The Extraterritorial Build in place a week before the opening. 
"The things that once so defined him — shag carpeting, Room & Board sofas, monogamy — now suffocated him."Need a little smile amidst the ennui of your stunningly designed, ultra hip, modern lives? Enjoy the oft ridiculous, always chic, architectural eye candy from Dwell through the lens of the wry wit at Unhappy Hipsters.
(image from Dwell, September 2009)
Last week, California adopted the U.S.’s first mandatory green building codes called Calgreen, which are expected to help the state reach its goal of cutting CO2 emissions by a third by 2020. According to The New York Times’ Green Inc. blog, every new building will have to “reduce water usage by 20 percent and recycle 50 percent of its construction waste instead of sending it to landfills. Commercial buildings will be required to have separate water meters for indoor and outdoor water use. Mandatory inspections of air conditioner, heat and mechanical equipment will be also be instituted for all commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet.”
Tom Sheehy, acting secretary of the state Consumer Services Agency and chair of the California Building Standards Commission, the group that passed the rules, told The San Francisco Chronicle: “This is (something) no other state in the country has done – integrating green construction practices into the very fabric of the construction code. These are simple, cost-effective green practices. California should be proud.”
The California Building Standards Commission unanimously approved by new rules, which also allows cities with stricter codes to keep their independent standards.
Importantly, to offset the cost of meeting the new code, developers will not be required to get green building certification from the U.S. Green Building Council or other organizations. Still, the new codes are expected to increase the cost of building homes. As a result, new home prices are expected to rise by $1,500.
The U.S. Green Building Council’s Northern California chapter told The San Francisco Chronicle its group was ”concerned that parts of the new code lack the rigor of existing local regulations, possibly making it difficult for cities and counties to adopt more stringent standards.” However, state officials said it was necessary to create a “single comprehensive code, clearing up confusion over varying regulations, and it allows builders to receive green certification without paying a third party.”
California’s Building Standards commission passsed similar rules in 2008, but now that they are mandatory, it’s expected they will remove three million metric tons of emissions from the air by 2020. Read the article
The New York Times’ Dot Earth blog reports on a new study on urban green space from Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union, which contends many urban green spaces emit more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than they absorb. This is due to the high amounts of emissions from lawn irrigation, fertilizer, mowing, and leaf blowing. The study argues: “Turfgrass lawns remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important ‘carbon sinks.’ However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks.”Claudia Czimczik, a researcher at University of California, Irvine, and a co-author of the study, told Dot Earth: “Lawns weren’t initially invented to store greenhouse gases — they have a lot of other purposes such as recreation. But there is a lot of recent political discussions about lawns as carbon sinks, and if that is the case we need to consider the whole package.”
According to Dot Earth, the researchers looked at four parks in Irvine, including open lawns and athletic fields. Open lawns which use fertilizers emit “heat-trapping nitrous oxide,” which “offsets 10 to 30 percent of the carbon dioxide captured and stored.” Additionally, the fuel used in mowing and leaf-blowing ”releases four times more carbon dioxide than the lawns soak up. Athletic fields fare even worse because they require more maintenance.”
Czimczik said Californian parks may be a special case because park officials maintain their parks year round. More research needs to be conducted on the emissions of green spaces in other regions. She added that push mowers should also be considered.
Dot Earth points to the EPA’s GreenScapes program, which can encourages homeowners to think about land, water, air, and energy use in their lawn maintenance. Unfortunately, the article leaves out the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES), a comprehensive new rating system, which addresses all of these issues (see earlier post).
Ciclovía started in Bogotá, Colombia over thirty years ago as a response to the congestion and pollution of city streets. Now it is happening all over Latin America and the United States, giving people a break from the stress of car traffic. The health benefits are immense, bringing families out to enjoy their streets in a new way, getting them to walk and bike together.So, it's sort of like parking day for roads, only on a massive scale. In other words - awesome. And, as noted, extremely valuable in a city like LA without many parks or even substantial enough right-of-ways in most places to provide comfortable, safe sidewalks. More info and coverage on cicLAvia can be found at the links below.
In Los Angeles we need this event more than ever, as anyone who tries to move through this city knows. Not only is it difficult to walk, bike, and drive here, but more and more children suffer from obesity and other health effects caused by growing up in a park poor city. CicLAvia creates a park by removing motorized traffic from city streets, and encourages people to come out and carve a new landscape for themselves.
