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3 al. , , ed. Wim
The New York Times York New The (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 121. Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future 1940-1990 Future Constructsthe L.A. Overdrive: (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University California 190. Press, 1971), Architecture, Media and Corporate Space : —Reyner Banham —Reyner 1 4 LosAngeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies The Organizational The Complex possibly be.” possibly “Many U.S. cities have had have their areas downtown cities fall U.S. “Many this into kind and made have equally in Los irrelevant Angeles], desuetude [as of revitalize have does the one of to others in none but them, attempts feeling a strong thatquite such this cannot the action is where
signifier of the “organization man,” whose work life was work whose separate man,” signifier the “organization of in his the suburbs. life time home from and at leisure domestic ce tower ce tower ffi o the monofunctional and work-space, work-time and asdistinct a work knowledge as downtown of anstood icon As a product of managerial organizing of As a product for capitalism and a tool 1 Reyner Banham, 2 At the time, Manhattan’s vacancy rate was 16.9 percent.http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/11/business/office-glut-spreads-in-california.html See: Richard Stevenson, W. 2014, “Office14, GlutJanuary Spreadsaccessed in California,” 1991, 11, November 3 Reinhold Martin, 4 Wim de Wit, “ The Style of the Future’ The Vicissitudes of Modernism in72. Los Angeles,” in 2013), Publications, Getty Angeles: (Los Alexander James Christopher and Wit de The clichés about Los Angeles, its downtown, and its suburbs need no further rehearsfurther no need suburbs its and downtown, its Angeles, Los about clichés The Instead, which of the the city, is evolution usually described in terms of demographics estate was quarter one was It as clear that well. empty patently the in Los Angeles. work for fit was longer no cemodernist tower ffi o with fanfare in 1992, its fifty-two floors were seventy percent percent seventy were floors fifty-two its with fanfare in 1992, commercial real vacant, and central of the rest Los Angeles’s When Arthur Erickson’s second California second Plaza ArthurWhen building Erickson’s opened for development, and yet more voluminous than voluminous the demand for more and yet development, for ce space. ffi o less numerous than the capacity of the center-city land cleared than the capacity numerous the center-city of less in Los Angeles was designed in some version of modernism,” modernism,” of wasin Los Angeles designed version in some imitative thanmore distinguished, were built and the towers more respected sisters: New York, Chicago, and San Chicago, Francisco. York, New sisters: respected more “virtually period, Ince building high-rise theffi o post-war every The glass boxes that rose between the 1960s and 1990s sought sought and 1990s that glass between theThe rose 1960s boxes its on image city as modeled a modern upgrade Los Angeles’s to
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- - 8 and the of both role in The insular, the city. suburban corporate campuses that now constitute well half over of allce offi space in the United States are being pressured by both scholars and freelance-driven econo mies renew civic-minded to engagements with existing city centers, infrastructure, housing, and diverse urban culture in order At the present moment, when a 24/7 the At present when moment, a 24/7 is challengingwork-life the very possibility of leisure and lifestyle, and as the arts and entertainment are themselves considered sites of work, we argue that the history of Los nebulous Angeles’s downtown reveals an evolving relationship of leisure work, to finance, legal, and accounting firms, continuevacant today, to hover as those aroundsector. tenantstech booming 20 the percentwith continuespace industrial rehabbed for tocompete shrink their footprints and 8 It is worth noting that downtown’s office towers, typically occupied by economic strength of the region was built workplacesupon already diffuse and varied enough sidestep to conventional central ized finance or corporate headquarters. planning and architectural restructuring that rendered downtown a playground for overindulgence. A once-glorious, rundown neighborhood called Bunker Hill focused the regime’s fantasies, development and with herculeanort, eff the hill and every thing was on it flattened make to way for towers alongErickson’s with others in the the “build and it Yet they and 1980s. 1970s will aspirations come” of the public-private real estate machine missed its target; the presented the opportunity invent to new practiceswork that the fit spatial patterns of the city that, in turn, would influence the evolving architecture of work. These pressures sparked an animated battle between centrality and escape, concentric and work sprawling leisure, and speculative
