of adapting to the rapidly was built to accommodate the vagaries of Building of 1893), the true explosion of comm- sprouted throughout the region—were largely have persisted in areas close to DTLA, where and service provision emerged as a logistical im- Throughoutwork arrangements the 20th century, that allow technological employees to within the capitalist, political, and social organ- In many North American teenth and fourteenth12 centuries that demon- larger department stores, which increasingly to uncover many of the changeslarger in than the inoffice the past and will continue to grow. shifting needs, both material and immaterial, speculation and the insertion of an unpredict- of chairs and couches that provide a setting that ercial growth in the area came during the 1910’s, managed from downtown. By the 1920’s, the toys, garments, and jewelry continue to be perative of the new industrial economy. The people in its current achievementswork from inhome. office60 tower design have re- Flexible Work Spaces. Moveable office furniture building typology and how they manifested encourages a level of ease. 1920’s, and early 1930’s, completing downtown’s nation’s petroleum and banking industries were manufactured and distributed. In fact, industrial ization. For at least one theorist, Ferdinand cities, downtown was processes of the modern businessstrated enterprise a combination and of domestic and work aggregated together to formbuilding a larger whole, by not assign- In 2006, WorldatWork vealed an unyielding positivist push towards of the work they shelter. able quantity and quality of interior of work.is a concept that was important to the early open Tonnies, urban work engendered an entirely new space in an efficient striation of space based necessitated an entire building devoted only to over time in built form. The overriding shift has division into sub-districts. headquartered in downtown. The Spring Street employment has remained an important portion a place where business the hierarchical structure that guided its roles reported the nomadic performanceCisco’s example – performance of investing that in was technology meas- infra- office landscape and the Action Office system in BUILDINGway of life, and entirely new senses of time, of on a vertical organization that began to disap- commerce. These factorsing led to thespecifi increasingly c desks,seen Modernist spheres of separation, function- Postindustrial Postmodernism in In all current trends in the office interior, worker Financial District became home to Bank of of all the work done downtown. and tasks were first promulgated by railroads in uredstructure architecturally, and their financially support and of intelecommuting worker the 20th century. Giving workers options for 11 al zones distinguished planametrically—broughtknowledge worker rep- the DTLA comfort is a heightened issue of rational import- America, the Crocker National Bank, the Inter- place, and one’s self in relation to them. Social services were provided the 19th century. Railroad companiespear. In this were case, buildings with the ground mono-functional office building.saving With themoney intro- on real productivity. Throughout history, each metric moving furniture according to their needs aligns During the early 20th 60 31 32 also highlights an increasing characteristic of the 61 14 relationships based on place were weakened floor devoted to commercial 15activity—selling the duction of the elevator, the possibility of exag- into closer contact with oneresented another through roughly two ance, influencing the symbolic and cultural under- century, the construction national Savings and Exchange Bank and the Los rather than products pro- among the first firms faced with managing the estate costs. Cisco also saved money of performancepost-Fordist pushedeconomy. the The other post-Fordist two in a know- with current attention to worker comfort and by broad migrations to industrial cities like Los craft (for example, barrel making, silver working, gerating this mono-functional stacking of office vertical layering, blending andthirds stacking. of the American With significant swathes of Los Angeles’s pinnings of a corporation. The interior built envi- Angeles Stock Exchange. The famous Biltmore cooperation of hundreds of spatially dispersed on technology infrastructure,While avoiding costlysuburban homes reinforcingledge worker feedback produces loop. As knowledge such, the historywork with its relationship to productivity. More importantly, of “downtown” as the Hotel was built downtown in the early 1920’s Angeles, and were replaced with relationships duced. Thus the start people and the logistical challengesor glass ofblowing) moving featured a wide frontage to program was taken even further. In this stage of the office tower— the building form assoc- downtown core of office towers built Asin the the worker becomes ronment reflects, in an effort to reproduce, the Ethernet jacks by using more wireless internet- work force.58 These people limited tools, relative to the tools of production the flexibility of furniture allows for new config- based on associations of common economic the street. The space of production was either we can see that although the program is entire- were located far from late 1970’s and 1980’s, DTLA stands as an ex- corporation’s image of itself and the expectations city’s central place and as were the Ritz Hotel and the Astor Hotel. The of the service economy people and freight. In the United States, the based devices. Cisco is a technology firm using iatedin mostthe Fordist symbolically economy. with Tools the autonomous such as the mobile more fl exible and urations that repurpose certain spaces and mini- on the ground floor for ease of transport or on ly non-domestic, the public face of the building spend a large amount of emplar of the postmodern architectural mo- of its employees. Thus, in current and on-going the place of business Hall of Justice, the Japanese Union Church, the interests. railroads created a system of internal operations the homogenous concen- separation of specific function—and of the freelance, they are mize costs. On one end of flexible workspaces [ENCLOSURE]drove downtown growth the top floor for maximum day lighting in the still alludes strongly to ansome established of its own formal network innovations to cut phone were once seen as an expense to the em-ment in which the image and identity of work Work, particularly off ice time working outside of image of downtowns reveals a deep integra- articulations of the office, interior architecture was inseparable from the Great Western Savings, the Sun Drug building, out of these challenges that could be supplant- costs and support a certaintration kind of work ofculture. off ice towers ployer for the workers use. In more recent years, bringing their tools you have the modular items like desks and ac- and the mono-functional case of crafts. The second floor was often given tradition, albeit on a grander scale – foreshad- tion of tectonics, economics and labor. caught up with and overtook the material nec- is argued as a critical opportunity to influence a the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing work, was central to the ed anywhere and was organized to accomplish the traditional off ice. On especially with the popularity of smartphones, companying storage that can be reconfigured de- process of urbanization over to the domestic space of the craftsman’s owing even bigger scalar Theshifts to Internet, come. itsin centraldeclin- business dis- essity of office work per se. The quintessentialof choiceWe begin along by examining with, how 20th century company’s sustainability—through the encour- buildings, and the Roosevelt Office Building off ice building morph- highly specific tasks, rather than some general average, they work from the mobile phone is an expense taken up by the pendent on certain job functions—some which formation of downtown, family. The rental component involving the ing cost, the availabilitytricts, new working This feedback loop shaped the architectural postmodern architectural characteristic of his- structural innovation of office towers deve- agement of creativity supported by comfortable of Los Angeles itself. were also erected during the 1920’s economic sense of enterprise. The management structure individual worker who not only uses it for her as opposed to relying may require more surface area or storage space. more so than shopping, ology that would serve it. apprentice and journeymen would typically be 3.4 locations, ranging tendency towards flexible shells capable of toric references displaced in time and space is loped to aid in the maximization of land-rental physical environments. expansion. railroads used to implement the system proved of private networks,demands and economics personal communication, but also for her work- on the employer to This type of flexibility is consistent with the trad-

43 Jo Allen Gause, Mark Eppli, Michael Hickok and Wade Ragas, Office Development Handbook (Washington: Urban Land Institute, 1998) . 58 “Set Them Free: How Alternative Work Styles Can be a Good Fit,” hermanmiller.com, last modified 2007, http://www.hermanmiller.com/research/research-summaries/set-them-free-how-alternative-work-styles-can- 10 James E. Vance, Jr, The Continuing City: Urban Morphology in Western Civilization (Balitmore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). 11 1887: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag, 2nd ed. 1912, 8th edition, Leipzig: Buske, 1935 (reprint 2005, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche be-a-good-fit.html. Buchgesellschaft). 59 Eileen McMorrow. “Americans are working from many locations outside their employer’s office,” last modified December 1, 2005, www.mcmorrowreport.com. 12 David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, (Baltimore, 60 “Set Them Free: How Alternative Work Styles Can be a Good Fit,” hermanmiller.com, last modified 2007, http://www.hermanmiller.com/research/research-summaries/set-them-free-how-alternative-work-styles-can- THE FUTURE OF OFFICE WORK Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984). be-a-good-fit.html. VOLUME 1: HOW WE GOT HERE

DEFINING WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENTS Instead of illuminating alternative sites of work in the city apart from Moving from desk-scale innovations to building-scale innovations, the One of the most notable developments of off ice work in downtown, the “Every new technology creates a off ice buildings, commercial real estate broker Carl Muhlstein of Jones third and fi nal workshop revealed a divide in thinking about locations of live-work loft conversions of historic off ice spaces in the early 2000s Two panels of the fi rst workshop explored the continued eff ects that Lang LaSalle, argued that architects should in fact be building more off ice work. Some panelists argued that off ice work or even desk-work is linked under the Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance, illuminated the potentials for work new environment just as a motor digital technologies have on the spatial, temporal, and cultural conditions buildings, yet diff erently. With a portfolio of nearly six million square to particular locations in the city, while others argued that it need not be. to be regenerated in diff erent zones and in diff erence confi gurations in of work. Since technological innovations have, perhaps most rapidly and feet of real estate in the Los Angeles metropolitan region, Muhlstein Despite visions of a revived downtown, Los Angeles regularly focuses on the city. Spivack argues that new zones in the city could be created for car does, as the railway did, or most profoundly, continuously transformed the ways in which specifi c suggested that a nation-wide attention to creative industries is also re-positioning its downtown as the city’s central district for work and the industrial work, wherein any substitution of traditional off ice space is as radio and airplanes do -- any locations of knowledge work in urban centers come to be, the turn to desk- emerging in Los Angeles. Specifi cally, building activity in Los Angeles region’s preeminent location for business. However, just as growth in Los necessarily predicated upon social interactions, which are essential scale innovations is foundational. Specifi cally highlighting the sharp divide most recently has been focused on the center of Los Angeles, as a region Angeles has challenged traditional visions of what a centralized site of when developments are not location-specifi c. new technology changes the between material and physical environments and those construed more previously overlooked (such as the region of Venice/ Fairfax, where knowledge-based work might look like, Los Angeles’s polycentric urban virtually, the panelists revealed new perceptions of space and boundaries new construction activity is underway). However, the call to build more form initially prompted the City-Less workshop to reconsider downtown’s whole human environment, and off ice buildings downtown—a site in the city that continues to prioritize unique potential against the backdrop of other locations for work in the FIG 16. Downtown Los Angeles Aerial of workplace environments through media and communication theories and Image courtesy: Gensler envelops and includes the old technological experimentation. In the 60s, media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s mixed-use and institutional investment over commercial development— city. Since the 1950s, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) of off ered the term “Invisible Environment” as a tool to perceptually shift an might indicate a need to look more specifi cally at the types of off ice Los Angeles has assigned the Bunker Hill region as the fi nancial core of environments.” understanding of how daily routines and everyday lives are structured2. The buildings needed downtown. Muhlstein argued that, “We don’t need any downtown, and, by extension, the city. The Bunker Hill Redevelopment -Marshall McLuhan, “The Invisible Environment.” “Invisible Environment,” to McLuhan, served as a counter-environment that more traditional off ice buildings,” suggesting that the creative industry Project of 1955, for example, included a massive slum clearance project that was intended to change the way one perceives environments as physical represents a new network of off ices emblematic of fl exibility, openness, razed homes, up-zoned the entire neighborhood, leveled the topography , entities, by revealing other webs of media, communication, and circulation and collaboration. While the need for fl exibility and collaborative spaces clearing the way for future commercial skyscraper development among as environments in their own right. Specifi c to the workplace, the ubiquity is most apparent in creative and entertainment industries, he argues that the other industrial use -based zones. Despite such radical transformation, of technology has continued to challenge the ways in which corporeal and similar characteristics have also been adopted by more traditional types former Deputy Chief of Operations for the CRA, Don Spivack, noted that material characterizations of work have been able to encompass all aspects of knowledge-based work, such as fi nancial or legal off ices. the outmoded zoning and building regulations in downtown continue to of work environments. Thus, bodily and material signifi ers have come to restrict development and to contradict and undermine downtown’s ability represent and stand-in for otherwise unfamiliar virtual environments, often to attract new forms of and locations for knowledge work. In addition to complicating the workers’ spatial and temporal defi nitions of work. Thus, the creating new design and density incentives to embrace a mono-centric fi rst workshop was distinguished by two components; the fi rst focused on core, he suggests that the city move toward performance-based zones technologies of work, and the second on an environment of work, although rather than use-based; performance zones would allow for diff erent uses they are inextricably linked. to co-locate, establishing neighborhood compatibility, other standards that developments must meet. The city could also develop new or modifi ed zones for industrial live-work, for example.

