Drylands Competition

Image from Drylands Competition.  All Rights Reserved.

A very interesting new competition has been announced this month by the California Architectural Foundation, in partnership with the Arid Lands Institute at Woodbury University and the AIACC Academy for Emerging Professionals.  The competition is is the 2011-2012 William Turnbull Competition: Drylands Design: An Open Ideas Competition for Retrofitting the American West.  The competition asks design teams to generate progressive proposals for creative alternatives for the American West in the form of new architecture or community design prototypes. The competition features a great jury of architects and landscape architects, and final proposals are due in December.  More information is on the website, and part of the competition brief is provided below.

The Challenge

Water scarcity is both the history and the future of the American west. Re-thinking water use, particularly in the face of climate change, will be central to the region’s survival. The work exceeds the grasp of a single discipline, and touches all dimensions of the way people live and work. Sustaining the US West in the face of water scarcity and hydrologic variability brought on by climate change will require strategic architectures, infrastructures, and urbanisms that promote adaptation and resilience. Drylands Design seeks innovation in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, regional planning, and infrastructure design that addresses water supply, water quality, water access, water treatment, and the water/energy nexus. Drylands Design seeks integrative proposals from multidisciplinary design teams that anticipate science and policy perspectives as necessary dimensions of intelligent design response, and exploit beauty as an instrument of resilience and adaptation.

Competition Objectives + Priorities
The purpose of Drylands Design is to generate a portfolio of long term design strategies for the arid and semi-arid west’s water-scarce future. Proposals must recognize and address:
The Water-Energy Nexus
The relationship between water, energy use, and heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions is intertwined and self-limiting; uncoupling water’s capture, treatment, distribution, and use from energy-intensive delivery systems is critical to a new western drylands design.
Scarcity + Variability
The twin effects of climate change on the American west’s hydrologic cycle are expected to be scarcity (prolonged drought periods and diminished snowpack) and variability (increased intensity of flood events). Design for variability will replace engineering for stationarity.
Localized Resources
Rain water, storm water and single-use municipal supplies, currently treated as waste or flood hazard, form the largest “undeveloped” sector of western water. Converting local liabilities to assets will offset dependence on carbon-intensive imports.
Social Equity
Recognizing that no built environment achieves true vitality without social equity, Drylands Design seeks proposals that actively benefit low- and middle-income communities, urban and rural. More specifically, Drylands Design seeks proposals that promote an active and participatory civic engagement by citizen-users.
Thus, Drylands Design seeks responsive, variable, localized, and low-carbon alternatives to energy-intensive, 20th-century centralized water engineering solutions. Drylands Design seeks a portfolio of strategies for the west that actively remediate the environmental sterility, economic monocultures, and cultural lethargy induced by the West’s dependence on an obsolete engineering paradigm. Drylands Design seeks proposals that tactically promote a place-specific built environment of both ecological and cultural vitality.
Site – Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
Drylands Design seeks proposals for the arid and semi-arid regions of the US West, using John Wesley Powell’s historic, and imprecise, designation—the 100th meridian—as its starting line. The 100th meridian, as Powell pointed out in his 1878 Report on the Lands of Arid Region, is the approximate demarcation line corresponding to a radical shift in US hydrology. Simply put, it is, more or less, where humid East ends and the arid West begins. All proposals must be sited in the United States, west of the 100th meridian.
Design proposals may be for a real or speculative project, for one or more real sites, and must be as yet BE unbuilt by Spring 2012. All design proposals must be sited conceptually within three scales: the local, the regional, and the global.
Local Specificity
All design proposals are required to be sited within a specific location in the U.S. arid or semi-arid west. Locally, even hyper-locally, site-specific design is required.
Regional Relevance
All design proposals are required to identify the ‘typicality’ of particular site conditions, and address or speculate on scalability and replicability of design strategies to other comparable sites throughout the west.
Global Context
All design proposals are required to speculate on scalability and replicability to drylands in other parts of the world. If sprawl is arguably the West’s most enduring global export, could intelligent drylands design be its next?
Although this competition is not site specific, a site in Fresno, California may be used for the project if the team desires. Click here for information regarding this site.