6 - - - , February 2015, City ObservatoryCity Architects, developers, 7 Between 1940 and 1970, the and 1970, Between 1940 5 Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions 7 “Downtown Los Angeles” in this essay refersgeography, to a historically which prior toshifting WWII was locatedand in nearby the traditional 19th century plaza gridiron. district Hill Bunker adjacent the Afterinclude expandedto but zone, this in existed still the war, “downtown Los Angeles” tabula rasa with urban redevelopmentAvenue. effortsGrand concentrated primarily along Surging City Center Job Growth,” Growth,” Job Center City Surging accessedhttp://cityobservatory.org/wp-content/up September2015, 1, loads/2015/02/Surging-City-Center-Jobs.pdf 6 Edward Soja, (Malden,MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000),131-2. 5 That’s below the average for other American cities: San Francis co (26.1 percent), in comparison to Austin (28.8(19.5), New percent), Orleans Charlotte (23.3 percent). See: Joe Cortright, “City Report: urbation tripled to 10 million,urbation tripled 10 to fragmenting the region incorporated into a full 140 cities each with its own downtown of sorts. in the city. population of the wider Los Angeles con comprises less than one percent of the squarecity’s 500 miles and is the place of only for work percent seven of all workers understanding the sprawling megalopolis of LosAngeles, where conventional urban narratives since “downtown” do apply, not and political can economy, be illuminated by overlaying the history of its material form. This is particularly important for over urbanism.over In essence, Los Angeles representations of suburban leisure, which prioritized pastoral ideals of refuge and leisure by interpreting downtown as an open latticework and the modernistce offi towers as overcoming tools for post-war and planners of Los downtown Angeles’s were required push to against conventional wisdom about the spatial interplay of work its vibrant identity as the center of Latino commercial activity century along the 19th gridiron streets. invent a narrative about downtown that might be powerful enough supplant to Angeles because the population booms emanated primarily at the periphery, forcing predominantly Anglo boosters to However, the standardHowever, urban narrative of a middle-class, white does exodus not describe the spatial demographics of Los
46 UNFIT: Los ANgeLes ANd The empTy gLAss Box WORKSPACE THRESHOLDS 44 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00114 by guest on 25 September 2021 THRESHOLDS 44 UNFIT: Los ANgeLes ANd The empTy gLAss Box WORKSPACE 47 , ed. - - Phantasmic 10 Fast Forward Urbanism However, such However, 11 The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic An Study Class: LeisureTheorythe The of (Norwood, MA: Norwood 43. Press, 1912), consumption of time.” was clear that “work” in Los Angeles had been redefined, at least rhetorically, since the suburban metropolis was claimed as land“the of stars: where they live, where (Fig. they 1) work, and where they play.” Los displacement Angeles’s of downtown in the name of “recreation,” and “freedom” paralleled“play,” Thorstein classic theory of “conspicuous Veblen’s whichleisure,” described both physical and intellectual pursuits of “non-productive advertisements and accounts of a “Los Angeles lifestyle” leveraged recreation time and a leisure lifestyle, depicting the city as a land of leisure, entertainment, and sprawling it domestic life. By the 1940s, of leisure time was therefore directly correlatedVeblen, Thorstein to their class status. See: Institutions of 10 Albert Pope, “From Form to Space,” inDana Cuff and Roger Sherman (New143-175. York: Princeton2011), Architectural Press, 11 To Veblen, the concept of leisure-time was suggestingassociated thatwith therethe elite, were few advantagesmanual to “productive labor was work,”merely and a signthat of social weakness one’s accumulation capable of replacing the heart former of the city—downtown—with a new kind of