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CicLAvía will work to address five core pressing issues present throughout all of Los Angeles: Public Space, Public Health, Community and Economic Development, and Pedestrian and Bicycle Advocacy. As a recurring free event, set for the same day/time every week or month, CicLAvía will allow for the temporary closure of interconnected routes throughout the region, creating a web of public space on which residents of Los Angeles will be able to walk, bike, socialize, celebrate, and learn about new cultures and neighborhoods. Similar events have successfully occurred in other US cities, such as Portland, New York, and San Francisco. Bogotá’s Ciclovía has also inspired copycat programs in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Quito, Ecuador, and Melbourne.
I visited the Ballona Wetlands in Playa del Rey on Saturday for a guided tour of the Freshwater Marsh. It is a wonderful example of a constructed wetland that not only provides stormwater management for surrounding development but also helps reconstruct lost habitat in an urban context. 
Abbot Kinney in Venice has become one of the great meccas for boutique stores in LA, and hip product designs are no exception. One of the more interesting stores has to be A + R, which features a hand-picked selection of sleek, pop-oriented design products. Or as they say: Global Design. Edited. The store is definitely a great place to go for one-of-a-kind gifts that vary from clever to chic. Although it feels like I am choosing between children, below are a few favorites:A Peaceful Bomb Vase by Biaugust(streetview from panoramio user matthewcorreia. all rights reserved)
Message Bean by SMP
Skull Tea or Coffee Set by Studio Pirsc
Recycled Cork Cases by Artecnica
Off the Wall Mini Flowerpot by Thelermont Hupton
Urban Sketchers is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people around the world who draw on location where they live and travel.The site features an impressive stylistic diversity, and its content is updated daily for a regular dose of inspiration. For LA residents, check out the work of Virginia Hein, one of the site's featured correspondents. Virginia is a Pasadena-based toy designer, illustrator, and drawing and design instructor with a great collection of watercolors and sketches from around Los Angeles. Her inspiration? She is "drawn to places that feel like the “old” Los Angeles (which is relative of course!). I never tire of the effects of atmosphere (what some unkindly call smog!), the verticals of the palm trees and horizontals of freeways… and the many brush-covered hills."
When the first set was shot in January 1951, City Hall was California's tallest building, a literal and figurative symbol of the power of the metropolis' downtown. By law, no building could be built to overshadow the structure.
What surrounded it was a city in transition: The Hollywood Freeway had opened in December 1950, cutting through a swath of the area, and many beaux-arts and Victorian structures had already been razed for parking lots.
Both of those developments portended the coming domination of the car -- and the corresponding boom of suburbia that would mark downtown's rapid decline.
. . . .
But take the elevator to the top of City Hall today, and there are signs of new development in downtown as well.
There are the sharp angles of the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, which opened just across the street in 2009; a new train line that stretches to the Eastside. And the downtown skyline keeps growing, this time to the south with a cluster of new condo and hotel towers rising near Staples Center.
From the top of City Hall, it's hard to tell that 40,000 people now live downtown, a dramatic demographic shift that is more easily detected on the streets of the city center.
Okay, not the most dramatic picture possible of snow in the LA Basin, but still pretty cool to look across the valley just steps from the beach and see snow in the mountains. According to the LA Times, snow fell as low as 2,500 - 3,000 feet with another 6-12" expected by the end of next week. Another great photo from the LA Times here.
Great story in the New York Times yesterday about designers branching out during a tough economy, including mention of LA-based Coolhaus ice cream sandwich truck. LA residents can find the Coolhaus ice cream truck around town - check out their calendar on the Coolhaus webpage.. . . the revival of bottom-dwelling marine life in the wake of treatment upgrades at the two big wastewater plants that empty into the bay several miles from shore.While they might not be cuddly, charismastic megafauna, they are key elements of rebuilding an ocean ecology and hopefully signs of the bay's recovery. Much work still remains to be done (note the historical contamination from DDT and PCBs persisting in sediment, and the ever present issue of urban runoff), but at least we can enjoy the return of invertebrates this time around.
Diver surveys have documented sea animals and plants on the sea floor "where really it was barren before," said Shelley Luce, executive director of the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, which issues the report every five years. "I think this is one of the more remarkable recoveries we've seen," she added.
"It's right up there with the return of the bald eagle and brown pelican."