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Architectural Proposals With the above water issues in mind, design a building on a specific drylands site in the American West as defined in “Site” above. Architectural proposals may include, but are not limited to:

Single Family or Multi Family Dwellings

Commercial/Industrial Complexes

Mixed Use or Hybrid programs

Civic/Educational Buildings

Community Design Proposals
With the above water issues in mind, develop a community design proposal on a specific drylands site or region in the American West as defined in “Site” above. Community design proposals may include, but are not limited to:

Civic infrastructures

Urban Landscapes

Regional Planning

Playa Vista Central Park: A Park Waiting for People

View to the performance shell that functions as the visual icon for the park.

Recently I had posted an article from The Architect's Newspaper about innovative design projects in which Architecture and Landscape Architecture combined in new and innovative ways.  One of the interesting projects in the article was Central Park by the Office of James Burnett in Playa Vista, and, as promised, here are some photos and thoughts on the unique and engaging park.
(Editor's note:  As I was crafting my write-up, Archinet published a nice review of the park, including some great images.  Interestingly, we had some similar feelings about the public-private nature of the park.)

 

The verdict?  Central Park is a new, contemporary park full of promise and dynamic design moves, but suffering right now from something (mostly) out of its control:  It is a park without people.  The feeling after visiting it three or four times is akin to an empty house or a high-design piece of furniture placed behind glass - it is beautiful, striking, but incomplete without its use and users.

Completed in the summer of 2010, the park sits at the eastern end of the Playa Vista development, bordered on the north by a new contemporary commercial development, but surrounded on all other sides by graded, empty plots waiting for eventual completion of the far-reaching Playa Vista Development.  The park itself is comprised of both bold and subtle design moves that create a rich experience for those that are able to find it. The park is broken into three primary activity sectors: active recreation facilities such as a soccer field, basketball court, and Noguchi-esque play areas comprise the western third of the site; an amphitheater flanked by Oak allee strolling gardens and bocce ball courts sit in the center of the park; and a naturalistic stream and reflection pond bookend a playful garden composed of large, angular berms planted with drifts of accents plants on the eastern third of the site.  Geometric bands of trees and pathways run across and diagonally through the site, creating strong circulation and site lines on the site, eventually extruding into the series of angular, engineered berms on the eastern edge of the park. 

Beyond the groundplane geometries and bold berms, the designers spent a lot of consideration on massaging grades on the site to not only manage topography and drainage but separate functions in small, but meaningful ways.  The most noticeable is the sloping amphitheater with the bisecting circulation path (akin to a romantic haha wall) that allows people to traverse the park without being seen.  However, gestures such as lowering the synthetic turf soccer field to help contain activities and retain water, and elevating a sand play area for small children away from foot traffic also create significant experiential gains in the park.

Environmentally, the park also showcases a contemporary ethos.  The drought-tolerant, largely native or near-native plant palette is entirely irrigated with graywater (as is all of Playa Vista), and the amenities double as habitat providers.  Some birds from the nearby Pacific Ocean and Ballona Wetlands are already beginning to colonize the water features.

As is true of all new open spaces in park-starved Los Angeles, early colonizers are soccer players both during the week and weekends.  However, passive users, and casual visitors to the park are either absent or few and far between.  In part, this is a result of the hidden nature of the park (it is not visible from any nearby streets, nor highly publicized), but also from the tenuous nature of privately developed, public access parks such as Central Park.  While the park is open to the public, it was developed by private owners and sits on private land, dictating a different set of concerns and liabilities.  The result is a long list of rules restricting use of the park and a highly-present group of security guards tasked with protecting the park.  While undoubtedly this security has prevented the park from disuse, graffiti, and other forms of human entropy, it clearly engenders a feeling that you are not welcome at this park, especially in larger groups (On visits by myself  I had no problems, but on a visit taking 15 students from a landscape architecture program to see the park's design I was questioned extensively by security before we could tour the park.) The result is a park that wants to be used, but isn't being used yet, despite the carefully designed spaces found within.