sprawling, social urban substrate—a process that the urbanist Albert Pope characterizes as the city of being form overtaken by the city of space. in 1884 to open to an ce offi with the hopesin of 1884 developing surrounding land, including fig orchard in thea 120-acre suburbs that would later be named “Hollywood.” The subsequent age of film golden and enter tainment, with coupled the displacement of rail transportation by automobiles, proved definitions of leisure based on freedom and refuge were qualities of social life governed by the logics of capitalism, theorized by Marx as “disposable and time,” predom inantly realized in relation centralized to ceoffi (especially work in Los Angeles) by commodifying and homogenizing
9 - The New
, November accessed 25, 2011, September http:// 2015, 1, DOWNTOWN LA: A SUBURBDOWNTOWN REMOVED ONCE
9 Louise Mozingo, Rethink “To Sprawl, Start with Offices,” York Times www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/to-rethink-sprawl-start-with-offices. html _r 0 to achieveto socio-economic sustainability. most recited narrative of this supersession came from Kansas realtor Harvey Wilcox, who migrated downtown to Los Angeles status, downtown and thece offi buildings there were reasserted as symbolic anchors of governance and administration. The investments percolating on the edges of the counteract its increasingly To city. ancillary workers inworkers the Spring Street financial core, yet downtown’s primacy was slowly outshined by an impulsive series of land emerged asemerged a bonafide urban center at the turn of the century shoppers in for retailthe Seventh Avenue district or for were replaced with relationships based on daytime associations and common eco nomic interests. Downtown Los Angeles weakened by broad migrations central to industrial cities like Los Angeles, they centers that would eventually connect to distant suburban residences. As primary social relationships based on location were was central the to formation of downtown Los century, Angeles when in the 19th railroads promulgated downtown work As in many cities across the US,ce offi work politics of the everyday. an individualistic, everyday life that is less susceptible a homogenization to of mass culture, and enmeshed more in the violent center, such ascenter, downtown Los Angeles, is poised redefine to the intersection of work and leisure in ways consistent more with It is therefore coincidence no that an agile, ambiguous,and perpetually “vacant” urban
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00114 by guest on 25 September 2021 Fig. 1: AnFig. 1: excerpt from a 1937 “Hollywood Starland” map encapsulates the leisure lifestyle of Los Angeles at its zenith, depicting the way in which Adorno and Horkheimer’s burgeoning Culture Industry producedhomogenous, a mat- like geography, with an economic core of overseers in the distance, represented by City Hall and the Chamber of Commerce. Source: Library of Congress. - - - -
- In Los 12 Thus, even Thus, even 15 Suburban 14 Planners argued 13 (New Norton, York: 1998), 57. , (New York: Oxford University Press, The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and The Corrosion of Character: The PersonalConse Character: The Corrosion of The Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corpo Decentering Leisure: Rethinking Leisure Theory Leisure Rethinking Leisure: Decentering (Cambridge: 171. MIT Press, 2011), contrasted against downtown work, the as the informality of suburban was work in schools, and they purchased beaches to safeguard public access. ground department. They started outdoor recreation and nature appreciation courses Angeles, these descriptors materialized in several ways. city Firstly, leaders established a first municipal ever play the Shaping of Modern AmericaModern of Shaping the 54. 2010), 14 Louise Mozingo, Landscapesrate 15 Richard Sennett, Capitalism New the in Work of quences 12 Chris Rojek, 2. 1995), Pub., Sage Oaks: (Thousand 13 Lawrence Culver, urban thinking was merely an added layer of moral regulationunder the guise of pastoral indulgence and relaxation. alternative uses of time through imagery and the modernist film. Yet, translation of “leisure” that permeated architectural and “playgrounds” workers. for for post-warfor suburban corporate campuses, estates, andce offi parks where leisure space and space work were conflated into haven, directly opposed traditionally to rigid “working” centers in the East, and therefore providing model a development Secondly, Los Angeles promoted its image as an informal Arcadian ideal and pastoral ual led household a mosaic to of individual backyards, undermining the demand publicfor parks evident in other cities. would need not separate to leisure spaces from and work residences since entirely, the glorified and spatially entitled individ that, as a new kind Los Angeles of city, their own activities despite invisible reins being by held administrators. space, which created an impression among thatworkers they have greater control over growth permitted organizations concen to tratepower without centralized hierarchical