Maybe not as visually dramatic: We're talking about snails and worms and other invertebrates crawling back into areas that for decades lacked the oxygen to support all but the most pollution-tolerant sea life.
Want to attend green events in LA, but aren't sure what's going on? Check out Go To Green LA for a great calendar of events. Coming up this week: free composting workshops, ecohome tours, volunteer expos, and green networking happy hours. (image from gotogreenla.com - all rights reserved)
The other nice part about leasing? "The lease includes permit, installation, maintenance, a web monitoring system, and guaranteed production," says Bass. As such, the agreement relies on a service versus an end product model. Rather than selling consumers a solar panel that they have to maintain and eventually disgard, SolarCity provides the service of solar-powered electricity to consumers, while incurring the material costs. Ideally, this model not only increases the ability of consumers to use solar-power, but will also motivate more cradle-to-cradle thinking in panel design to reduce the material cost for SolarCity and increase their profits. (See the great book "Natural Capitalism" for a great discussion of the potential benefits of this model)A typical three-bedroom home with a current electricity bill of $200 per month might lease a 4kW solar system. The new solar system will generate enough electricity to offset what the homeowner is currently paying to the utility company from $200 down to $60 per month. The SolarLease payment would be $0 down and $110 per month, amounting to a savings of $360 in the first year.
“Richard Neutra, Architect: Sketches and Drawings”
May 3, 2009 – March 28, 2010
Central Library – Getty Gallery
1. New York City, New York 55.7%And, as Human Transit notes, the list deals with "incorporated cities, which are things of very unequal size and shape bearing little relation to the organic form of urban regions. For example, Los Angeles at #49 would score much higher if the vast low-density San Fernando Valley were not part of the incorporated city, and high-density innermost suburbs like East Los Angeles (#39) were included instead." In other words, on the bright side of things, car happy LA is actually more of a low-car city than expected.
2. Newark, New Jersey 44.17%
3. Jersey City, New Jersey 40.67%
4. Washington, D.C. 36.93%
5. Hartford, Connecticut 36.14%
6. Baltimore, Maryland 35.89%
7. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 35.74%
8. Boston, Massachusetts 34.91%
9. Buffalo, New York 31.42%
10. New Haven, Connecticut 29.74%
. . .
14. San Francisco, California 28.56%
32. East Los Angeles, California 21.24%
36. Oakland, California 19.62%
45. Berkeley, California 17.01%
49. Los Angeles, California 16.53%
How long will it take for a city that lacks age, poverty, or dominant universities to achieve the kind of low car ownership that these 50 demonstrate? How soon, for example, will a city be able to create a combination of density, design, and mixture of uses that yields the same performance as an old city that naturally has those features?While Portland is successfully moving towards a dense urban condition, is appears people may not be willing to give up their cars yet. So, is there much hope for traffic clogged LA? No doubt we need to reduce the number of automobiles, and even more importantly, automobile trips in Los Angeles to improve environmental quality and alleviate traffic. Hopefully downtown's resurgence and improved urban design and transit initiatives throughout the city will keep moving us toward this lofty goal. While much remains to be done, at least our place on the list provides some hope that a less car-centered LA may be in our a future.
Portland is probably the most promising such city in the US, and it's not on the list. Only 14% of households there don't have a car, so it's probably well down in the second 50. Like many cities, Portland has been doing everything it can to build a dense mixed-use urban environment. It's the sort of city that convinces the Safeway supermarket chain to rebuild their store with townhouses and residential towers on top. But while people are moving into the inner city, they don't seem to be selling their cars when they do, nor do they seem to be going to work by transit.
The project will redevelop a large patch of dirt between the Santa Monica Pier and the Santa Monica City Hall (see detailed view of project site to the right - image courtesy of City of Santa Monica). The project will include 7 acres of park space bordered by future residential development with the goal of creating a dynamic open space that will connect the Santa Monica Civic Center to the rest of the city. The project scope is summed up well by Architect's Newspaper, which first reported the finalists in December: According to the project’s RFQ, the Town Square, adjacent to Santa Monica’s City Hall, is set to be a space for cultural and civic events, while the Palisades Garden Walk, to its south, will focus on the city’s unique “cultural” and “horticultural” offerings, including a botanical element and water features. Adjacent streetscape improvements, as well as pedestrian and bicycle paths, will connect the parks to the city, while Moore Ruble Yudell’s Santa Monica Village will sit just adjacent. The city has committed $25 million for design and construction of the project, and construction is planned to begin in August 2011.Funding for the project was approved in June, and interviews will occur this month with a winner chosen sometime shortly thereafter. The selection panel is said to include Ken Smith and USC architecture dean Qingyun Ma. A public process will be implemented by the winning team to help develop the final plan.