FIG 10. Jones Lang LaSalle’s “S-Curve” of 2 McLuhan, Marshall. “The Invisible Environment: The Future of an Erosion.” Entertainment and Creative Industries as Perspecta 11 (1967): 163-167. presented by Carl Muhlstein FIG. 5 Image of designed mobile desks courtesy of Shujan Bertrand. 14 15 08 09 06 07

While narratives of work by Jen Stein and Tracy Brower capture the Conceiving of the city as a lab for an innovative economy, Senior AMBIGUOUS ZONES AND DISTRICTS The third way in which downtown portrays itself as spatially distinct is spatial and temporal characteristics of work within the building, the Sustainability Consultant at Arup Los Angeles, Russell Fortmeyer, argues through its districts. The Fashion District, Financial District, Arts District, connection to the off ice building as the sole site of work often distances that people’s behaviors and locations in the city are the most complicated and Manufacturing District, for example, each connote specifi c building the geographic specifi city of such work. By mobilizing theorizations of and challenging factors to deal with in off ice design. Arup uses technology types and identities that refl ect a culture, type, and scale of work, yet place as called out in the fi rst panel—the call for architectural thinking, to help create smarter building environments that are able to adjust their relationship to knowledge work, is unclear. Although the districts physicality, and narratives of place—the interior of the off ice building themselves to the conditions of use, such as dynamic, kinetic facades, are largely symbolic boundaries (see fi g 15 for legal zones), they have represents only one possible site among many in the city for examining as well as air and light comfort controls that tune themselves to the continued to be the site for economic development. Don Spivack and others a workers’ daily routine. As the historical investigation from the fi rst year occupants. Fortmeyer used Arup’s new satellite off ice in downtown as a call for updating this identity-geography and redevelopment projects, co- of this study has uncovered, technology has made it possible for the off ice prime example of new forms of reconfi gurability and fl exibility. For ARUP, working spaces, and other forms of contemporary work that have begun to building to be only one side among many for work. However, the off ice the desk itself was conceived as the object with most transformative power make use of these specifi c districts in new ways. Still, the future eff icacy building has been historically cited as the preeminent location for work, for the off ice, changing throughout the day for various client meetings and of organizing the city based on work types remains inconclusive. Since which is refl ected in the ways that design opportunities for thinking varying kinds of work. Claiming that Arup’s “off ices are used as desks,” the current identities of the districts do not fi t a model of specialized about the boundaries of work have been constricted. Shujan Bertrand, an the ideology of an off ice itself as a mobile object may allow for building knowledge-based work, a number of scenarios may transpire. The potential Industrial Designer at Coalesse, for example, studies mobile workers that envelopes to be considered neutral, but with potential to be branded by a for districts to be re-confi gured by characteristics of work remains possible, specifi cally push the boundaries of destination-oriented work in daily life. particular type of use (temporary, co-working, satellite, etc.), and arranged and holds advantages for acknowledging the variety of scales, times, and Residual spaces, for example, between “destinations” of work—between in pockets throughout the city. spatial demands of work. Therefore, several questions for future design the home and the off ice, or the café and the airport—demonstrate a spatial thinking can be raised: collapse in our consideration of design possibilities. Bertrand tracked the daily emotional and physical demands of workers, and concluded that the Does downtown represent a disconnect between the organization of the transitional spaces—between home and off ice—are in fact intersections city and conditions of work itself, whereby work is blind to geographic that are often overlooked by designers, and highlights the spaces that space? are in fact produced by destinations. This analysis harkens back to geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s distinctions between spaces and places, arguing Can knowledge work overcome a model of centrality and urban iconicity? that spaces reveal a sense of movement, while places are pauses or stops along the way to a destination. Tuan argues that “each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place.” To align Tuan’s argument with Bertrand’s analysis, a bus stop—a space commonly understood as a programmatic void—might hold equal design potential as a site for work, more readily able to be identifi ed as a design opportunity FIG 13 & 14. Russell Fortmeyer described recent studies conducted by ARUP in the UK and in San for urban designers and architects. Francisco, suggesting that interior designs are commonly thought to be the most infl uential to positive work experience and productivity, but in fact the location within the city and the people one is working with are more infl uential, indicating a need for a scalar change in design thinking. FIG 8. Bertrand argues that creating refuge in open landscapes, enabling micro off ice migrations, This is personifi ed by their Arup’s new satellite off ice in Downtown Los Angeles, designed by Zago and fostering more intersections for innovation, such a outdoor off ice experiences, rest-stops, or 3Johanna Brewer and Paul Dourish, “Storied spaces: Cultural Accounts of Mobility, Technology, and Architecture. co-working parklets, may help stimulate new design interests in downtown Los Angeles. Image Environmental Knowing,” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66.12(2008): 965. source: Shujan Bertrand Images courtesy Arup. Figure 22. Zoning vs use in downtown Los Angeles 22 23 14 15 18 19 Printed in China Printed Printed in China Printed in China Printed

–LESS: THE FUTURE OF OFFICE WORK VOLUME 2: RE-WIRING WORK

For three years, cityLAB in collaboration with Gensler explored the form of office work for downtown Los Angeles. The first year focused on the planning history of downtown and the political and economic regimes attached to various planning ideals and evolutions of work at the scale of the city, the building, and the desk. Year two identified new opportunities for design to reinvent working in downtown through architectural and urban design interventions. While an array of innovative approaches can be imagined for the future of work, implementation remains elusive. To realize office innovation means to interrogate the role the city plays as a place where technology facilitates the doing of such work. Specifically in L.A., it also means imagining alternative futures for downtown’s obsolescent office building fabric. In turn, the third year promoted new design ideas that address these opportunities in order to provoke new conversations among civic leaders about the future character of downtown as place and point of exchange. DESIGN FOR DEEP THINK

Image credits: AN.ONYMOUS Marta Nowak, Iman Ansari

Open office plans, constant interruptions, insistent mobile technology, and a mobile workforce combine to produce a norm of distraction. For Jet Propulsion Laboratory, cityLAB researched and designed spaces for "deep think," or the kind of concentration that both individuals as well as small teams seek intermittently. The design proposals stand as alternatives to the domesticated, informal, wide-open offices that romanticize collaboration (often called "creative offices"). Recognizing both the changing economies and technologies of office work, DESIGN ideas to inspire new workspaces at JPL and beyond were developed by three UCLA faculty- led teams: Marta Nowak of AN.ONYMOUS, Jeff Burke and Randy Illum of REMAP, and Güvenç Özel. WESTWOOD VILLAGE VISION

Westwood Village Vision: Aerial View of Total Scheme Looking South Image credits: Neil M. Denari Architects and Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design

Westwood Village, once the central hub of the Westside, was founded in 1929 along with the southern campus of the University of California. The Janss Investment Company developed the Village as a shopping district with a planned mix of retail use, distinct architectural character, and strong identity. Even as Westwood Village can be seen as a model of "smart," walkable, mixed-use urbanism with vibrant cultural institutions, it has experienced decline since its heyday. High housing costs contrast starkly with low commercial rents, vacancies, and ground floor turnover. cityLAB research looked behind the myths about Westwood’s problems to formulate two visionary scenarios: an L.A. neighborhood that could lead the way to a car-less, or at least "car-lite" future; or an arts and culture district that reactivates a dynamic, sustainable place. The recent formation of Westwood’s business improvement district, the coming subway line, and the growth of UCLA bring renewed attention and possibility to the Village. CAR-LITE

Low Aerial Looking North Up Westwood Blvd at Wilshire Image credits: Neil M. Denari Architects

With a growing Metro system’s light rail and subway lines extending deep into the Westside, Los Angeles is in the process of reversing its identity as a place of staggering commute times and an unsustainably expanding footprint. As a way to explore this future, the proposal by Neil M. Denari Architects relies on the dramatic effect that the extension of the Purple Line to Westwood Village combined with the recent Expo Line extension will have on the entire city. With a proposed dedicated express bus lane connecting these two lines along Westwood Boulevard, Westwood Village promises to become a significant node for not only development along the Wilshire corridor but also for the reestablishment of a pedestrian-oriented nexus of activities. By moving cars below ground at Wilshire and Westwood, bikes and pedestrians move freely across one of the most traffic- heavy intersections in the L.A. basin. Perimeter parking garages keep cars at the edges, maintaining the cherished low-rise, historic center of Westwood Village. LIVING CULTURE

A2 October 10, 2025 VILLAGE VIEW www.rsaud.com www.rsaud.com VILLAGE VIEW October 10, 2025 A5