Other implementation issues of lesser, and perhaps more typical, degree of a large-scale, recently completed project are also present.  At my last visit in March, at least 4 or 5 Oak trees had failed on the site, potentially due to issues with standing water or drainage.  Also, as a park exploring new design ideas, some are destined to work great, while it appears others may potentially prove short-lived.  For instance, low groundcovers were planted beneath the Oaks in organic geometries to promote a circuituous, modern strolling garden, but are already struggling to establish  properly, and will likely fail due to trampling.  Also, the long-term health and stability of the berms will be interesting to observe, if nothing else because their form seems so dependent upon engineering that may degrade over time.

Overall, Central Park is an impressive project, both in its scope and execution, and is full of rich ideas for designers and visitors.  Not only does it create a number of distinct and carefully constructed spaces, but an obvious financial commitment and dedication to customization by the client and project team has a created a park with a unique and compelling identity.  Now all it needs are the people the project deserves.

Concept Rendering of Park.  Image from Archinect  All Rights Reserved.

View own circulation spine towards berm garden.

View down circulation spine from the playful berm garden.

Redwood allee and horseshoe area

Western entry plaza with depression and extrusion

Oak Allee

View to the sunken soccer field

Contemporary play area recalls a Noguchi playground

View of the reflecting pond and seating.

Stepping stone path across riparian feature.

Stepping stone detail across riparian feature

Geometric strolling garden that may not survive use

One of the dead oaks on site.

View to sports facilities across pond with island tree plantings.

Custom Ipe seating elements provide vantage points for the geometrically planted berms.

Detailed view of Berms planted with succulent and grass mix

Custom seating element echos the topographic moves on site

Custom seating and planter

Star Jasmine covers a custom fence surrounding the performance space.

Integrated signage detailing

Venice Garden and Home Tour -this Saturday

Image from Venice Garden and Home Tour.  All Rights Reserved.

This weekend brings another installment of the annual Venice Garden and Home Tour.  Running from 10am to 5pm on Saturday, May 7th, the walking tour will feature over 30 gardens and homes throughout Venice for people to ogle and muse over.  Should be another interesting installment, especially with the continuing onslaught of contemporary homes being designed and built in Venice.  More on this year's tour is shown below, as well as some pictures from previous years:

This annual self-guided walking tour will feature 30 gardens and homes in the charming, secluded Walk Streets neighborhood and streets south of Venice Boulevard. The tour is a showcase of how architects, landscape designers, and homeowners have crafted gardens and homes to make lovely living oases. These private spaces, sequestered behind carved wooden doors, contemporary metal gates and imaginative fences, are open to the public this one day of every year when tour-goers can walk the streets, meet and enjoy the community, and be inspired by the inventive design, surprising spirit and whimsy that is uniquely Venice.

The Walk Streets through tranquil neighborhoods where the homes face one another are actually pedestrian paths that bring people together. When Venice was being developed, workers lived in modest bungalows that later became summer beach homes for Angelinos; many of the remaining old bungalows are reworked now to meet today’s standards and tastes, and sit side by side sleek contemporary cubes. Local architects Barbara Bestor, Tom Carson, Talbot McLanahan, Tim Petersen and Robert Thibodeau, along with local landscape designers such as Jay Griffith, Pamela Burton, Naomi Sanders and Di Zock, have influenced the constantly evolving development of these distinctive neighborhoods.

The gardens and homes on this tour exemplify Venice's creative energy: the homeowner’s love of living inside or outside with nature, the use of lanterns and crystal chandeliers found hanging from trees or cleverly placed antique neon signs and sculptures in just the right places to enhance gardens. In these rustic enclaves, rooftop gardens and solar panels pop up into the trees, and tiny vegetable gardens thrive next to shady children’s play yards.

Now in its 18th year, the Venice Garden and Home Tour is the much anticipated annual fundraising event that draws visitors from all over California. The tour gives financial support for NYA’s Las Doradas Children’s Center, a licensed child care facility that provides full-time, education-based child care to low-income working families.