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As the 19 Downtown 20 4.1 (1982): 14. (1982): 4.1 LosAngeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies Urban Design InternationalDesign Urban DOWNTOWN LA: A SUBURBDOWNTOWN IN ATTIRE DOWNTOWN Banham, affi rmed that the existingce offi core of commercial towers was inexorably referring“gutless,” downtown to as an thetheaddendum of city. rest to building designs and urban plans began taketo shape, critics, including Reyner even confoundedeven Kevin Lynch, who found that challenged it his own cognitive categories, remarking that central “the area is general set in a vacuum...The downtown] isimage remarkable [of its for centralemptiness…The activities extended Income for L.A.,” L.A.,” for Income Banham, 20 Reyner (Berkeley190. andLos Angeles: University California of Press, 1971), 19 Edward Helfeld, “Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project: Generating In 1956, rigid buildingIn height 1956, restrictions were lifted, and by the of end the decade, the Community Agency Redevelopment rolled a out of Los Angeles (CRA/LA) redevelopment Hill Bunker 133-acre massive scheme, utilizing tax increment financing replaceto a dilapidated neighborhood with downtown “appropriate” more uses, capable of generating income the for city. and ideological surveillance, the downtown that after emerged War the Second World was, in fact, the not downtown the for vast majority population, of the region’s since providedit cultural no lure beyond work itself—and very not of much that. However, planners, architects, and civic boosters were determined position to again it as the migratory the heart, reclaiming from city’s it impulses outward that had trumped its preeminence and managerial competence. The juggernaut of suburban development that pressured growth at theedges simultaneously forced reimagining a of downtown Los Angeles. As became it reduced of a site to political administration - - 7 (1992): 397. 7 (1992): (Cambridge: Critics of Without Without 16 Despite a 18 17 PlanningPerspectives The Provisional CityProvisional The trans. Anthony Eardley (New York: AthensCharter became post-war living laboratories. have defined American urbanism in contrast the to European model, post-in dustrial cities with their pliable built fabric even a looseeven planning strategy that might Grossman Publishers, 1973 [1933]), 70. [1933]), 1973 Publishers, Grossman 17 Lewis Mumford in memo to J.L. Sert. Charter,” Athens See: the after Urbanism Eric Mumford, “CIAM 18 Ibid., 413. Also see: Dana Cuff, MIT Press, 2000) for a discussion of the influencedwaysdevelopmenttheAngeles Los20th the century. of in real estate and lending 16 Le Corbusier, fields, stadiums, beaches, etc.” an was “urban where complex” non-work imagined be to located nearby “favorably prepared places: parks, forests, playing circulation. Instead of a pure segregation of uses, was work reclaimed as part of the Congrès International d’Architecture defining four (CIAM’s) funcModerne’s tions of dwelling, working, recreation, and based on entrepreneurialism and automobility challenged received urban discourse about land use by critiquing organization of the itselfwork remained fundamentally the same. The processes of American urbanism Angeles’s zoningAngeles’s ordinance. urban revisionism as well as real estate and lending industries prevailed, roughly reproducing the functions four in Los about the synthesis of leisure, the arts, and opportunities engage to workers for in urban political processes, perpetual series ofpost-CIAM debates such as those Planningled by the Town Association to theto rest of his existence.” political and cultural activities, provided these are adequately planned and related the machine does merely not free modern man sports for and weekend excursions: it also frees him a fuller for participation in European modernism like Lewis Mumford suggested that leisure “the given us by