[AUTOMATED PARKING, from A1] [Sculpture Park, from A1] With their own killer App for your I-Pad, Redevelopment Council (WRC), that UCLA Extends Its Welcome all you need to do is to log on to the website the dream of a new sculpture park on (www.Parkingbanks.villageView) when you ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Broxton had the chance to become a re- Linear Open Space Scale Comparisons arrive in the Village. You will be guided to ality. “A stroke of genius,” proclaimed the closest structure, where a robotic valet STAGE REVIEW stead of looking at a projection on a sil- one Westwood Village stakeholder who LINEAR PUBLIC SPACE will relieve you of your vehicle. To retrieve it ver screen, 3DS involves seating in the prefers to remain anonymous, referring after your visit is just as easy: just log on with round, allowing the audience to view the to the WRC’s recommendation to lever- your I-Pad as before, and the robotic valet will life-like projections in the center, from age the residential development with a Landmarks deliver your vehicle to the same spot you left different points of view. Depending on larger, better located, and publicly-sub- it within 5 minutes. Worried that the Robotic where you are seated, your viewing ex- sidized parking structure replacing the Twilight: perience is dramatically different--an Valet might scratch your vehicle in the pro- Broxton garage. cess? The robotic valets are engineered by Alive! ingenious device to attract audience for But like all visionary undertaking, UCLA Robo-Lab with state-of-the-art tech- the Beginning 3DS return viewings. With 3DS, I can hon- the new Sculpture Park was not with- nology; they can wash and even detail your Staging a Comeback! estly say that the audience experiences out its own controversy. The early con- vehicle while you are getting your cultural fix unparalleled engagement in the action cept of the park featured a monumental (and romance) as it unfolds. in the Village, for a small additional cost. ROGER SHERMAN sculpture resembling an orange peel has ROGER E. BERG Hard as it is to admit, the 3DS expe- ARCHITECT had Westwood residents and visitors in ARCHITECT rience is so mesmerizing that this critic a heated debate about the artwork’s rel- overlooked holes in the plot. In this evance to the Village’s legacy. Dubbed After years in which previous owners prequel from first-time director Max the “Orange-Appeal”, the 50 foot tall “WHY OWN WHEN struggled to fill seats at Westwood’s famed If you happened to be in Westwood Spielberg (son of the maestro), we learn sculpture (by local artist TANG) will be Fox and Bruin theatres, UCLA’s trumpeted Village in the last 24 hours, you could how Bella’s mother fell in love with Ed- fabricated with a fiber-reinforced edible YOU CAN HAVE move seven years ago to purchase, restore not have failed to notice the line wrap- ward’s dad. Does that mean that Bella compound impregnated with 50,000 and adaptively reuse the landmark buildings ping the Zocalo with people waiting to be and Edward are actually brother and real orange peels. ROOM SERVICE? has proven to yield great benefits both for the first to experience the new motion sister, but they didn’t know it in the “I don’t get it, what does the Orange- the school and the community. Today, the picture phenomenon “Twilight: At First original saga? It is a stretch to believe Appeal has to do with Westwood?” Says Bite”, presented in 3D-Surround, or (spoiler alert) that Edward and Jacob one long time Westwood resident. “The Service Apartments for Rent / Great Views university’s world-renowned UCLALive! Natural Ventilation performance series, which those structures 3DS. To those who are asking is it worth were lovers in their early days, which Orange-Appeal speaks to the new gen- caused the vampires and werewolves LESS is MORE now are host to, regularly plays to packed the wait?, the answer is: absolutely. eration of interactive non-site specific Even for those of us who are not ex- to turn from being friends to foes. In work. It invites viewers to experience it NO Mortgage houses. This is in contrast to its previous on- NO Homeowner Insurance actly in the Twilight target audience, I the end, however, none of that is really with its touch, its color, and its scent,” campus locations at the Freud Playhouse and what matters here; you will feel the first NO Property Tax Kaufman Hall, where attendance suffered must confess that the 3DS experience explains Hammer Museum’s Fiona Ra- is still out of this world. I was lucky kiss(es), and be moved by the passionate gheb, chief curator of Next-Gen Art. And best of all due to public complaints about inconvenient 3RD STREET PROMENADE, SANTA MONICA WESTWOOD BLVD., WESTWOOD LARAMBLA, BARCELONA HIGHLINE, NEW YORK NO dirty dishes! enough to be invited to a press screen- embraces. Twilight: At First Bite has LENGTH: 0.37 MILES LENGTH: 0.70 MILES LENGTH: 0.75 MILES LENGTH: 1.25 MILES access, the cost of parking, and the lack of “It is—literally--a sculpture with good ing a few days ago. 3DS, it was explained transformed movies from being sensible taste! Why not?” adjacent pre- and post- performance dining OPEN HOUSE THIS SUNDAY: and then demonstrated, is a complete to sensual. And with the only 3DS the- offerings. Watering holes along Westwood 0.125 0.25 0.5 MI Come check out the 500SF, immersion, not something that can be ater in the world located in Westwood, DIAGRAM: Comparison of Westwood Boulevard to two other world-renowned pedestrian corridors. Blvd’s emerging “Restaurant Row” are also 1000SF, and 1500SF units in replicated with Netflick or a download. it is easy to see why going to the movies the WholeLife Suites. Weekly, feeling the benefits, its 500 foot long outdoor For starters, the viewer does not have in the Village has become the Saturday [UCLA WELCOMES, from A1] Shaded by a double line of trees, the connects from the heart of the UCLA ing to the portal to MTA’s just-opened monthly, even annually available. seating areas regularly filled to capacity on to wear those annoying glasses. And in- night date. lane on either side; the additional width pedestrian portion has, since its “soft campus to the north to the school’s re- PurpleLine train to downtown L.A. the nights that shows are scheduled. PLAN showing the 4 nationally-designated and 40 local cultural landmarks in Westwood Village. was reallocated largely to the west side opening” six months ago, seen a con- cently completed Lot 36 development From UCLA’s point of view, the corridor For an on-line tour of the new While-Life Suites, visit www.WholeLifeSuites.viillageview of the street. stant throng of people moving along it: at the corner of Gayley and Wilshire, and public square together effectively PLAN DIAGRAMS illustrating Westwood’s evolution as an entertainment venue (BELOW), from an unparalleled concen- This extrawide pedestrian “quay”, students hurriedly on their way from bends around and defines the edge of become, in the words of Capital Pro- tration of movie theatres and premieres until 1970; its decline since then due to competition from area multiplexes; and its re-emergence today (ABOVE) in the form of the consolidated entertainment hub featuring state-of-the-art as the designers refer to it, has already campus to Lot 36, or shoppers wanting a new village public square, or “Zocalo” grams chief Jif Overall, “nothing less “3DS” sense-around technology, attracting crowds and openings to the Village once again. proven a boon to restaurateurs on that to become part of the scene taken in by as planners would like it to be called, re- than the gateway to UCLA from Los side, who some time ago applied for and denizens of the cafes that line what is ferring to the famed central gathering Angeles that we never had, but always [CRIME ALERT, from A1] received permits enabling them to ex- quickly being referred to as “Restau- space in Mexico City. The Bruin shuttle needed.” UCLA campus.” ABOVE: View looking southeast down newly pedestrian- pand café seating into the right-of-way. rant Row”. The new corridor, which also stops there, at a transit center link- The VIP also comes with a ized Broxton Avenue, showing Sculpture Park in place of former garage (relocated to SE corner Gayley and “Crime-Alert” app for those who wish Weyburn). EAT & DRINK to interact with the patrol in real 1970 2010 [MTA Station Opens, from A1] time. According to the joint state- ment, “our goal is to give the com- AL FRESCO REVIEW Zocalo/MTA parking, munity better access to the closest security patrols; and for the security 2025 patrols to respond much quicker to Village Dining any suspicious activities.” It is ex- Tall Ship’s BLUE BOTTLE COFFEE OPENS IN VILLAGE ROGER SHERMAN pected that the arrival of VIP will At Last, ARCHITECT make UCLA-Westwood the safest neighborhood in the Southland. Dining Out Back With yesterday’s long-anticipated 2018 JONATHAN GOULD The Wait is OVER... To download the VIP App for your Guide opening of the Westwood/Wilshire Pur- Google traffic map from Sept. 16, 2011 (TOP), showing congestion that was endemic to Westwood prior to instal- I-Pad, visit WWW.VIP.VILLAGEVIEW.COM. means pleLine station, the City of Los Angeles NO LINE • NO ATTITUDE • lation of new parking structures and vehicular routing at For those of you who might be too young and L.A. County Metropolitan Trans- Village periphery (BOTTOM, in birdseye view of Village KEYWORD: Crime-Alert Order your Blue Bottle latte from Gayley; foreground). to remember, grabbing a late-night burger at portation Authority took one step closer Dining Out from your I-PAD • It will be Ship’s Coffee Shop was the Saturday night HOT and READY within toward its goal of extending the subway ritual after a movie in Westwood back in the 3 minutes, or less… all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The oc- day. Designed in a “Googie” architectural Fox Theatre Bruin Theatre Landmark Theatre casion marked the official halfway point Restaurant Row style, the original Ship’s was a landmark on Or the drink is on US. in its “30/10” plan to expand its rail net- Wilshire, marking one’s arrival in Westwood. work, begun in 2010 and expected to be Of course those days are long gone, as the completed by 2040. Westwood thereby ROGER SHERMAN popularity of Westwood Village declined 1 becomes the new westernmost termi- ABOVE: Plan showing parts of Westwood’s revitalization, coded by sponsoring stakeholder. ARCHITECT along with the demolition of Ship’s—until 4 3 • nus of the MetroRail system (replac- recently. As of just a few weeks ago, SHIPS ing Wilshire/Western), making L.A.’s Since the UCLA’s and MTA’s joint has been re-incarnated as the TALLSHIPS, affluent, but traffic-congested West- BELOW: Diagram showing the phased strategy that designers devised, by re-injecting thanks to celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa. the Village with key features in key spots, in a specific order. move seven years ago to dramatically 5 2 8 side—and UCLA in particular--directly widen (by 50 feet) the west sidewalk Perched atop the new Zocalo Gateway BUT if you want a scene. and practicably accessible to the larger along Westwood Boulevard, Village res- complex, TALLSHIPS offers a dining ex- metropolitan area via public transpor- UCLA | COUNCIL | BID | DEVELOPER | MTA taurant owners’ and patrons’ long-held perience unlike its predecessor. Chef Nobu tation. “This is a huge step not just for hopes of al fresco dining in the absence has created an imaginative menu combining 6 Go to the other one on MTA, but for Westwood,” said MTA of car noise and exhaust and emergence, the old Ship’s classics with an ethnic twist. Abbot Kinney… for just great Director of Joint Development Reg- and in its stead a lively flow of strollers You can still have your late night burger, 9 coffee, and no hassle. Come and bikers, appears to have finally been but it’s served with a tuna tartar patty on a gie Molinari. “With the completion not 7 to Blue Bottle in the Village, realized. A once intermittent frontage only of the station, but of the 1,200-car soy-tempeh bun baked in jalapeno reduction. 10 1. Intelligentsia Coffee The ONLY one in LA. of fast service restaurants, low rent 12 For Angelenos who worry about their waist- 2. Café Gratitude park-and-ride garage below the Zocalo, tenants, and empty store displays has line, the edamame fries are not only green, 3. TallShip’s as well as the new transit/welcome cen- been filled by a succession of cafes and 11 THEN AND NOW: images showing Westwood, once referred but also guilt free and fat-free. Personally, 4. The Full Monty’s ter, MTA has implanted in the Village restaurants with outdoor seating not [Shuttle Award, from A1] to as “Village of Towers” (TOP RIGHT, 1920). I prefer some of Nobu’s more daring inven- 5. Grandiddy Riese the place of arrival and gathering that unlike one finds on Paris’ Boulevard tions such as the Hamachi Meat-Loaf Ran- 6. Ciro’s day in Goteborg. The Rorlighet (which it has always lacked. With the Fowler Montparnasse or the Ramblas in Barce- chero, or Unagi Chili, garnished with a touch 7. Harry’s Bar means mobility in Swedish) is consid- lona. As the place to see and be seen, the and Hammer adjacent, and a new arts of mozzarella--heaven to the taste buds. The 8. Café Sannzibar ered by transportation planners the Boulevard has transformed from its re- hotel, conference center and state-of- new TALLSHIPS is fusion cuisine at its best: 9. Restaurant Robouchon highest award of its kind, acknowledg- cent incarnation as a place to go before the-art entertainment complex being a noteworthy testament to the multi-cultural 10. Milk Bar es “innovations in the marriage of the or after a performance to a performance completed above it, I expect Westwood 11. Club O2 technology of movement with the art (destination) itself. appeal of the new Westwood Village. And the of citymaking”, according to organiz- to transform even further from the cul- crow’s nest view of the from TALLSHIPS . . 12. Casablanca ers. A spokesperson for the Volvo Group, tural destination that it has already be- . pretty spectacular as well, extending from which sponsors the prize, said “the jury come to a virtually 24/7 destination for ocean to hills to downtown LA! was impressed at how robustly an array education, fine dining and the arts. In WESTWOOD VILLAGE For reviews of other restaurants in the PLAN showing the migration of Westwood’s burgeoning dining scene to “Restaurant Row,” lining the west side of of purposes the redesign of the boule- the time that it will take for us to com- DINING DEALS! new Westwood Village by Jonathan Gould, Westwood Boulevard. vard succeeded in supporting: dining, plete the last leg of the line (to Santa visit www.JonathanGould.VillageView Key- strolling, biking to class, collecting and WWW.YELP.COM/WESTWOODVILLAGE Monica), the Village has a real oppor- word: Counter-Unintelligence channeling stormwater, shuttling MTA commuters the last mile to campus— tunity to become to the Westside what even easing the ability to cross from one Hollywood—which the PurpleLine also side of Westwood to the other.” Despite serves—is to the Eastside.” For its part, rumors that it was the blue-and-yellow UCLA expects the arrival of the line to colors of UCLA’s shuttle design that ap- both result in an increase of foot traffic pealed to the Swedish group, a member in the Village while reducing auto con- of the panel commented that “it was gestion, as more people chose to travel LACK OF IDENTITY clear to us that the remaking the Vil- there by rail—or become familiar with OPINION Sears vs. B of A lage would not have succeeding without the location of MTA’s new public park- the redefinition of the Boulevard itself. ing structures at the district’s periph- INTELLIGENTSIA 2011 To Village View, hall-style meeting will take place in 30 It is to the newly established public ery. FRESH ROASTED COFFEE NOW AT WESTWOOD VILLAGE 1937 I agree with LL. An Apple (store) days, followed by a vote of the entire square (Zocalo) what the aorta is to the in the Dome would degrade the image Village community. heart, in its role in supplying the body of the Village into a glorified shopping (Westwood Redevelopment Council) with oxygen.” MTA communications di- mall, rather than the cultural destina- rector Jolee Lichtvek will be in Sweden Dome tion that it is becoming. The kids from to accept the award with Westwood BID UCLA would be constantly hanging out [VILLAGE REVIVAL, from A1] LANDMARKS UNTOUCHED Head Eric Erickson on Sunday. there, and it would be a traffic night- Westwood. He received his MFA and NEW BUILDINGS: LACK OF IDENTITY Westwood’s Monthly MBA from UCLA; and as a member of NON LANDMARKS HEIGHTENED TO 45 FEET mare for residents. A historic archive DESIGN PROTOTYPE for the new vehicle, which is entirely powered by the solar film on its windows. Sears vs. B of A the (Westwood Redevelopment Coun- VACANT LOTS HEIGHTENED TO 160 FEET Building: for Westwood would be more appropri- TechWalk Showcases a WESTWOOD VILLAGE / INCONVENIENT TRUTHS RSAUD + EC 6 OCTOBER 2011 cil), he has been a vocal supporter of 2011 ate to its architectural significance. the Westwood Vision Plan since 2012. 1937 Sears Back to the future? Photos showing the evolution of Westwood/Broxton crossing, from historic Sears Building (1920, (MK) LEFT); to blighted Bank of America (2011, MIDDLE); to soon-to-be-opened Zocalo Entertainment Complex (RIGHT). Creative Renaissance “Coming from both an artistic and en- 1937 2011 trepreneurial background has allowed Village View, Zocalo May Apple or me to “think beyond the village,” said I was excited to hear that an Apple BY ALISSA WALKER Sanchez—also the primary theme of the past 15 years. Increased access is Ms. Luck has it all wrong: it may ac- Megastore is going to be in the Dome his campaign. not a cure-all; MetroRail will not only tually be what she derisively refers to as building. Right now, there is no place His success story has in many Be West- bring more patrons, but also undesir- “backwash” that saves Westwood, not is for us to get I.T. supports and supplies Even in a city that excels at rein- able elements that less accessible, pri- the cause of its demise. Time has proven Archive? on campus. Apple would be both the venting itself, it’s tough to think of a ways both polarized and galvanized dignified and popular anchor tenant Los Angeles neighborhood that has ex- the debate about the revitalization of WESTWOOD VILLAGE / INCONVENIENT TRUTHS RSAUD + EC vate developments6 OCTOBER 2011 like The Grove can that it is precisely this view of the Vil- side’s Portal perienced as drastic a transformation Westwood Village. For the past decade, Sears control, which will always make them lage as an “island” to be protected from the Village so desperately deserves. Sanchez has spoken strongly in favor more successful than business improve- modern life, not reconnected to it, that LAURA JOHN INITIATES (Anonymous UCLA student) as the tiny university-adjacent enclave 1937 2011 of Westwood Village. Was it just ten of re-imagining the Village for a new Sears to LA, But at ment districts (BIDs) like the Village. has prevented Westwood from otherwise generation in the 21st Century. This Now that the station is operational, benefiting from the obvious wealth of To Anonymous UCLA student, years ago that UCLA students staged EDWIN CHAN their legendary protest, walking out of view was widely controversial against the only hope for preserving Westwood cultural capital nearby that other mori- ARCHITECT I miss the Yamato restaurant, which Luck’s campaign promise to restore and What Cost? is for the BID to force MTA to close bund neighborhood centers would gladly was at least as big a draw, especially in classes and into Westwood’s abandoned preserve the neo-Spanish style of West- the Westwood Blvd. portal, thereby re- trade for. Its true revival will be a func- the evenings. storefronts to draw attention to their wood’s past. stricting direct MTA access to UCLA tion not of how well it fends off unnamed Last week, when Village View went (anonymous UCLA student) 49% occupancy rate? Today, the dark- Speaking to VIRGIN-CNN from (Lot 36) and the Wilshire corridor. riff raff, but rather whether it is able on-line with the report that the land- est day for the neighborhood has been his office at the W hotel in the heart of LAURA LUCK INITIATES capitalize on those offerings--enough mark Dome Building on Westwood To LL and MK, all but deleted from Westwood’s collec- tive memory, as a new generation of cre- Westwood Village, Sanchez said “I am – Laura Luck, Westwood resident to divert commuters returning to the Blvd. might become home to an APPLE As a Westwood Resident, I think an Sears atives have stormed the historic streets, ecstatic that the community has finally ROGER SHERMAN westside from work after exiting the Megastore, the response from our read- Apple Megastore is exactly what the Vil- activating the community, stoking eco- spoken. I understand why some people ARCHITECT MTA will ruin Westwood? Really? train, to have a drink or dinner, or even ers has been overwhelming. A sample lage needs. It will attract people, young still insist on preserving the memory As a UCLA alum and longtime patron take a stroll before climbing into their thread of their comments: and old, to come to the Village. Who nomic growth, and throwing one heck of of Westwood for sentimental reasons. of UCLALive!, I have reached an age car, bus or bike for the final leg home. needs an archive when all the historic a monthly party. My grandparents come from Spain, so Much has been made of the arrival when I can no longer drive to see shows, Dear Village View, buildings speak for themselves? Westwood Village’s rebirth is best the Old Westwood Village reminds me of the Purple Line to Westwood, and and so am excited to have an oppor- – Rantsa Lot I cannot believe that an APPLE Me- (JR) viewed at the intersection of Westwood very much of our ancestral home. It’s the opportunity it now affords West- tunity to come to the Village without gastore is coming to the Dome building! and Kinross on the third Friday of the comfort food! But if we remove our siders to travel downtown and points having to impose upon my daughter to Once again, Laura Luck has found This is simply a crime; whoever came Readers of Village View, month for the neighborhood’s TechWalk. blindfolds, we will realize that the im- east (and to students travelling west to accompany me. And as a senior, I have way to snatch failure out of the jaws up with that deal should be thrown in We would like to clarify the story of Launched in 2020, the event is now one age of Westwood as a quaint little vil- UCLA), avoiding the cost, time and ag- fewer worries about safety amidst a of success. If her thinly-veiled pro- jail. As a longtime Westwood resident, an Apple Megastore in the Dome build- of the city’s biggest happenings, rival- lage is lost in all the high-rises beyond gravation of driving. Amidst all of the healthy throng of pedestrians than tectionist views were any more ex- the Dome building has always been my ing. The proposal from Apple is still un- ing the now-defunct Downtown Art Wilshire or the mega-developments ballyhoo, however, is the fact that most I do—indeed did—for decades in the treme, they would require blockading favorite of all the historic structures. der review. IF approved, Apple would Walk of the 2000’s in both numbers and across Gayley in Lot 36. In order for us of the same boosters have conveniently Westwood of blighted storefronts and the roads into the village, with access Putting it to such commercial use is a be required to respect the architec- cultural influence. As you stroll the fi- to survive and grow into the future, we failed to consider the inevitable “back- empty sidewalks, walking my way to it by appointment only—perhaps violation of its civic status! It should be tural heritage of the historic building. nal hours of the weekly farmers’ market must stand tall and assert our identity wash” of public access to the village in back at night to the parking garage. even requiring a pre-arranged visa! preserved for cultural use only, such as Meanwhile, the Westwood BID is also on the Zocalo (with much of the produce with a new image, reinforced by a new ways that could threaten the progress an archive of the Village’s rich history. seriously considering the archive alter- DIAGRAMS showing how the adoption of a more surgical growth strategy (BOTTOM) enabled planners to preserve the [TECHWALK continued on A6] skyline, with forward-looking architec- Village’s 44 national and local landmarks, while keeping new mid-rises below height of Fox Tower. that has been made in the area over – Ricardo Winston, Los Angeles – Rem Paul (LL) native, pending on available funding, ture that speaks to who we are today.” if the Apple bid falls through. A town