Image from Venice Garden and Home Tour.  All Rights Reserved.

Image from Venice Garden and Home Tour.  All Rights Reserved.

Landscapes for Living: Bunker Hill Steps

Image from LA Times.  All Rights Reserved.

Even more follow-up to the Cultural Landscape Foundation's recent symposium this week from the LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne.  He takes a quick look at Bunker Hill Steps, one of Lawrence Halprin's downtown projects, as a kick-off to a new series called Ground Level bringing attention to street-level design in Los Angeles.  

One theme of last week’s Landscapes for Living conference at SCI-Arc, which I write about in a Critic’s Notebook in Wednesday’s  paper, was the continuing, puzzling obscurity of landscape architects and their work in Southern California. As it happens, a main goal of our new Ground Level feature is to bring attention to overlooked street-level design around the region. Serendipity!

So today we’ll devote this space to one of many pedigreed-but-under appreciated examples of postwar landscape design in downtown Los Angeles: Lawrence Halprin’s Bunker Hill Steps, completed in 1990 directly across 5th  Street from the Central Library and in the shadow of Pei Cobb Freed’s U.S. Bank Tower, the tallest building in the city. In romantic as much as literal terms, Halprin’s design is meant to recall the Spanish Steps in Rome, a debt that makes this project a textbook example of postmodernism in landscape architecture. More practically, the steps provide a pedestrian link between downtown’s historic core and the newer architecture of Bunker Hill.

Bisected by a stream-like water feature, the 103 steps flow around and past artworks by Robert Graham and others. The project is one of a number downtown from the period by Halprin, a giant of postwar landscape architecture who lived in Marin County and died two years ago at age 93.

Halprin’s nearby designs include the Maguire Gardens at the foot of the library, Grand Hope Park and the glass-enclosed Wells  Fargo Court (formerly Crocker Court) at 3rd Street and Grand Avenue. According to Charles Birnbaum — founder of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which organized last week’s conference — this loose network of L.A. projects contains Halprin’s “most diverse vocabulary of indoor and outdoor spaces.”

Landscapes for Living

In response to the Cultural Landscapes Foundation's recent symposium "Landscapes for Living: Post-War Landscape Architecture in Los Angeles," Christoper Hawthorne had a great article pondering why landscape architects and their work remains so anonymous in Los Angeles and beyond.  Definitely worth a great read to ponder some ideas as to exactly why landscapes are valued so different than architecture in a city full of such great designers.  Below is an excerpt:

"In Southern California," the architect Charles Moore wrote in 1984, "the part that is planted is very likely to be more sophisticated than the part that is built."

If that's the case — and I'd say it has been in nearly every phase of the region's design history — how to explain the fact that Los Angeles architects have for so long been much better known, locally and around the world, than their counterparts in landscape architecture? Why have our best gardens tended to be even more susceptible to neglect or demolition than our best houses, which are themselves infamously vulnerable?

Why is it that everybody in L.A. seems to remember that Bertram Goodhue designed the original Central Library downtown, but few know that the acclaimed landscape architect Lawrence Halprin is responsible for the Maguire Gardens at the building's feet, added when the library was restored and extended by architects Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer in 1993?

. . . .

Explanations for that obscurity came in a rush all day long. Landscape architects don't publish or promote their work the way architects do. They don't create objects, easily photographed and quickly understood, the way architects do. And perhaps most obvious of all: Their work is ephemeral by definition, quicker to decay and easier to modify than buildings are, to say nothing of a painting, a symphony or a novel.

All those explanations make sense, but they are mostly universal: They don't say a whole lot about the particular battles fought, and often lost, by landscape architects in Southern California.

. . . .

To get at the peculiar anonymity of the Southern California landscape architect, it seems to me, requires exploring a notion that barely got a hearing at "Landscapes for Living," at least during the panels I attended: the L.A. garden as a vehicle for — and expression of — a certain democratic impulse.

Because Los Angeles was built from its earliest days around the primacy of the single-family house, garden space here has always been widely available to families with a range of incomes and backgrounds. Instead of a Central Park by the famous Frederick Law Olmsted at the very heart of our metropolis, we developed tens of thousands of private amateur parks in our backyards, to go with a relative handful of parks and plazas by prominent designers.

