Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, Michael Graves, … UCLA?
In the past, winning Architecture Magazine’s prestigious
Progressive Architecture Award has often been associated with
outstanding achievement on an individual artistic level. This year,
however, the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design has
been tapped for the 2005 Progressive Architecture Award for the
urban design research project “L.A. Now: Volume 3,”
which encompasses 35,000 to 100,000 potential housing units in
downtown Los Angeles. The 52nd annual award is also the first to be
given to a single recipient rather than several, as well as the
first to a university.
The “L.A. Now” project marks an ambitious attempt to
critically examine problems such as overpopulation and
infrastructure facing the Los Angeles of today, and to address
those problems through a series of research and speculative urban
design proposals. UCLA students were involved in investigating
solutions for housing tens of thousands of residents on an unused
228-acre site in downtown Los Angeles, the largest contiguous piece
of such property, and thus confronted Los Angeles’ unique
housing needs on a large scale.
“This happens to be an enormous project,” said Thom
Mayne, the principal of the architecture firm Morphosis and UCLA
professor who led “L.A. Now.” “We tried to
develop policy guidelines and trajectories that are useful for the
city and its political structure to allow people to understand what
the broader implications of this project are beyond the economic
viability of development ““ the broader urban implications,
the civic possibilities and potentials of these projects ““
and communicating that to the broader public.”
Mayne indicated that development based only around such economic
viability might miss the bigger picture. “This is a city
that’s a private place in terms of its public structure.
We’re interested in allowing people to understand the
potential within these situations,” he said.
The students met and interacted with a review committee
comprised of public policy makers ““ developers, city
planners, critics, the MTA, and Richard Weinstein, acting chair of
the UCLA department of architecture and urban design ““ on a
regular basis for critiques and advice.
“It deals with macro problems,” Mayne said.
“And how one deals with evaluating these types of problems
within human terms ““ economical, ecological. The projects are
very complex, interactive, interdisciplinary projects.”
Several teams explored a number of different options. One
explored the site as a park facility, while another expanded on the
housing idea to place a kind of suburban environment in the city.
Yet another extended Chinatown up a nearby hill.
“Is anyone else doing this right now? No. We’re
interested in doing it precisely because no other institution or
government body has the answer, money, or wherewithal,” Mayne
said.
Pleased to be recognized for his work, he emphasized the
importance of working within the context of society.
“The honor the school and students received really
couldn’t have been any more perfect for me,” Mayne
said. “I want architecture to be a part of the debate and I
want the school to be a part of the relationship with the city.
It’s nice to be kind of rewarded for that.”