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22 The Practice of Everyday Life Everyday Practice of The production offers an area of expansion rationalfor operations that permit work to be managed by dividing it (analysis), tabulating it (synthesis) and aggregating it (generalization)...located on one or another square of the social checker board—in the oce,ffi in the workshop, or at the movies. 22 Michel de Certeau, Certeau, de 22 Michel 29. 1984), Press, California of University Angeles: Los and (Berkeley dall together by Robert developer Maguire, which was referred as to a team of Los Stars” (CharlesMoore, “All Angeles’s Barton Myers, Cesar Pelli, Frank Gehry, Larry Halprin, The proposal al.). et took Piazzacues Navona from linearly Rome’s to string together a mixture of high and low- rise buildings, punctured by public spaces people gather, to protecting but for them from overwhelming largece o ffi towers. steppedWith towers imagined ascritiques with permission from Macmillan PublishersMacmillan. Palgrave by Ltd: Urban Design (1982), International4.1 Among the proposals was a scheme put Fig. 2: Downtown Bunker Hill Redevelopment Plan, including Arthur Erickson’s California Plaza with Isozaki’s MOCA, Reprinted 1980. - (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
21 The Image of the Citythe Imageof The (“promotion”) spread through the workplace. Reciprocally, cultural that camouflage economic reproduction with fictions of surprise (“the event”), of truth (“information”) or communication
21 Kevin Lynch, 1960), 35. and shifting,fact a which dilutes their impact.” work bothwork reinforced and reproduced each “Culturalother. techniques,” he argued, Certeau as an emerging characteristic of everyday urbanism, in which leisure and Becket’s 1964 Music Center. The piecing Center. Music 1964 Becket’s together and of work leisure like a social checkerboard was described by Michel de “monumental” Museum of Contemporary Art, reinforcing the nascent cultural core representedon Grand by Welton Avenue and the altogether, work call proposals for asked designers thread to togetherce, offi retail, housing, luxury hotel, and a economy had filtered into the everyday and collapsed the line between leisure housing, unifying the forces that had stratified formerly the geography of As validationthe city. that the experience that was intended syn to chronizece offi space with cultural institutions and architect teams submit to proposals California for Plaza, which was a project In 1976, the CRA/LA In 1976, invited developer/ five of the city—first through symbolism, then by culture and experience. of such claims, boosters were determined remake to Bunker Hill as the “gut” Despite, perhaps or because
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24 , ed. Greg Goldin Never Built Los Angeles Los Built Never critic who noted that the Skepticism about the relative (May 1987): 82. 23 L.A. Times matically and economically unfit an for extroverted scene in of work Los Angeles, the disregard of integrated a more cultural corridor caused the project fragment to into a team of designers, just like the selection committee initially hoped The avoid. to museum directors detached from the masterplan and awarded the commission Aratato Isozaki instead, while the hotel While the downtown power could brokers admitnot that glass were boxes program and Sam Lubell (New York: Metropolis Books, 2013), 120. 2013), Books, Metropolis York: (New Lubell Sam and 24 “MOCA and More: The Future of CaliforniaArchitecturalRecord Plaza at Bunker Hill,” 23 John Pastier, quoted in, in, quoted Pastier, 23 John to anto “intimacy and intricacy of those [proposed buildings] seemed elements inappropriate anto audience that expected, and indeed demanded, monumentality and polite blandness.” of the insularity and monumentalityof modernist towers, the museum protruded outward and angled the over street, giving primacy.it The much-laudeddesign now was at the time considered an insult to “bureaucrats, citizen commissioners, and modernists,” unevolved according work withwork trio a heroic of extruded mod ernist megastructures. the proposed With ceoffi space totaling a million over square feet compared 33,000, the to museum’s the cultural space in plan Erickson’s was entirely consumed by the three glass towers, paradoxically upholding the same insular ideology that of work had caused downtown falter to in the first place. playfulness of the proposal and about whetherteama of designers could carry out a unified plan led the selection committee chooseto Arthur proposal, Erickson’s which instead oeredff ofce a version offi Fig. 4: The “All Star’s” proposalFig. 4: “All The for Grand Avenue aimed to infuse “life” into downtown, with interior alleys connecting Bunker Hill to the historic retail and finance core. Source:1979-80. Maguire Investments. MOCA design. 1979-80. Source: Maguire Investments. Maguire Source: design. 1979-80. MOCA Fig. 3: The L.A. “All Stars” Fig. L.A.3: The proposal,“All titled Grand Avenue,” “A consisted of a string of nine projects from Fourth to Sixth Street, including Cesar Pelli’s Granite and Glass and Tower Hugh Hardy’s