Another question I didn't hear any of the panelists address directly, though they seemed to circle around it all day, was this: In a world quickly turning every artistic discipline into digital form — even architecture, with fancy computer renderings of unbuilt projects now routinely splashed across the front pages of newspapers and the covers of books and magazines — how can landscape architecture possibly compete? If gardens are nearly impossible to appreciate in two dimensions, they are also best understood over time.

LA Projects Showcase Living Architecture

Playa Vista Park.  Image from The Architect's Newspaper.  All Rights Reserved

The Architect's Newspaper had an interesting read this week on how the increasing trend of merging landscape and architecture is producing innovative building and site designs.  Even more pertinent, they included a number of LA design firms and projects in the mix.  Prominently featured was James Burnett's and Michael Maltzan's recent collaboration on Playa Vista Park, (I have yet to visit, but will hopefully post some pictures and thoughts on it in the next few weeks), and other LA-related examples include Belzberg Architects' Museum of the Holocaust, and work by Morphosis, SWA, and Freeland Buck.  Definitely very exciting and impressive work, with hopefully even more to come.

Playa Vista Park.  Image from The Architect's Newspaper.  All Rights Reserved.

Year End Review

Near the top of the list of year-end, best of lists has to be the Curbed Awards 2010 at Curbed LA.  My personal favorites worth checking out:

• Top Ten Weird and Wonderful Celebrity Houses
• Nine Nuttiest Architecture Renderings of 2010

Although, really, the whole list is worth a good look.  Hopefully, with a (slightly) rebounding economy, 2011 should bring an even better group of nutty renderings and real estate offerings to enjoy.

SM Civic Center Park - Updated Concept

Image from Field Operations. All Rights Reserved.

The updated concept for the Santa Monica Civic Center Parks was presented to the community last Saturday, featuring a dynamic synthesis of the three previous concepts based on feedback from the community, with additional design detailing.  The preferred concept from the last meeting was the Arroyo Wash concept, with added facets from the other concepts, and the new concept promises an interesting coastal park with elements people might recognize from other recent Field Ops work such as the High Line.  Check out the entire presentation here, and get ready for the next community meeting on January 29th.   

Predock Building Doomed

Image from Tom Zasadzinski and The Architect's Newspaper.  All Rights Reserved.

The iconic Antoine Predock-designed Classroom Lab Administration building on Cal Poly Pomona's campus is slated for demolition. Built in 1993 and featured in a number of movies and television productions, the building appears to be little loved by its users on the Cal Poly campus.  The Architect's Newspaper reported the news, including direct responses from Antoine Predock:

In recent weeks, it has become clear that Antoine Predock’s iconic Classroom Laboratory Administration (CLA) Building on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona is likely to meet every building’s nemesis: the wrecking ball. The university claims it is structurally compromised and poorly designed for education. While demolition is not yet scheduled, on September 21 the California State University Board of Trustees voted to construct a new building in its place.


Meanwhile, Predock fired back in an interview that the CLA is not only structurally sound but an “irreplaceable” part of the campus. “In their haste to find a quick solution to common structural problems, university officials have chosen to raze this important visual landmark and, by doing so, will demolish a vital part of the university’s identity,” he told AN.


Designed in 1993 to be what Predock called “the new campus gateway” and “a pivotal, landmark building,” the CLA is composed of an eight-story triangular tower and an attached seven-story rectilinear structure. The tower, with its soaring form, is visible from the I-10 freeway and also doubles as a wayfinding device on campus, helping visitors move through a school that university president Michael Ortiz calls “difficult to navigate.” The structure has been featured in numerous films and television spots, and is even integrated into the university’s logo. Its presence will not be easily replicated.


