UCLA’s “L.A. Now” Project Wins Major Design Award

   Innovative approach to area’s housing crisis


Thom Mayne

   The UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design has been awarded the 2005 Progressive Architecture Award (P/A) by Architecture magazine for "L.A. Now: Volume 3," an urban design research project encompassing 35,000 housing units in downtown Los Angeles.
   The project was led by UCLA professor Thom Mayne, principal in the architecture firm Morphosis. The award was announced in the January issue of the magazine.
   Now in their 52nd year, P/A awards recognize unbuilt projects that demonstrate overall design excellence and innovation. Over time, they have served as bellwethers of emerging architectural design trends and talents.
   The award to UCLA is unprecedented as it was given to only one recipient and was the first ever given to a university.
   The genesis of the L.A. Now project was the need to examine critically problems currently facing Los Angeles --- overpopulation, housing and infrastructure -- and address them through a combined series of research and speculative urban design proposals that might, in turn, generate a discussion within the community.
   The UCLA department of architecture and urban design provided the foundation for the conceptual framework that began with a deep analysis of existing demographic, cultural and infrastructural issues.
   Currently, there is no policy or plan in place to address the housing needs of a growing population in Los Angeles on a large scale. The primary objective of the proposed work was to produce workable, large-scale housing solutions that would address the city's impending population increase.
   "L.A. Now: Volume 3" investigates ways of housing 35,000 to 100,000 residents on a neglected 228-acre site in the last cornerstone of downtown Los Angeles, an area that represents a crossroad and collision of every major infrastructural system and ethnic cultural district.
   This is the first volume to introduce several proposals to a specific area; each proposal targets a specific critical position within the current housing debate so, collectively, the publication effectively illustrates the complex landscape of solutions available.
   The "L.A. Now: Volume 3" project successfully integrated UCLA students with public policy makers and provided an opportunity for the students to confront the realities of their profession through experiences not typical of conventional curricula. The project became a kind of forum in which the students' thorough immersion in a real-world setting took into account the comprehensive and integrative nature of urban development in a major metropolis.
   The students' engagement expanded beyond the conventional academic setting in terms of depth and breadth of research as they had an opportunity to interact with key private individuals and public officials, thus putting them on the front line of the city's public policy and decision-making processes.
   These people met with the students for four hours every five weeks over the course of an academic year, critiquing their work and giving them advice They also met individually with the students in between the scheduled meetings.
   "A new educational circumstance was created where the students began to understand the operations which will later impact their careers, and at the same time the clients the board of advisors modeling the establishment were asked to consider a larger context of information in their response and criticism," said professor Richard Weinstein, acting chair of the department of architecture and urban design.
   In the group that met with the students were Robin Blair, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Con Howe, director of planning, Los Angeles Department of City Planning, John Kaliski, principal, Urban Studio (architect / planner), Nicolai Ouroussoff, architectural critic, Los Angeles Times (now at The New York Times), Jan Perry, member of the Los Angeles City Council, Ian Robertson, principal, Robertson Company (developer); Dan Rosenfeld, principal, Urban Partners (developer), Deborah Weintraub, Los Angeles City Architect, and Weinstein.
   The UCLA students involved in "L.A. Now: Volume 3" were Raffi Agaian, Pakling Chiu, Alexios Fragkiadakis, David Garnett, Svyatoslav Gavrilov, Constanza Guerini, Chaitanya Karnik, Jacob Kwan, Narineh Mirzaeian, Masako Saito and Myungsoo Suh.
   The project actually began in the summer of 2000, when Richard Koshalek, president of Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, approached Mayne about participating in a study of Los Angeles that would offer suggestions for its future development and growth. During a yearlong intensive studio , Mayne and a group of students first undertook the project of understanding Los Angeles and subsequently designing speculative urban proposals for its downtown core.
   A large portion of this effort focused on the collection of data on the Los Angeles area in recognition of the fact that no project could be understood properly in isolation from the larger picture. This initial research was compiled into a book that was published by Art Center College of Design in 2001 as "L.A. Now: Volume 1." Based on this research and analysis, the students then designed interpretive strategies to accommodate the city's fragmentation and heterogeneity, emergent orders and non-linearity. Each of these projects established a basis for working within the broader context of the city.
   The academic setting of the studio allowed for the emergence of urban proposals that might not be possible within the strictures of conventional planning and development as the initial research phase unearthed programmatic and spatial adjacencies. These projects were published in 2002 as "L.A. Now: Volume 2."
   UCLA Architecture Research Studios are a yearlong studio that provides students with an opportunity to gather information, document the site, attempt to understand "the problem" in the context of change in the larger city and to formulate design proposals. The groundbreaking "L.A. Now: Volume 3" is a snapshot of Los Angeles at the beginning of the 21st century that presents a series of conceptual proposals that encourage civic and business leaders, developers, architects, students and the general public to rethink the city and the plans for its future.
   Program alumni who live or are doing work in Santa Monica include Frederick Fisher, recipient of the Brendan Gill Award from the Municipal Arts Society of New York for the design of the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; Hsin-Ming Fung, co-founder of Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture, whose projects include the award-winning temporary Towell Library at UCLA and the renovation/restoration of the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood; (Hank) Koning and (Julie) Eizenberg, recognized for their groundbreaking work in housing and community-based projects in Santa Monica and recipients of AIA honor awards; and John Ruble, principal in Moore Ruble Yudell, whose projects include the new Main Library in Santa Monica and the Civic Center Parking Structure.