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Fig. 6: The elevations of Arthur Erickson’s designimmense imbalancereveal the of program. Reprinted with permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Urban Design International (1982), 4.1 Macmillan. Palgrave by stratification), and Hollywood’s media creation of Los paradise Angeles (as and Angeles could longer thrive no without first establishing equivalent housing and a more robustcultural foundation o to ff setthe ceo ffi space, planners scrapped future plans to build additional towers, leaving the com mercial district incomplete. Inadvertently, this urban amalgam of misplacedorts eff (glass built boxes like islands along Grand unfounded programAvenue), (finance and insurance), the double-strength of leisurethe and automobile (as economic DNA of sprawl andDNA freeways, as is typically portrayed, the but stillbirth of the post-war downtown. Recognizing that downtown Los need step to into the Driving public way. was itself portrayed, à la Reyner Banham, as Los special Angeles’s of form leisure, creating a perfect harmony between conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure in the of form the convertible. These changes constitutedonly not the of moat. As with of much the city in the eighties,was remains) Grand (and Avenue auto-dependent and, as such, those Ange lenos unable a to ord a carff wereectively eff barred from entering these glass boxes. Each linked tower internally itsto own parking, such thatce offi did workers not Even 25
Fig. 5: Arthur Erickson’s Masterplan for California Plaza attempted to create a new public and commercial focus for L.A. Reprinted 1980. with permission from Macmillan PublishersMacmillan. Palgrave by Ltd: Urban Design (1982), International4.1 with its quite literal blast-wall relationship theto surrounding city streets, Erikson’s California Plaza used parking as a kind critical history, exactly not but as he described Unlike it. the Bonaventure Hotel, for critique.for The tabula rasa that was Bunker Hill became the “fortress of Mike L.A.” Davis’s the overall project a halt, to the austere towers fulfilled their symbolic duty: they stood as monuments downtown, for ready though second Erickson’s opened tower withdisastrous vacancy results that brought 25 The existing hotel on the site remained,named yet it the was “Los renovated Angeles and Hilton later & Tower,” followedin 1999. by theThe “Wilshire building was Grand” demolished in 2013tower, to makealso way called for a newthe Wilshire Grand, whichfloor ironically plates mixed boasts with open hotel Coast. office space,West the on surpassingtower tallest the US Bank tower as the commission was given Jon Jerde. to
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28
, 141. Postmetropolis DOWNTOWN LA: URBANDOWNTOWN SPECTACLE
28 Soja, 28 Soja, Soja calls the Outer “exopolitan Cities.” population, shifting from seventy percent Anglo, sixty to percent with non-Anglo the fastest growth occurring, still, in what Ed Bunker Hill’s was redevelopment Los andunderway 2000, between 1970 Angeles added three million people its to everyday downtown work, confronting the glass and boxes giving life downtown’s to cultural and mixed-use projects. While yet robust cosmopolitan collective that produced a new post-industrial image of sidewalks crowded with shops spilling into the streets and complete with and flower fashion marts. It was this less contrived, only nine In five. to fact, the historic gridiron district’s vitality came from a diverse Spanish-speaking population on broadened include to a wider definition and array of everyday laborers, extending beyond those working downtown from cultural institutions, the definitions and capitalist-driven stereotypes of “work” were gridiron downtown has met a di erent ff the sunk Without fate—at leastnow. for costs of new commercial towers and tower-version of downtown hastower-version left open the possibility new alliances for between urban programs, while the historic The failure of Bunker Hill’sce- offi also in “what is reputed be to the world’s largest collection of engineers, scientists, for thefor working poor as well as jobs at the high of end the labor market—not only in entertainmentthe ever-robust industry, but immigrants and as the incognito internet Los U.S., hub of the Angeles Western “reindustrialized,” adding wage low jobs As America’s port major of entry for