While Ortiz admits that “the removal of the CLA will leave a void in the skyline,” he contends that “those who have to interact with the structure on a daily basis are not as fond of the structure.” The building, he and other administrators argue, is confusing to navigate, cramped, and plagued with problems. According to Mike Sylvester, Cal Poly’s vice president of facilities, the university was forced to pursue “a latent defect claim for design and construction deficiencies” shortly after the building opened, due to extensive water damage. That damage, he said, has still not been completely fixed.

Renovating the building would mean updating it for new seismic codes, among other things, and the university says it would cost $80 million, the same price they have estimated for a new building. 

Predock, who completed his plans for the building under the supervision of a California State University review board, is understandably upset by the news. “It is devastating,” he said, “to imagine that this iconic structure, one of the most important of my designs, might be demolished, creating a void in the Cal Poly campus fabric, an irreplaceable loss.”

Responding to the administration’s charges, Predock staunchly defended the CLA’s structural and figural integrity, calling his building “a project of which I am extremely proud…not to mention the fact that the structure survived both the Northridge and Chino Hills earthquakes unscathed.” He added that the school itself signed off on the building’s design. “During the construction drawing phase, the project underwent intense scrutiny by the university and its peer review panel,” he said, “continuing into the construction phase with a team of university inspectors.”

Cal Poly’s Sylvester differs with Predock about the university’s oversight of his work, revealing some underlying tension. “Although there were reviews during the development of the project, the liability for design and construction is the architect’s, engineer’s, and contractor’s professional responsibility,” he said.

Around campus, reaction to the impending loss seems surprisingly ambivalent. University message boards have been quiet, while local preservation groups have been mum. Said Sylvester: “There are many people in the university community that are disappointed that the building may be demolished, but overall most people agree with the university’s decision and are looking forward to a new replacement facility.”

According to Cal Poly’s Office of Public Affairs, construction on the CLA’s successor is estimated to begin in 2013, and will take approximately 18 to 24 months to complete after groundbreaking. An architect has not yet been named.

From the article, it appears to be a classic example of an aesthetic approach clashing with user needs, but it is hard to tell how much Predock's design or perhaps proper construction is really lacking in this situation.  Certainly the building satisfied a number of larger programmatic needs on campus, including wayfinding and identity, but did not function to the satisfaction of its daily occupants on a practical level.  Right or wrong, the design will be replaced, and it will be interesting to see what fills the void. 

Santa Monica Palisades Garden Walk - Initial Concepts

Image from Santa Monica Civic Parks Project and Field Operations.  All Rights Reserved.

James Corner and Field Operations held the second community workshop on Sunday, sharing the results from the previous workshop as well as three initial schemes for the high-profile park project.  A complete pdf of the presentation as well as summaries of the concepts and feedback are available for download on the project's website.  Initial impressions: three interesting and distinct ideas for the space, but The Arroyo Wash Concept is my clear favorite.  Something about the lines and character of the graphic imply something genuine about the site in a way that the other concepts don't quite capture.  They feel more introduced, forced, or perhaps even over-designed at this stage, whereas the Arroyo Wash Concept has a simple, strong elegance to it.  Will be interesting to see how the feedback process and design development help shape concept selection and development. 

Image from Santa Monica Civic Parks Project and Field Operations.  All Rights Reserved.

Image from Santa Monica Civic Parks Project and Field Operations.  All Rights Reserved.

Dwell on Design

 Image of Vapur Anti Bottle - from ConstructLA.

Dwell on Design was last weekend here in LA.  Sadly, I had a number of commitments that prevented me from attending, but another blog, ConstructLA, has a nice recap of their top 5 products from the expo.

California Scenario turns 30

Famed artist, sculptor, and landscape designer Isamu Noguchi's California Scenario project in Costa Mesa is celebrating it's 30th anniversary this year.  The Dirt reports that to commemorate the milestone, the Noguchi Museum in New York has a new exhibition discussing the work, complete with photographs, models, and video. 

The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York, has marked the thirtieth anniversary of famed modern artist Isamu Noguchi’s California Scenario with a new exhibition. The public garden, commissioned by developer and philanthropist Henry T. Segerstrom, is located in Costa Mesa, California. The exhibition explores the design of garden through photographs, models, and video.