Image credit: RSAUD with Edwin Chan

Living Culture is a future vision of Westwood as a magnet for arts, entertainment, and culture that in turn creates desirable residential and shopping environments. The Village’s identity is solidified as the Westside’s cultural core. It takes full advantage of the proximity to UCLA and builds upon the Hammer, the historical importance and current presence of cinema, the Geffen, UCLA-Live, the Fowler Museum, and possibly more remote institutions like the Getty or LACMA. Compatible small and large institutions, from galleries and new museums to artisanal food and drink establishments, are encouraged to come to Westwood. The creation of a vital cultural district depends on more than visitors to the area; it must cultivate a street life that is active, safe, welcoming, multi-faceted, and creative. Street life depends on a range of events, goods, and services as well as a resident population to support them. Based on cityLAB’s extensive research, the Living Culture scenario set guidelines for the imaginative redesign of the Village by Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design with architect Edwin Chan. WESTWOOD VILLAGE VISION

Village Living Room Image: Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design

The central theme of Westwood Blows Up! will revolve around the complex relationships among entertainment, performance, consumption, and technology as well as among spectacles, places, and communities. Through a diverse program of installation, theater, sound, video, games and the Internet, the festival will focus on the affects of entertainment and technology on arts and performance practices and how innovations in the arts and performance contribute to the rethinking of place. In fulfilling that mission, Westwood Blows Up! also seeks to give audience members, community groups, and students of all ages the chance to go beyond the traditional experience of observing an arts event and become active participants in the creative process. YOUNG ARCHITECTS MULTIPLYING ARCHITECTURE IN THE CITY

Los Angeles, neither unique nor like anywhere else, is full of architecture without urbanism. Yet L.A. has also spawned a wide range of urban-architectural prototypes over the last century from the Case Study Houses to Disneyland and the freeway. If some of L.A.’s DNA metastasized and spread in perverse forms, other diagnoses like "too much/little architecture," "autopia," or "suburbs in search of a metropolis" could lead to design correctives, precise excisions, systemic restructuring, prosthetics, or entirely new bodies. Right now, as L.A. is becoming another metropolitan version of itself, architecture can reassert its city-making practices. Here, juried proposals from six young (less than ten years out of school) L.A. designers suggest that architecture is not about utopian vision or the building, per se, but its generative capacity. They explore how design ideas propagate their offspring, operating at multiple scales, from the body to the city. THE FANTASY COMPACT

It’s the year 2026. Greater Los Angeles is now a public theme park. Having voted for and passed (almost unanimously) in the general election of 2018 Proposition FFF, or what’s known today as The Fantasy Compact, Los Angeles County took fantasy back from private interests and made the practice of sympathetic magic a public good. Conversion happens in stages. By 2019, urban mascots drawn from Reyner Banham’s seminal text, Los Angeles: The Architecture of the Four Ecologies, are stationed throughout the county. A Welcome to Los Angeles curriculum is instated for all kindergarden through twelfth-grade students countywide. New and current residents are encouraged to attend monthly awareness meetings as well. All Angelenos are reminded that they are cultural ambassadors. The first Wonder Stations are installed throughout the county for free public use. Some stations are physical structures while others are digital experience enhancements. Wonder Stations provide moments of pleasure and activate a hyper sense of place and well-being. It is suggested that Angelenos engage with at least one Wonder Station per week to maintain an optimal state of urban balance and to stay in touch with the Fantasy Substrate. The most impactful Fantasy Compact transition is implemented in 2020: all citizens are now cast members and characters who contribute to the ongoing narrative of the place. This promotes awareness that narrative is work. Since institution in 2022, all citizens/cast members benefit from opportunities under 1.72.05 for Cast Visitation, a program that allows for 5% of the population at any given time to experience Los Angeles as a different member of the cast. Uniforms are provided. New cast positions are added daily. By 2040, paid for by bond, there will be designated lands and rides.

WELCOMEPROJECTS Laurel Consuelo Broughton Kevin Reinhardt, Kodchamon Archimongkol, Brad Silling, Cindy Yiin powerful industries. As Norman Klein writes, "By 1900, Fantasy is the oft-overlooked and under- boosterism in Los Angeles had developed virtually into discussed driver of the form and urban experience a public-service corporation, centered around three of the built environment of Los Angeles. In its industries: tourism, real estate and transportation." development over the last 150 years, Los Angeles [1] But gradually the narratives have been absorbed has been given shape by many hands (citizens, into the place and into the people. Fantasy in Los developers, filmmakers, engineers, and architects) Angeles reaches from the built form of the giant through narrative storytelling that has proliferated Tamale in Montebello, to the Rose Parade-vision of Los a kind of fantasy urbanism. To spend a day in the Angeles broadcast every January 1, to the thousands life of Los Angeles is to slip between the real and of Angelenos today posting #palmtrees on Instagram fictional, banal and fantastic, moment to moment. daily to remind themselves of the "paradise" they These juxtapositions occur through a mixture of reside in. real design intervention—the streets of Hollywood glittering before your headlights, hyper-fictional While accessible, fantasy has historically been historic spaces like Olvera Street in downtown, and controlled privately and produced for profit either big the banality of eating a slice of pizza on the ground or small. If understood as a primary aspect of Los floor of strip mall that is wearing a giant derby hat. Angeles’ DNA, however, there is no way to imagine a future for Los Angeles without acknowledging its Profitable industries of twentieth-century power. Fantasy is the way forward precisely because of Los Angeles—tourism, real estate and development, its public legibility. The fantastic is not simply a style and entertainment—mastered a narrative flair for of architecture or a fiction but a substrate layer—The marketing and inspired on the part of the public Fantasy Substrate—out of which the whole of the built an insatiable thirst for actualized fantasy living. environment and a cultural relationship to it arose. As This thirst was so great that fantasy environments such, The Fantasy Substrate belongs to all citizens of were deployed in almost all arenas of Los Angeles Los Angeles and its benefits should be understood as commerce from shaped mom and pop restaurants to a public good rather than a public exploitation. thematized neighborhoods. Today privately-funded developments have continued to make use of this As a speculation for the future of Los Angeles, desire for fantasy and its continued existence in the The Fantasy Compact suggests an urban planning that urban fabric of Los Angeles by employing narratives is not rational. The Fantasy Compact is an agreement in order to package sellable experiences that can publicized through government but undertaken take place within the confines of their properties. between citizens to believe and participate in The Grove and The Americana shopping centers sympathetic magic. The compact is voted into effect are often-maligned but very popular contemporary by the citizens of Los Angeles County, thus making examples. Yet even buildings we might overlook the entire county a public theme park. The actual participate in the fantasy; the dingbat apartment making of the theme park is as much about collective building creates its own dreams with its name­— belief and participation as it is about law or physical Casa Bella or Tahiti Heights. As it turns out, fantasy changes to the environment. The citizenry undertake pervades normal life in Los Angeles so thoroughly to believe in their own implication in and labor in the that we hardly notice it. making and preserving of the fantasy environment of Los Angeles. But whose narratives are these? Originally, the fantasy narratives of Los Angeles were written by [1] Klein, N. M. "20th Century Los Angeles," Los Angeles Times. 1990: A1 DO NOT DISTURB OCCUPANTS

Architecture is owned. It is financed and governed. The protocols for producing architecture such as zoning ordinances, deed covenants, mortgage financing, et cetera are actively but invisibly dictating the architectural object. This spatial DNA of the city, while seemingly fixed, is incredibly precarious. Do Not Disturb Occupants approaches architectural outcomes in Los Angeles through the manipulation of property ownership, policy loopholes, tax dodges, political coups, and collective development strategies. In a region with one of the highest-value real estate markets in the country, many Los Angeles municipalities and their neighborhoods have historically high ratios of rental property to owner-occupied houses. The financial protocols of the past century, specifically the 30-year mortgage, enabled Los Angeles’s sprawl through widespread homeownership. This financial instrument is responsible for many of the objects and materials of our built environment as mortgage underwriters adhered to Federal Housing Administration standards and specifications without considering lifecycle or environmental impact beyond the term of the loan. The resulting structures have limited durability, but were easily financed. By proposing alternative methodologies for financing and owning architecture, this project re-imagines single neighborhoods, block by block, as repeatable micro-cities that redefine the role of citizenship, community, domesticity, and the economics of housing through material and performance in urban space.