Beyond the rhythmic design quality, though, I was also struck by two thoughts as I wandered through this landscape. One, I was intrigued by the opportunistic spider webs that have begun to cover the tops of the hedges. It seemed to reinforce the reality that any design, particularly landscape architecture projects dealing with living organisms as materials, will have unexpected outcomes. Perhaps some spider infestation was expected, but the large prevalence on the tightly clipped tops of the shrubs suggests that the design's sculpting of the hedges actually generated a more positive condition for spider habitat to flourish. Second, in this day and age of sustainability concerns, I was left wondering whether projects with large maintenance inputs will be worth maintaining long into Southern California's future? To be fair to the designers, I am not being critical of their choices as this project is over 20 years old and reflects a different era and attitude. But, the question remains as to whether the aesthetic quality of the project still merits the costs of its upkeep? And, how do clients or designers make that decision? Or, in a related question for issues of preservation, at what point does a project's significance justify the energy it takes to maintain it, not just culturally, but ecologically? Especially as concerns over water use, restoration of biodiversity, and energy use increase in the near future, Los Angeles's design community and citizenry are faced with the challenge of balancing regenerative design with aesthetic expression in our existing and future designed landscapes.
Great news - a week full of rain is on the forecast, something we desperately need despite the inconvenience it may add to our lives. According to the Metropolitian Water District of Southern California, water reserve levels have dropped consistently since 2006 (see graphic from MWD's website to the right). For example:In June, 2005 the elevation of Lake Oroville was 897.12 feet. By February, 2008 the elevation had dropped to 719.86 feet. The lake lost 2,079,738 Acre Feet of water during that time.They have some telling time lapse photos of Lake Oroville and other regional reservoirs on their website. Hopefully this week will help bump water levels up locally, and build up a large snowpack regionally for our water supply throughout the year.
1/31 - Downtown's Historic CoreAll tours start at 11AM, and are free for A+D members. General admission tickets are $15, or $5 dollars for students per tour. A three-tour package is also available for $30. RSVP at info@aplusd.org or 323.932.9393.
2/7 - Koreatown
2/27 - Boyle Heights (Including a Goldline Ride)
Is there a bigger project potentially affecting the future of the Los Angeles / Orange County region than the Orange County Great Park? After hearing all of the press, and getting a chance to listen to designers Ken Smith and Mia Lehrer talk about the project at this year's ASLA Convention, I finally got to visit the initial offering of the park this past October. While only 27-acres of the 1,347 acre project, the 2009 ASLA Award winning Preview Park project is functioning as a prototyping ground for the rest of the park. Design ideas, details, and materials are being tested while initial events are being implemented to promote use of the space by nearby residents.
"The illicit cultivation of someone else's land." - Richard ReynoldsGuerrilla Gardening is a grass-roots, worldwide movement begun in London that has a radical name and what some might perceive as a revolutionary agenda because of its manner of appropriating public or private space towards a communal good. Empty lots, barren planters, weed filled right-of-ways, and even posters are appropriated under the cover of darkness to grow plants, and so-called "seed bombs" are thrown to propagate wildflowers and beautify neighborhoods. Most often these unused spaces are converted into flower beds, but some groups have converted these spaces into productive urban agriculture landscapes or native plant havens.
"Gardening public space with or without permission." - David Tracey
"To not only get our hands dirty and start gardens all over Los Angeles, but to become a resource for other potential Guerrilla Gardeners and a homebase for people interested in brightening their own communities."That doesn't mean they aren't stirring things up, and enjoying the anti-establishment edge of the movement. Many members have adopted clever pseudonyms (Phil O'Dendron and Lord Aloe are two personal favorites), and the group coordinates a number of social outings with the air of cloak and dagger ecological missions. Ultimately, that might be the greatest success of the Guerilla Gardening movement is interjecting some intrigue, coolness, fun, hipness, and sexiness into gardening. They aren't just planting a few shrubs, they are part of an anti-establishment movement.