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, from inclusive tabula rasa tabula wait, wondering if and when the modernist ceoffi towers might strike back. In the decades after the war, Los and the privately Broad held Museum that Both amp up opened in September 2015. leisure dynamic. in the work-play They investment The completed conditions). parts of the Project Grand are the Avenue redesign of the public park at City Hall Companies has (which stalled over for a decade waiting opportune more for Project, which is a Frank Gehry-designed shopping mall withce offi space, housing, and in hotel two the towers for Related to more stillborn—or more to very prolonged gestation—development projects. The most recent is called the Grand Avenue perpetuated by the fact that theorts eff to build continue Grand out today, Avenue with the city giving land and tax breaks never trulynever attainable inbuilt form. The urban spectacle of downtown is testament the to imperfect duo of leisure and labor—constantlyand necessarily in a struggle find to a sense of equilibrium work-play dynamism.work-play Those propositions can be viewed as both an enduring critique of modernist visions asof work as much a corridor ofce offi towers and cultural insti tutions, the most interesting incursions are architectural propositions concerning the and finally, from forms and boundaries that defied absolutism. Along the jewel-box destruction and programing and the possibility of redefin ing and workers their cultural necessities, momentum from its incompleteness, from the possibility adaptation of bottom-up and realignment rather than top-down built landscape open fortuitous to urban transformationin themillennium. new The flexible potential of that landscape gained
56 UNFIT: Los ANgeLes ANd The empTy gLAss Box WORKSPACE THRESHOLDS 44 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00114 by guest on 25 September 2021 THRESHOLDS 44 UNFIT: Los ANgeLes ANd The empTy gLAss Box WORKSPACE 57 is h hanghai, rinceton s p esign.Trained d herman, herman, s (with R. candidate in Architecture at UCLA as d h ress).In addition, she founded the urban p p TheProvisional City, and Architecture: The state,along with that of cityLAB- UCLA, for IT IT e m Fast Forward Urbanism ellonFoundation called “The Urban Collective Turn: epartment of Architecture and Urban Urban and Architecture of epartment (both ress) and and ress) m d p eniorResearch Associate at cityLAB—an urban think tank s exicoCity. m
headedmulti disciplinary a team in that as a arded ma or a the from grant ifein acifc im egacities to ring design and the humanities Angeles, Los Tokyo, of studyaroundUCLA the together at and Architectural Architectural Practice of Story researchthink-tank cityLAB in 2006, and has since concentrated her efortsaround issues of the emerging metropolis ost recently, uf books, including including books, ana uf isprofessor, a author, and practitioner in architecture er or focuses on aforda le housing, modernism, su ur an studies,the politics of place, and the spatial implications of new computertechnologies uf has ritten and edited num er a of and continues to practice architecture in a variety of settings. settings. of variety a in architecture practice to continues and researchfocuses on theories of practice within architecture, and his dissertationexamines the economic and cultural forces surrounding theemergence of multi frm architectural organi ations in the s s and Aaron Cayer is currently a a currently is Cayer Aaron a as well UCLA’s within asan architect, Aaron holds graduate and undergraduate degrees inarchitecture and sociology from Norwich University in Vermont, The authors wish to acknowledge the generous support of UCLA’s acknowledgegenerousUCLA’s support the to of authors wish The Real for Center Ziman article. this for possible research the making core. Indeed, the physical and conceptual ambiguity of downtown be to proved its greatest strength.
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