FIELD DAY Marc Maxey, Ellen Donnelly by removing real estate from the speculative market. A confluence of historic and financial The land trust can begin to combine lots and erase circumstances in Santa Monica’s Ocean Park property lines to assemble larger tracts of land for the neighborhood make it ripe for reconsidering its L3c to develop as part of its socially-driven mission of ownership structures, land use and zoning, as a providing high quality design and affordable housing. prototype for urban reinvention. Over seventy percent Land Trust members can either rent their home or of Santa Monica households are rentals. In 1978 purchase it through equity shares in the L3c. The California voters passed Proposition 13, reducing previous ideology of homeownership–a burden only property owners’ taxes by as much as 57% and justified by rising real estate prices–is replaced with drastically limiting future increases. Less than a year a sustainable approach to building wealth through a later, Santa Monica voters amended their charter community-led, design-driven lifestyle where best-use to pass one of the strictest rent-control laws in the rather than highest-use governs development. country. These laws provide incredible protections for tenants, while simultaneously disincentivizing Using this alternative model of residential investment and maintenance by landlords. Both laws development, streets will also be reconsidered as were overwhelmingly successful and have utterly community assets and their use redefined. As cities failed. Today there are owners of multimillion dollar become less reliant on the automobile through properties who pay $1000 per year in property taxes increased mass transit, cycling, car sharing, and while a new home buyer can expect to pay ten to fifteen driverless technologies, many residential streets times as much. There are longtime renters paying function as mere parking lots. With municipal support $650 per month for a bungalow with an ocean view from the city, the street grid can be reimagined as a while the market rate of their unit is nearly $4000 per building site that encourages incremental development month. While property values continue to skyrocket, at different scales to enhance the qualities of urban massive discrepancies exist between market rate experience. Similar to the beloved walk streets of Los rents and property taxation. It is in this space that Angeles’ Venice neighborhoods, our proposal creates new opportunities for architectural intervention and urban communities privileging the pedestrian over the policy overhaul exist. driver without giving up the necessity of using a car in LA. As designers we recognize that the ownership and Through the implementation of a non-profit use of the car will be disrupted in the coming years. It land trust hybridized with a low-profit limited liability is our position that cities are sites of constant change company (L3c), longtime owners wishing to liquidate and policy must be revisited and reconsidered as properties encumbered by rent control are financially economic, cultural and social situations shift. Do Not incentivized to sell their buildings to the L3c and Disturb Occupants offers a radical new chapter in the donate their land to the trust as a tax write off against city’s history where economic necessity meets the massive capital gains. Decoupling ownership of uncanny, and all the neighbors are on board. buildings from land creates permanent affordability CITY RENDER

Figure 1. Assembly of one asphalt road part, one exterior stucco part, and four interior plaster parts.

Figure 2. Assembly of four asphalt road parts, four exterior stucco parts, and four interior plaster parts.

Figure 3. Assembly of one asphalt road part, one exterior stucco part, and one interior plaster part.

Anna Neimark, Andrew Atwood (First Office), Theo Triantafyllidis 10” (22”)10” (22”) 12” (24”)12” (24”) 375’ (30”)375’ (30”)

4’ (1-1/4”)4’ (1-1/4”)

4’x8’ Drywall, Thickness of road excavation Veneer plaster coat, Primed and painted (2 ply Museum board)

Stucco, Board Joint,

Fine Dash Finish (2-1/2”) (2-1/2”)8’ 8’ Taped and Plastered (Acrylic Paint with (1/4” Masking Tape, white) fFoaming Polyurethane Asphalt laid into metal lath atop a and Sand) compact gravel base (Grey rubberized silicone with dark grey 1/8” rubber aggregate, cast into wood forms)

12” (1/4”)12” (1/4”) 12” (1/4”)12” (3”) 40’ (3”)40’

20’ (30”)20’ (30”) (30”)20’ 20’ 2” x 10” Wood Floor Joist,

15” (30”)15” (30”) 15” (30”)15” doubled Expanded Metal Lathe, (Basswood 1/8” x 1/4”) Galvinzed Steel (36”) (36”)450’ 450’ (lasercut 1/8” Acrylic, white)

2”x4” wood stud, exposed for incoming wall (Basswood 1/16” x 1/8”) Paper Backing (lasercut 1/16” Acrylic, white) Metal Mesh Earth Grid for high tensile strength. (Nylon fibers added for strenght and reduced deflection)

Figure 4. Diagram of one stucco surface part. Figure 5. Diagram of one plaster surface part. Figure 6. Diagram of one asphalt intersec- Stucco is applied in three layers. The initial Plaster is applied to drywall that is secured to tion part. Asphalt is set into a mesh earth scratch coat creates adhesion to the metal dimensional lumber framing. Drywall is taped grid above a compacted gravel base. Asphalt lath, which is nailed through the paper nailing at joints and plastered, sanded, and painted is rolled to solidify the hot aggregate mix- backer to the exterior sheathing or studs. Final to create a continuous interior surface. Stucco ture, creating a smooth street surface. Paving plaster coats create the finish texture, which set on metal lath with paper nailing backer is marking is rolled or stenciled directly onto can vary from smooth to highly textured, creat- shown. Model built at one fortieth real size. the asphalt once it is set. Model built at one ing a continuous exterior surface. Model built three-hundredth real size. at twice real size. aesthetic qualities to encompass not just LA in No matter where we look or how close we photographic representation, but also in design get, Los Angeles appears as a city of continuous practice. Taking stucco as a primary example at materials: drywall clads its interiors, stucco – the the architectural scale, we propose to draw the city exteriors, and asphalt – everything else. These directly through its material finishes. Stucco, after quick and cheap finishes tend to flatten parts all, is not for nothing often referred to as "render." and ornaments, casting elevations and roads Stucco renders exteriors, adding texture and tone seamless and infinite. Perhaps it is because to architectural forms. Drywall, using joint tape these materials are so common that they so and compound, when primed and painted, does deeply impress themselves upon our minds. We the same at the scale of the room. Asphalt, when use the word “impress,” because they produce layered, with pavement markings applied to it, does something of a relief. Relief in both of its senses: the same at the scale of the city. LA is, therefore, a mental and material. We feel relief when we city of rendering; it is here that we can begin to encounter them, when we find ourselves in front impress our digital anticipations of our own future of their ordinary textures. They exhibit a weak directly onto our urban forms. attitude. Their thick surfaces smooth things over, dulling architectural parts by erasing their So we thought to stage an experiment in seams. So we come to the second sense of relief. asking the audience to design urban blocks from Drywall, stucco, and asphalt, especially once three surface finishes, in the forms of a model painted, produce material relief. Meaning—if we and an app. Here, in both the physical and digital can still use this term to refer to architectural worlds, three materials are forced to interact in syntax—becomes muffled. LA’s architecture one abstract space at three different scales: urban does not speak. Its tectonics are not revealed. asphalt intersections that designate building Passers-by remain entirely uninformed. No one quadrants are represented at a scale of 1:300, knows what happens here. Without apps or the while painted drywall interior elevations that lean kindness of strangers, Los Angeles would be on stuccoed exterior elevations create possible barely legible. building configurations at scales of 1:40 and 2:1, respectively. Of course, most of the time, these We have seen these blank qualities material planes will misbehave and collapse onto exaggerated in Ed Ruscha’s graphite drawings the asphalt. Prop them, lean them, or let them pile of Some Los Angeles Apartments and in up; there are no codes, no rules, no rights, and no Catherine Opie’s deadpan portraits of Mini- wrongs. Send us a picture when you’re done. malls, and now we would like to extend these HOW TO LEVEL A FOUNDATION

How To Level a Foundation is a research project exploring how small institutions can have a direct role in changes to the urban landscape. The project is a manual in three parts. The first section is a study focusing on partnerships between institutions in Los Angeles: a set of practices driven by lending and characterized by the spread of production, distribution, and display of cultural programs throughout Los Angeles. The second section maps LA through the lens of vacant lots, transit infrastructure, and arts budgets to reveal opportunities for alternative modes of production and exhibition The third section is a prototype at typical sites for lending and distributing the work of cultural institutions along existing infrastructure in LA. Organized along heavily trafficked areas, the production and display of cultural programs is supported by a foundation of architectural parts that pack and unpack.

Reimaging Team: Gabriel Fries-Briggs, Brendan Shea, Nicholas Pajerski, Alison Rust We’re not suggesting foundations because Los Angeles institutional buildings are too heavy, or that their We like LA because it’s variable. It feels mass is necessarily a problem, but rather because like other things too. Its many parts pop and the site suggested in the call for proposals—the city, whistle, turning on as things shift around various Los Angeles—presented logistical problems. So we centers. Its culture is not something that can agreed on foundations. LA’s institutions command be quantified. It bleeds out through the city and resources commensurate with the city’s size, vast crystallizes in all manner of places. The City is not storage facilities and payrolls. But for all that stuff, only full of stuff but full of institutions that collect they’re often hard to see beyond a signature facade. and move—think the Broad, bulky item pickup, or A model of cultural institutions with a central the Port of LA. Think of LA in terms of its weight— command and controlled daylighting can’t compete how masses shift the city’s shape, define its with the vast distribution facilities and processing edges and locate its cores. These features are not centers that move stuff around at breakneck pace. strictly the site of our proposal but the subject. Even as we develop more densely, LA resists a single Distribution center. We think that’s ok. So let’s diversify our How to Level a Foundation is a guide to institutions rather than make new ones. And trade distributing the work of cultural institutions. the white box for the portable, scalable and modular. As Los Angeles densifies and doubles down, Perhaps the most appropriate role for architecture a network of level foundations supports a in this scenario is provide foundations. heterogeneous mix of parts: curated architectural Foundations samples. The proposal promotes the activities of Similar to a network of museums lending LA institutions—events, education, production, each other works of art, How to Level a Foundation display, idling, disseminating—with a preference is a system for lending architectural parts and for the fragment, out-of-context and borrowed. Los infrastructures. A base supports. A frame displays. Angeles is founded on uneven urban development A wifi router connects. Two walls are sufficient and threaded by major systems of transit. Defined for an office. These architectural fragments are by a concentrated core of cultural institutions a mobile foundation for dispersed institutions and a dispersed field of everyday urbanism, Los working on and in the city. Distributed both alone Angeles is in need of a planning scenario to level and in clusters, they form a family equipping a new and redistribute cultural amenities. This project architectural site with another. Foundations are speculates on the possibility of rethinking the heavy. They are the bearing for architectural load, existing infrastructure and cultural potential of designed to support growth or slight movement, Los Angeles. In examining how art and architecture and they get covered up. Foundations provide a can be redistributed, not only throughout the formal and operational logic. Freighted visibly, city, but on a regional scale, this research they fit a set ratio of dimensions suitable for project proposes discrete actions: to slow down transportation and shed light on the processes that movement, rethink storage space and daylight often keep work in the climate controlled shadows. distribution. It proposes prototypes looking to be How to Level A Foundation is an ongoing pursuit, tested. investigating how to lend and move architectural parts and redistribute Los Angeles. YES, IN MY BACKYARD (AND EVERYWHERE ELSE TOO)

In March 2017, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, a measure proposed to set limits on Los Angeles County’s density development, will be on the ballot for voters. Its competing measure, the Build Better LA Initiative, was on the ballot in November 2016. The names of these initiatives, "Build Better LA" and "Preserve LA," now represent an axis of division in Los Angeles’ building politics. Voters are prompted to take sides so that the future direction of density development can be resolved democratically. However, it is problematic for building politics to shrink to a binary choice, especially one which will affect the entire city regardless of the intrinsic differences between its neighborhoods. The situation is worsened because Los Angeles residents, most of whom are neither pro- development agents nor anti-development activists, are poorly informed of the subject matter. Without a broad comprehension of the implications of density development, public participation in building politics may devolve into sentiments or inaction. Therefore, it is an urgent task to spark exchanges between public constituencies and contour the debate on density development. In this light, "Yes, In My Backyard (And Everywhere Else Too)," a pro-density project, operates as an augmented reality game that provides a platform for information dissemination and civic debate. Played by residents from all neighborhoods in Los Angeles, this game cultivates pro-density mindsets by advocating the need for density and its pragmatic benefits. At neighborhood scale, players must collect, move, and crowdsource virtual bricks to build volumes that are linked to density-dependent rewards such as transit services, community parks, and grocery stores. The more players build, the more amenities they earn for their neighborhood. At city scale, the totality of these virtual bricks amounts to the housing stock required to accommodate the projected population growth (1.6 million) for Los Angeles by 2060. Therefore, players are creating versions of virtual development in anticipation of the real development needed. The more players engage, the sooner the city can come to terms with its projected population.

Legg Yeung, James Janke, Ryan Hong the public with density development. It challenges Over two game stages, players will produce the public to deploy density tactically and aligns multiple virtual scenarios of density development. personal gaming experience with community Each neighborhood will first confront its density building targets and city development goals. The target by redistributing virtual bricks from recent success of Pokemon Go! suggests that the its boundary to build local clusters of virtual technology and market that support location-based, volumes. Once an internal target is reached, the augmented reality games are already mature. The neighborhood becomes unlocked, allowing its wide appeal of such games is rooted in their ability to players to build outwards and outside players entice public participation through immersiveness. to build within. This staging strategy facilitates By overlapping the virtual with the real, even the a shared responsibility of density development most mundane urban block can be transformed. among all neighborhoods, and encourages local While Pokemon Go! was created for commercial and consensus. recreational purposes, its formula can be adapted However, given the intrinsic geographical to engage the public politically. Thereby, "Yes, In My differences between the neighborhoods, their Backyard (And Everywhere Else Too)" latches onto preferences of density also differ in terms of locality the existing infrastructure and opportunities in the and distribution. As a result, these differences gaming industry, but reappropriates them to guide offer diverse benchmarks for density assessment. public perception of density development. Furthermore, players’ interests are rooted in Simply viewing images of density development market economy and social identity, causing projects can quickly incite strong sentiments. Given them to intermingle, negotiate, and compete. This their one-sided authorship, these images do not produces an augmented urban landscape of both paint a complete picture of density development, but conflict and cooperation. Players will navigate instead elicit fear of economic and social instability. through mountainous terrains, visit monuments Therefore, to persuade the public to say "Yes, In My under construction, and encounter campaign Backyard," it must be educated comprehensively on message billboards. As a result, the dynamics and the subject matter. This project provides a process scenarios within the augmented urban landscape for the public to test-run their choices, and a medium will generate cautionary tales and testimonials for to deliberate over the outcomes. It creates room for a grounded debate on density development. much-needed civic debates about the future of Los In order to maximize accessibility, the Angeles, discouraging "No" as the answer to density. "Yes, In My Backyard (And Everywhere Else Too)" It seeks to inspire Angelenos to adopt a pro-density project utilizes a gaming mechanism to confront mentality, thereby fostering a city of YIMBYs. PROPOSAL FOR DOWNTOWN ALLEYS

(N) BRICK PAVER PATIO, PT’D.

(N) CONCRETE PLANTER, (N) WINDOW FRAME SKYLIGHT (N) COLLECTIVE LOUNGING (N) DRYING AREA. PT’D. SEE X/AX.X FOR DETAILS PILLOW, CPT-1 ALUMINUM FLOOR GRATE, PT’D. (E) CONCRETE (N) 5” RECT. SKATE RAIL, BOULDER TO REMAIN. (N) DOG BATHING FOUNTAIN PT’D. AND SPLASH PAD SUGGESTED LOCATION (N) CONCRETE PAD OF VELODROME (N) CLIMBING WALL (N) TURF PICNIC AREA

(N) WATER FOUNTAIN

(N) STREET NEWSPAPER RACK

(N) LANDSCAPED BERM

(N) LANDSCAPING (N) RUBBER FLOOR BALANCE BEAM (N) RIGID RUBBER DRONE LANDING (N) WOOD SCOREBOARD, PAD PT’D. (N) STAINED CONCRETE OUTDOOR SHUFFLEBOARD COURT

(N) FISHING POND

(N) RECT. TUBE STEEL 1 1/2” x 2“ x 1/4”

(N) STEEL PLATES 2’-2” x 3“ x 1/4”

SUGGESTED LOCATION FOR CHARGING STATION

(N) PREFABRICATED MOLDED PLASTIC AUDIO SYSTEM

ALIGN ALIGN

(N) LONG JUMP LANDING (N) WOOD SITTING PLATOFRM, PIT SEE X/ AX.X (N) CMU PYRAMID SCENIC (N) GREEN SCREEN SELFIE (N) CMU PAVER PATIO, PT’D. OVERLOOK, PT’D. STATION (N) MARBLE WALL CONFERENCE AREA

(N) BLOCKWORK RILL WATER FEATURE (N) 2 1/4” DIA PIPE SKATE RAIL, PT’D.

(N) LANDSCAPING

Downtown Los Angeles is currently experiencing a building boom. While many parking lots have instantly turned into construction sites the emphasis on a broader city-wide pedestrian network has failed to keep up. At the same time, an existing informal network of alleys and surface parking lots provide pedestrian shortcuts for daily downtown life. Furthermore, some of these thoroughfares have become formalized shortcuts such as the Historic St. Vincent’s Court, Grand Central Market, The Spring Arcade Building, and Biddy Mason Memorial Park. This proposal considers the existing alleys and parking lots as territory for the public realm. Much like the High Line in New York City, the alleys and surface parking lots of Downtown Los Angeles are an existing infrastructure that form a fertile territory for a Los Angeles street level High Line, or Horizontal Line made up of public avenues and squares. This proposal aims to tap into the existing infrastructure of alleys, as well as surface parking lots and propose a new leisure network of public avenues throughout downtown. The ambition of this project is an architectural and urban proposal for the alleyways and surface parking lots in downtown Los Angeles that are populated and activated with micro-architectural interventions. Through quantity these micro-architectural interventions generate a new type of collective and leisure space that is pedestrian focused. In other words, the idea is a new type of public park, free and open to all, in the network of alleyways and surface parking lots in Downtown Los Angeles.

Office Kovacs Team: Andrew Kovacs, Yessenia Juarez, Erin Wright, Israel Ceja, Peter Boldt, Jena Meeks, Naomi Steinhagen SPRING SPRING AND AND 6TH 5TH MAIN MAIN AND AND 5TH 6TH

city block with micro architectural interventions. The proposal is important to Times 10 These micro architectural interventions are a new because it imagines the grouping and quantity densely packed landscape devoted to activities of micro-architectural interventions in an urban of leisure. Activities of leisure to be proposed are context as forming a new urban network, devoted botanical gardens, swimming pools, bike paths, sport to pedestrians and leisure. This expanding courts, dog parks, shaded resting areas (for sitting horizontal conglomerate of micro architectural or sleeping), viewing platforms, follies, pavilions, etc. interventions is overlaid on an existing network Forms of leisure to be proposed are ziggurats, strips, of city streets and sidewalks, positing a new city mounds, colonnades, hypostyle halls, stairways, network at the scale of a pedestrian against the fields, etc. generally multi-level and stacked buildings of Downtown Los Angeles. As much of the new construction in the current building boom of Downtown Los Angeles The most important scale for this project is nears completion one can start to see the rooftops that of the downtown city block. Through the size of of these new structures take shape on satellite views. micro-architectural interventions their placement, These rooftops are devoted to activities of leisure, yet organization, arrangement, and function can they are privatized. The idea of the city as a place of alter and adjust block to block. While the site collective living is replaced by isolated and detached for this particular study and proposal is focused spaces. This proposal aims to generate leisure space on Downtown Los Angeles, the idea of a multiple for all. Rather than elevating activities of pleasure micro architectural interventions grouped in a high in the sky, these activities are proposed on the dense quantity to allow for a new type of collective street, for the public to enjoy. space can be transferred to other leftover, residual, underused, and undervalued spaces in other type An important disciplinary subplot of this of urban environments throughout Los Angeles. proposal is to position the project in parallel (not The ability for the proposal to adapt and proliferate against or for) the American urban renewal project to other locations is to be understood through the of the pedestrian mall. The pedestrian mall aimed to micro/pedestrian scale. At this particular moment close streets and limit vehicular traffic in the name in time, the alleyways and surface parking lots of of commercialism and consumption. Sometimes Downtown Los Angeles are a fertile testing ground some of those projects succeeded and sometimes due to rapid development. they failed. With that said, this is not a proposal for a pedestrian mall. The goal will is for an alternative to As demonstrated in the proposed plan, the the pedestrian mall - a new type of urban park for the concept is to occupy and fill both alleyways and pedestrian and devoted to collectively and leisure. surface parking lots on a Downtown Los Angeles cityLAB OPERATING SYSTEM

The cityLAB Operating System is a model for a much-needed, new kind of practice. Particularly in the United States, the declining role of the public sector has left urban design with a weaker hand: urban problems do not have specific "clients" per se, and the thorniest problems in cities today are rarely site-specific. Yet as architects, our work is typically constrained by site and guided by clients. For cityLAB, these constraints are turned to an advantage: in contrast to a design firm, cityLAB makes its home in an academic institution, UCLA, so that it can seek out and initiate projects, rather than wait to be sought after. In initiating our own work, part of each undertaking is to construct our clients as we invent solutions. Likewise, no project at cityLAB exists in isolation, but rather is part of a family of undertakings that are applicable to cities at large. For us, every project must operate as both a specific solution and an urban exemplar. The lab’s priorities are guided by its five initiatives: rethinking green, postsuburbanism, spatial justice, new infrastructure, and urban sensing. Most projects address multiple initiatives. Like all good research, cityLAB’s demonstrations continue to fuel new iterations of each idea, in a kind of continuous incubation process. The continuous cycle spits out increasingly coherent conjectures about urban and architectural innovations that address current issues. When a prototype eventually goes to market, that is, when a demonstration is made public, it comes equipped with its own ecology of policy recommendations, implementation strategies, data support, and political momentum. cityLAB remains integral to that ecology, as we undertake related problems and develop new strategies. existing conditions offer radical solutions

a o ottal t

a Total Acreage 5,419 o t loal Offices 2,745 t a

Total 5,419 Total 16,257 units

Project: CityCraft Here, existing surface parking lots that punctuate every street in LA are repurposed to become sites for radical housing proposals that increase density cityLAB DESIGN/RESEARCHand utilize prefabricated PORTFOLIO construction modules. The team suggests starting with a city-owned lot as a demonstration project. 2006-2016 parking lot redevelopment ordinance • by-right multi-family development on any C-zoned parking lotProp X [2006] • 75 foot heightProp limit X is an experiment to test new strategies for • no change in FAR, but FAR may be calculated using the square footagetransforming of the entire the city through two distinct means: parcel, prioragile to subdivision planning and constructive collaboration. We • no additional parking requirement beyond that which is alreadymust on the site model new policy–Prop X–to be responsive to existing conditions, flexible enough to change with the times, and mindful of an emergent urban order.

postsuburban city, spatial justice

parking lots, shopping malls, and office properties O-Z.LA27 [2006] The current atmosphere of LA’s urbanism consists of defined O-Zones distributed across a residual field of holes delimited by policies of exclusion and disinvestment. The proliferation of diverse new O-Zones will disrupt older urban categories by producing new audiences that cut across those social and spatial statics, undermining previous models of identity politics and special interest. postsuburban city, spatial justice, rethinking green

Backyard Homes [2008-2012] Backyard Homes proposes innovative, flexible, environmentally sensitive, and affordable architectural models for infilling Southern California’s iconic single-family residential fabric. This radical step has the potential to restructure sprawl in an intrinsically responsive manner: homeowners, and neighborhoods can incrementally make their own homes more flexible and more affordable. postsuburban city

Fast Forward Urbanism: Rethinking Architecture’s Engagement with the City [2007-11] In the wake of recent failures in America’s urban infrastructure, an emerging group of activist designers are calling on architects to rethink their relationship to the city. ...they favor working with the realities of urban space, finding hidden opportunities in what already exists in our cities; they eschew monolithic, top-down approaches. postsuburban city, new infrastructure cityLAB DESIGN/RESEARCH PORTFOLIO 2006-2016

Superficial Superglow [2008-09] Focusing on the condensation of multiple technologies into building enclosures, this research explores schemes that demonstrate the ability to provoke interaction, map interactions and reveal these flows through the integration of illumination, sensors and projectors within a full scale storefront system. urban sensing

WPA 2.0 [2008-12] WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture began as an open design competition seeking innovative, implementable proposals that place infrastructure at the heart of rebuilding our cities during this next era of metropolitan recovery. It provides global access to the range of new ideas and resources gathered throughout the competition, workshop, and symposium. new infrastructure

Chia Mesa [2008-09] CHIA MESA transforms the strip mall into a prototype and a recovery strategy for Phoenix. Rapid urbanization of the metro area–its unbridled horizontal expansion into the outlying landscape– has destroyed not only its potential agricultural productivity, but its civic identity as well.

rethinking green

Parking Day LA [2008] The road is America’s largest public space. there are 3,981,512 miles of public road in the US, roughly 69 feet (.0132 miles) for each person in the country. Yet, we rarely treat the road as a public space. In celebration of Park(ing) Day 2008, the ‘drive-by, walk-in’ capitalized on this untapped social infrastructure, linking the public space of the road with the public space of the sidewalk. new infrastructure cityLAB DESIGN/RESEARCH PORTFOLIO 2006-2016

Duck-and-Cover [2009-10] Duck-and-Cover: Thinking Out of the Big Box, exploits the desire of retailers to build their brand, membership, or following through lifestyle and experience. By selecting levers of ecology, economy, technology, and identity, Duck-and-Cover gathers the political support necessary to reshape the big box as a metropolitan building type. postsuburban city

Playa Rosa [2009-10] Playa Rosa grew out of cityLAB’s WPA 2.0 ideas competitions and symposium in 2009. Located next to a major transit node, on the site of a failing commercial center in South Los Angeles, the Playa Rosa project works to define a new model of community revitalization for the post-sprawl era in the form of a hyper-consolidated public service hub. new infrastructure, spatial justice

Tracks of Change [2009-11]

specialtyspecialty retail retail This multidisciplinary study conducts three interrelated investigations: 1) to determine the types of urban development that have emerged photovoltaic louvered roof photovoltaic louvered roof around high-speed stations elsewhere through the

AR TIC Delphi method, 2) to identify the likely effects of AR TIC high-speed rail stations on the Southern California SANTA ANA RIVER communities adjacent to them, and 3) to delineate parking access road the best policy and planning practices to bring parking access road tree well (open to wash below) tree well about urban development aligned with the state’s (open to wash below) larger environmental, land use, and transportation light industrial/incubator business space commercial goals. structured parking light industrial/incubatorHigh Speed Rail business space commercial new infrastructure, postsuburban city structured parking High Speed Rail SHOP, PARK N’ RIDE: LANDUSE (EXPLODED) 20/22 93 Westwood Village Vision [2010-11] Westwood Village vision is a cityLAB research initiative that investigates the highly complex urban and political forces contributing to the current state of Westwood Village culminating with specific recommendations to revitalize Westwood Village as an attractive, economically vibrant, and sustainable area. new infrastructure, postsuburban city cityLAB DESIGN/RESEARCH PORTFOLIO 2006-2016

Westwood Blows Up! [2012-13] The central theme revolves around the complex relationships among entertainment, performance, consumption, and technology as well as among spectacles, places, and communities. Through a diverse program of installation, theater, sound, video, games and the Internet, it focuses on the affects of entertainment and technology on arts and performance practices. urban sensing, new Infrastructure

Digital Blue Sky [2011] The Digital Blue Sky workshop considered two primary ways that spatial computing can enhance the residential environment: improving environmental performance and enriching social, community life. A fundamental issue: how can the digital infrastructure of hardware and software be designed so that it anticipates inevitable changes and evolves over time? urban sensing, new Infrastructure

334Up inA. the Loukaitou-Sideris Air 333 et al. Up in the Air 335 Up in the Air [2011-12] This research project documents the various  obstacles elevated rail stations face in leveraging   light rail transit investments for transit-oriented   development; develops a typology of urban design   strategies for better integration of the stations to their surroundings; develops a set of performance and functional measures for these different urban design solutions; and test their application to a proposed and an existing Southern California Figure 10. El Segundo Station. Figure 11. Avalon Station. Figure 12. Rosa Parks Station.

‘Multiple Interruption’ Station: Harbor amenities and four disamenities exist within the 1 mile area, largely due to the lack Light Rail Transit highway median station. The availability of publicly owned land, the presence of additional 4 of developable land. Connectivity is limited by the height of the platform and the developable land under the freeway, the station’s highly intermodalLocated in nature South and Los Angeles, Harbor Station is a transport hub at the interchange 400-foot long trip to the station exit. In addition, the station area scored high in the presence of important destinations in the vicinity would appearof I-105 to and make the Rosa Harbor Freeway (Figure 13). The station has three levels. The negative environmental factors, including litter and prominent billboard signage. Parks a prime site for developing TODs. Yet the typical TODuppermost formulations platform, have located at the I-105 median, is elevated 42 feet above However, the high transit connectivity of the station area (19 transit stops and new infrastructures, postsuburban city yet to take hold. For ‘Single Interruption’ stations, Side Access,Figueroa Viaduct Street (Path and serves as the Green Line right-of-way. The lowermost level of BRT) provides an opportunity for leveraging development. Above) and New Paths all offer the potential for increasingthe connectivity station is 35 and feet below pedestrian grade and located in the median of the Downtown Los Angeles 1870 to 1945: A machine for office work Because of the absence of developable land and the multi-level nature of the enhancing access.MACHINE Taking into AGE accountIntegrating the the city, amountbuilding, and desk through of efficiency, developable economies, and scientific management land and Harbor Freeway trench, where the dedicated right-of-waystation, forSilver only the Line Viaduct bus (Path Above) and New Paths seem applicable to ‘Multiple specific context of the Rosa Parks station, it is suggested that the Viaduct (Path rapid transit (BRT) is accessed. 1890 Downtown LA 1781 1880s Interruption’ stations, and only the New Paths appears1896 feasible for the specific 1903 Pueblo called California Architect and Building News makes the point, “Every By the 1890s, the economic Los Angeles First height limit Above) intervention“La Reyna is most likely to catalyze further development in the vicinity enterprising man seeks to get as near to the center as possible and advantages firms realize by population is ordinance enacted 1909 de Los Angeles” With the exception of transportationwill put up with maintenance great limitations and inconvenience rather yards than and freight raillocating near one another 97,000 Free Speech Ban is founded leave the heart of trade and commerce.” context of Harbor Station.concentrate Southern Because California the station is cut-off from the surrounding urban The city CITY 1880 commerce in an increasingly 1894 Pullman Strike fathers place (Figure 12). Such an intervention would take advantage ofrights-of-way, often unused and and the land occupiedLos by Angeles the freeways,1885 the remaining1887 land (77%)bustling is Downtown Los Angeles a ban on free population is Santa Fe railroad Electric trolleys speech from 1870 1877 Birds eye view of Los Angeles fabric, adding new activities and programmes to theExecutives immediate at Machine Age firms prize station area is 11,000 enters Southern first travel in Los 1891 opportunities for face-to-face communication, public Spring and Temple Railroads arrive in Los Angeles upon the The Los Angeles Times notes, California, setting off Angeles 1889 information sharing, and client and consumer Continental Building streets and underused spaces under the I-5 and connectStreets, Downtown development there to potentialcompletion of the Southern Pacific in 1876, Orange County "The geographical center of Los 1903 largely residential, with single- and multiple-familya rate housingwar with occupying most of access that only a central place, augmented with The 13-story Continental private Los Angeles contributing to the social vibrancy and unlikely tobreaks stitch off due to togetherAngeles is the old Plaza, thebut neighbourhoods on either side of the Harbor property Southern Pacific Built in the new communications technologies affords Building, Los Angeles’ first economic competitiveness of downtown by population growth that has long since ceased to be except for 1 Romanesque skyscraper, is completed – making it a place to transport large the center of population.” Future ofthe Plaza Work [2012-15] redevelopment of the retail centre to the south, locating establishments at street 1884-1888 Revival style a reticulated frame the mile area. Opportunitiesamounts of customers, workers, and goods for developing transit-supportiveApproximately 100 density nodes 4 Freeway.1886 Developing some infill buildingstypically in theassociated commercial area on the northeast structure for more open First oil well dug new towns are An acre of land 1876 with commercial interior space in Pico Canyon planned goes for $100 The Wainwright Building is a office spaces of the level, deploying178mm site design to enhance the quality of pedestrianaround experience the station along are limited by barriers created by theside intersection of Figueroa, of however, two10-story red brick and office creating aperiod, New the Bradbury Path dedicated to non-motorized building in downtown St. Building is built in Larkin Building is completed 1887 Louis, Missouri. Designed by a period of in Buffalo -- considered the

BLDG An acre of land Dankmar Adler and Louis optimistic growth the arterial street, and creating more legible connections betweenheavily the travelled Green and freeways. The resulting nuisances (traffictravelgoes for $1,500 noise, from vibrations, this area to the station (Figure 13) could potentially create new first purpose-designed office Sullivan, the Wainwright is a for downtown office environment for a specific 1879 Telephone highly influential model for space. Typical of its organization. The innovation The telephone, once the office buildings, and was period, the Bradbury Fully integrated of the central atrium Blue Lines and other existing transportation networks at streetodours grade. and insect swarms)most common (and provide a major challenge for development.connections to Only destinations fiveamong the first on skyscrapers either side ofBuilding the featuresfreeway. Such awithin path an would buffer Inestablishes a neutral, a multi-year effort, cityLAB and UCLA graduate essential) business in the world. The Wainwright office spaces that architectural hermetic space with The punch clock appliance, supports a 1891 building features identical are discretely workspace and minimal distractions and Wainright Building fragments office wide-ranging network "honeycomb" plans to express segmented into surrounded by visual links to the exterior, workers' lives into of economic relations in architecture the autonomous units the latest thereby increasing efficiency public and private parts. An entirely new building type underlying economic for individual or technology, the and greater worker The office becomes a Holcomb specifically devoted to knowledge-based relationships whereby small-scale work worker becomes 1904 identification with the firm; 1906 Acoustic downtown worker's 1879 work accommodates the explosive growth owners and investors seek entities a component of a Larkin Building workplace as family Stenotype: Created a Telephone 1893 Globe Co. Office 1860s second home in managerial and business service the greatest possible revenue system that 1901 whole new segment of Bradbury Building 1896 Furniture Typewriter: Separated from both the domestic 1880s activities with the least possible integrates the Numerical Keyboard: administrative Made writing 1870 Calculating Machine sphere and industrial zones, the Frederick W. Taylor promulgates outlays space, the tools Early form of the workers who could more efficient & defined The calculating machine is marketed as office carves out new places in the methods to quantify human and and the user calculator and transcribe quickly in the modern keyboard a marvel of mechanical construction city, where business planning and mechanical processes to streamline equally computer, allowed for studentsshort hand, and it is in Architecture and Urban Design and a time-saver for the daily routines of administration, as opposed to and enhance overall productivity quick tabulations still used

DESK financial institutions business itself, took place 1780 1860 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 collaborated1905 1910 with Gensler Los Angeles, UCLA I.S. Downtown Los Angeles 1870 to 1945: A machine for office work Integrating the city, building, and desk through efficiency, economies, and scientific management Black Tuesday MACHINE AGE World War I Great Depression

1910 1913 Projecting forward to 1930 Pershing Square is 1911 1920s 1924 1950, this futuristic 250,000 vehicles renovated in the Updated height This business The Hall of Justice, the Japanese Union 1920s Plans for the vision of the city is 1920s a day pour into 1930s Beaux Arts style limit ordinance of property map Church, Great Western Savings, the Sun California is the Hollywood Freeway based upon a vertical Banking is centered in downtown. downtown Los Numerous very old and favored by City 150 feet is passed shows the Drug building, the Westinghouse largest petroleum officially begin layering of functions in The Spring Street Financial District Angeles historic buildings in Beautiful reformers commercial Electric and Manufacturing buildings, industry in America, the name of increased home to Bank of America, the Crocker downtown are demolishedAssociates, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory CITY density of and the Roosevelt Office Building are headquartered in speed and efficiency, National Bank, the International to make way for 1911 downtown and erected in downtwon Los Angeles downtown Los even as Los Angeles Savings and Exchange Bank and the Downtown Los Angeles: street-level parking lots The “Great Merger” occurs: the potential Angeles 1924 and many other US Los Angeles Stock Exchange 1930 Broadway at Seventh Street Frank Lloyd Wright's Southern Pacific Railroad opportunities for Frederick Law Olmsted’s, industrial cities The largest electric railway in the world at Johnson Wax Building purchases most of the future Jr., and Harland continue on a path of its greatest extent, around 1925: the Pacific 1920 1920s 1929 was designed to clearly Pacific Electric Railway development Broadway & 5th The Spring Street area Bartholomew's 1924 Major decentralization that Downtown Los Electric Railway or Red Car system connected 1925 impart and reinforce stock above Olive St. in downtown downtown LA becomes Street Traffic Plan for Los begins as early as the Angeles has the downtown employment centers to worker “May Live to See” corporate values, creating Street Los Angeles the banking center Angeles is published late 1920s 130 buildings dormitory suburbs in Los Angeles and Orange 1936 The Urban Land an architecture of work ten stories or Counties, and beyond to San Bernardino Institute is founded - based upon the creation of taller (as many County and Riverside 1925 1926 publishes the Office a particular identity of 1912 Los Angeles' 41% of the as Detroit, Portable Typewriter: Becomes Development 1939 work with its lack of any Pacific Electric population Philadelphia or to exploreJohnson Wax Building the Future of Work. more widely available and Handbook, which is reference to the exterior Subway opens enters the CBT Boston) increasingly used in business 1922-1923 disseminated widely beyond the space of work. administration Biltmore Hotel, Ritz 1920s 1931 to create a broad The plan reinforces the Hotel and Astor Empire State 1913 The Broadway standardizing internalized identification Belinograph: Hotel are built in Building is completed influence of the worker with the

BLDG area is the First facsimile downtown LA central hub for corporation machine capable 1911 entertainment of using phone Fordist regimes around time, space, 1921 and shopping and the selves of workers begin lines to send Filofax Personal Organizer: Gives 1925 influencing office space, particularly basic data visual and tangible importance to Single Use Carbon Paper: Predating as firms and workforces grow larger to an organized professional life 1920s the Xerox machine, people can create a 1930 Selectomatic handle administrative functions through the organizer’s calendar copy of a document. Carbon Paper was Bleakly Brothers, Camden Courier Post Elevators coupled with typewriters Ad from the The Ediphone The standardization and 1911 Sandusky Register efficiency of new storage Edison Business Dictating Machine The worker is The office takes on Taylorist 1912 Phonograph  equipment is highlighted. Typewriter Viewed primarily as promises to not only 1920s valued for his aspects of the factory floor, 1940 The question of the storage a business As had already occurred in make the process of Foot Lever Addresser Elliot Addressing Machine ability to 1932 systematizing operations by 1937 The image of the secretary appliance, telephone industry, office work is subject to dictating more The Foot Lever Addresser is described systematically of documentation remains The Principles of Indexing and coupling new appliances with new Xerography: is gradually emerging to use by women for de-skilling. Stenography, once efficient, but also to 1924 as a machine that is not only efficient replicate the one of the key links Filing is published as a guide to business systemspostsuburbanCopying process is take a more visible place city domestic use is at considered an essential skill ensure greater leisure Spiral Notebook: but also easy to use, reinforcing the efficiency of an between an increasingly office managers and workers to gain invented without beside the technological first discouraged and among professional secretaries, is time as a result, Production starts increasing integration of user and industrial era mobile work being tied to a maximum efficiency from major the use of liquid apparatuses of work, which King Vidor film then celebrated by largely replaced by "business 1921 reinforcing time as the on the most used machine within the greater aspiration machine physical base advancements in office furniture, chemicals previously had often been 1928 DESK still “The Crowd” service providers phonographs” - dictation machines Ediphone Brochure basic unit of work office notebook for efficiency like the vertical filing cabinet depicted devoid of users 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 

 cityLAB DESIGN/RESEARCH PORTFOLIO 2006-2016

Divining Providencia [2012-14] The project for Providencia envisions the new port city as a material and ethnographic analogue of the Amazon: an aggregation of differing yet interdependent artisanal trade associations and products. Anchored by both local industry as well as research institutions, the plan leverages the opportunities presented by the through-put of resources there to become a new model of transshipment zone. rethinking green, spatial justice

OP CITY: Figuring the Urban Future [2012-13] OP CITY brought together collaborative teams of architects and media artists and explored how the urban future may be extrapolated or "produced" by observing the city in new ways that these technologies afford— from mapping and diagrams to graphic narrative, gaming/motion graphics and digitally-manipulated photography. postsuburban city, rethinking green, new infrastructure

Ambient Informatics [2012-15] THE WEYBURN ASTEROID Ambient Informatics project brings aesthetics, AN AMBIENT INFORMATICS RESEARCH PROJECT technology, and innovative design together to create a new public experience in Westwood Village Los Angeles. It advances research into the use of "ambient informatics," a type of pervasive computing that communicates information in everyday environments without the use of language, numbers, visual icons, or screens. urban sensing, new infrastructure 10 MICD WEST | NOVEMBER 13 15, 2013 PROJECT TEAM:

MAYORS’ INSTITUTE ON CITY DESIGN Mayors’ Institute on City Design [2013] hirsuta Mayors & Cities The design of many American cities is frequently cityLAB-UCLA REMAP HIRSUTA MASS-PHILIA Concept, Project Management Lighting, Programming Form Fabrication plagued by a disconnect between political constraints and design opportunities. In an effort to close this gap, PROJECT DESCRIPTION: cityLAB convened mayors from seven western cities

The Weyburn Asteroid project is a transdisciplinary collaboration between cityLAB (a think tank with a team of architecture, design, real estate, and city in the department of Architecture and Urban Design), designer Jason Payne of hirsuta, and planning professionals to discuss design approaches the UCLA Center for Research in Engineering, Media, and Performance (REMAP) that explores the potential for “ambient informatics” to impact the city experience, the sidewalk experience, to specific issues in each city. These ranged from and the wait-time experience. Playfully named “Ida and Dactyl” for its resemblance to the asteroid and its moon, the sidewalk installation employs a beacon system within its core using waterfront development challenges to "town-and-gown" TCP/IP controlled, solid-state, energy ef cient LED lighting. Drawing on real-time data about Bruin Bus positions, the bench grows brighter and changes color to communicate information linkages about bus arrival and create new atmospheres along the sidewalk. postsuburban city, spatial justice, new infrastructure FOR MORE INFORMATION:

http://citylab.aud.ucla.edu The Honorable Robert Cashell ResearchThe Honorable was supported Julie Jones by the UCLAThe Honorable Art’s Initiative Jon Nehring and [email protected] theManning UCLA Of ce of the Vice Chancellor.Mayor (310)City of 794-6125 Reno Mayor City of Marysville P.O. Box 1900 City of Corvallis 1049 State Ave Reno, NV 89505 501 SW Madison Avenue Marysville, WA 98270 775.334.2001 P.O. Box 1083 360.363.8000 [email protected] Corvallis, OR 97339 [email protected] 541.766.6985 [email protected] The Honorable Osby Davis gon.gov The Honorable Deborah Mayor Robertson City of Vallejo Mayor 555 Santa Clara Street The Honorable Jackie Meck City of Rialto Vallejo, CA 94590 Mayor 150 S Palm Ave 707.6 4 8.4 377 City of Buckeye Rialto, CA 92376 [email protected] 530 East Monroe Avenue 909.820.2525 Buckeye, AZ 85326 [email protected] 623.349.6950 [email protected] Chief Executive Matt Vincent Chief Executive City of Butte-Silver Bow 1155 West Granite St. Butte, MT 59701 406.497.6462 [email protected] cityLAB DESIGN/RESEARCH PORTFOLIO 2006-2016

IT Workplace Futures [2014-15] This pilot study addresses an increasing need for senior administrators who manage information technology systems and staff to re-evaluate their current workplace assets and better understand future trends in order to enhance performance, increase innovation, and recruit and retain their desired workforce. postsuburban city, spatial justice

Backyard BIHOME [2015-2016] Developed as an extension of cityLAB’s Backyard Homes study, the Backyard BIHOME is an ultra-modern, lightweight accessory dwelling unit that has the potential to meet the current demand for 100,000 additional housing units in Los Angeles while also serving as a biome by providing habitats for other species, too. rethinking green, postsuburban city

Housing in the RiverCity: Rethinking Place and Process [2015] The RiverCity Gothenburg Vision is built upon ideals intended to guide the city’s growth over the coming decades. This research looked at the future of the RiverCity through an architectural lens: How can the next housing districts be better designed to encourage neighborhoods that are better integrated with their contexts, more sustainable, and more socioeconomically diverse? rethinking green, spatial justice

JPL Deep Think [2015-16] cityLAB’s 18-month collaboration with JPL leads to a series of design schemes that incorporate innovative architectural and technological strategies for deep think and collaboration. urban sensing

California Assembly Bill 2299 [2016-17] substantially, while avoiding political and addressing the existing R1’s deficiencies demand that With Assemblyman Richard Bloom’s office, cityLAB 30 entitlement complications. Moreover, they architecture be brought to bear if planning goals are to be receive the equivalent of a density bonus achieved. Surgical interventions at disparate urban sites wrote a new state bill, signed by Governor Brown in for building affordable, for-sale units. Working will be best accomplished by designers who can custom- with both lawyers and housing developers, ize the more standard solutions of builders or planners. September 2016 that became law January 1, 2017. The along with community representatives, cityLAB Undoing the R1 is the most complicated part of is inventing a new system of project delivery that reclaiming the city from the pathology of zoning. It will ensures community control over incremental growth. not be done all at once, but it will begin in the first ring new law ensures that accessory dwelling units, or Our workshops in Pacoima indicate that residents want suburbs and those that have already undermined the both environmental benefits and contemporary design. prescriptions of R1, through variances, illegal building backyard homes, can be built on more single-family The Pacoima project is expected to become a activity, non-conforming use and informal adjustments. new policy as well as a built demonstration, which could Following that lead, site specific opportunism can move lots throughout California, increasing neighborhood happen as early as 2010 if federal foreclosure stabiliza- in where zoning failed. The motivation for this trans- tion funds become available. Nevertheless, it already formation will not be the creation of more affordable environmental benefits, stability, and affordability. successfully challenges the status quo. With community housing, though the current mortgage crisis could fuel participation, design innovation, city planning coopera- the movement. Instead, perceived risks of change can tion and physical opportunities for infill, the R1 can be be quelled by sustainability’s goals, both systemic (like postsuburban city modified in ways that will improve neighborhood quality reducing global warming) and immediate (like reducing of life. Indeed, a study of all California cities found resi- household energy costs). The catchword “density” can dents of every race and every income level willing to live acquire implications for both individual and social goods, at higher densities provided they can have the housing as is already demonstrated by recent shifts in housing and services they need. This same research found an preferences. For the first time history, more than half the abundance of infill sites across California’s urban areas, world’s population lives in urban areas, and the trend of and the data does not count most of the underutilized depopulation in existing urban centers is reversing. backyard space.25 While it is unreasonable to general- It is important that we not confuse the eradica- ize these findings to major urban areas like New York, tion of R1 with other discredited neo-liberal calls for Boston, or Chicago, there is every reason to imagine deregulation. Any city contextualized in the structures of that denser neighborhoods could be created by utilizing economic accumulation will always be regulated, or as Three housing types and 64 variations infill strategies in postwar sprawl throughout the US and Lawrence Lessig puts it “changes that make commerce beyond. To do so will mean rethinking the R1. possible are also changes that will make regulation cityLAB’s Pacoima-10K project develops innova- easy.”26 Indeed regulations are inherent in urbanization tive, environmentally sensitive and affordable housing and the failure of zoning cannot be mended simply by models that show the benefits of rethinking community abandoning the balance between public and private planning from an architectural perspective. It revises interests, which to a certain degree is sustained by regu- those zoning practices that reflect our region’s sprawling lations. Nevertheless, zoning as it has developed during past for the needs of and opportunities within each of our the 20th century has failed and its paralyzed condition unique communities. Pacoima-10K is a demonstration requires a radical re-thinking of the codes inherent in its that the types of infill sites we’ll find in cities are small and comatose corpus. Indeed the re-coding of contemporary unconventional. A blanket land use or F.A.R. strategy is urbanism requires a new mode of flexibility capable of not helpful, whereas more tightly conceived site typolo- supporting architectural experimentation as well as to gies and solutions encourage fitting growth to existing reconstitute the outmoded premises of R1, such as the conditions. This strategy sits squarely between the preservation of functional segregation, the maintenance architecture and planning disciplines, requiring new ideo- of low density urbanism and the deliberate advocacy for logical frameworks that incorporate temporal evolution, social homogeneity. that operate at scales between buildings and cities, and The 10K project in Pacoima is but one example that acknowledge a public component (like affordability of the many site-specific experiments that must be or sustainability) within private development. undertaken if we are to develop solutions after zoning. It is indicative of the fact that these experiments will Conclusion need to be complicated formulae crossing professional boundaries. They will be characterized by opportunism There are good green reasons for infilling the R1 in the that responds to local ecologies, economies and politics. contemporary city. First, there are plenty of infill sites The advance of R1-busting experiments depends on the available if we proceed creatively, and there are few large momentum that sustainable development provides, and tracts of open land remaining in urban areas. Building the creativity that architects bring to design. into cities rather than beyond them saves farmland as well as natural preserves. Second, detached dwell- References ings are being built on smaller sites than in earlier eras without losing the suburban benefits. More dwelling 1. For two very different examples, see the plans for eco-cities units per acre means lower carbon footprints, densities Dongtan in China and Greensburg, Kansas that promote more adequate services and lower housing 2. Jarzombek, Mark. A Green Masterplan is Still a Masterplan, in costs (by lowering the amount of land attached to each Urban Transformaton, edited by Ilka and Andreas Ruby, 22-29. Berlin: house). Increased densities afford cities the opportunity Ruby Press, 2008 to require sustainability practices. The intricacies of 3. Owen, David. “Green Manhattan: Why New York is the Greenest Incremental densification of a Pacoima block

CUFF, Dana and DAHL, Per Johan 306090 13