In 1979, Segerstrom asked Noguchi to design a public garden to enhance two office towers built on family land once used as a lima bean farm. While Segerstrom initially wanted a lush retreat, Noguchi instead created a simple stone plaza with a few green spaces. The Noguchi Museum writes that the artist first conceived the project as an “abstract metaphor for the state of California, from the Sierras, to the desert, to the woods. In addition to including redwoods and cacti, among other native plants, it encompasses a number of individual elements designed by the artist to evoke some of California’s salient characteristics.”


The garden features a crack filled with water and stones, which functions as a stream beginning at the thirty-foot-high sandstone triangle named “Water Source” and ending at “Water Use,” a granite wedge. ”Forest Walk” takes visitors past a patch of California redwoods and “Desert Land” features a “symmetrical mound planted with a variety of cacti, agave, and other desert plants.” The sculpture “Spirit of the Lima Bean,” twelve-feet-high carved granite boulders, educates visitors about the earlier use of the site.

Segerstrom and Noguchi worked on the project for two years. Today, it’s a well-visited (and well-maintained) site open to all. In fact, Segerstrom “personally ensured” California Scenario was well-preserved over the long-term.  The exhibition is open through October 24, 2010.

Sadly for us, the exhibit is in New York, but fortunately for us, the actual work is still open to the public in Costa Mesa. So, while you can't go to the exhibit without a plane ticket, you can enjoy the unique sculpture garden in person with a short drive to Two Town Center next to South Coast Plaza.  While there, you can also see a classic Peter Walker design. 

(images from The Dirt, courtesy of The Noguchi Museum, New York.  All Rights Reserved.)

2010 AIA Housing Awards feature LA Projects

Formosa 1140 - Image from LA Times and Lawrence Anderson / Esto.  All Rights Reserved.

LA design firms keep bringing in the awards.  The 2010 AIA Housing Awards are scheduled to be officially announced on Tuesday, but the LA Times had an early peek at the winners, which include two LA area multi-family housing projects.  Congrats to architects!

Formosa 1140, West Hollywood
Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects

Jury comments: Elegant detailing, airy and uplifting, strong in many ways, with a delightful use of color. Skillful employment of Universal Design and sustainable strategies, all within a modest budget.... I love the fact that a park was born because of the thoughtful site planning.... This project brings dignity to an underprivileged population.

Step Up on 5th
Pugh + Scarpa Architects

Jury comments: A creative solution allowing light to penetrate deep into a site of modest width. The playful use of fenestration provides privacy and encourages the play of light and shadow.... Communal spaces for the residents convey a very significant social message for those who have never before had those spaces.... Elegance for the underprivileged.

2010 ASLA Professional Awards Announced

 From City Plates by Rios Clementi Hale - Image from ASLA. All Rights Reserved

The 2010 ASLA Professional Awards were announced this week, and Los Angeles has some great representation.  Four projects with connections to the LA area were selected, including a Master Plan for CalTech, and three different communication projects.  Congrats to the winners!

ANALYSIS / PLANNING CATEGORY

California Institute of Technology Landscape Master Plan
Nelson Byrd Woltz with Katherine Spitz Associates as the local landscape architecture)

COMMUNICATIONS CATEGORY

Ken Smith Landscape Architect Monograph
Ken Smith Landscape Architect (New York based but with Orange County office)

Grid/Street/Place: Essential Elements of Sustainable Urban Districts
RTKL Associates

City Plates
Rios Clementi Hale Studios

From Caltech Landscape Master Plan - Image from ASLA. All Rights Reserved

Casa Dominguez - Affordable Housings Goes Green

(image from LA Times. All Rights Reserved)

The LA Times had a great profile of Casa Dominguez, an affordable housing development in Compton that is poised to become the first LEED Platinum affordable housing project.  Hopefully the project will serve as an example for how to bring sustainability and green design to people often left behind by the marketplace, and underscore the power design has to change people's outlook.  As the article points out:

Geneva Mason, 23, who is transitioning out of foster care and is 7 months pregnant, began talking about her new lifestyle in the building by making a confession:

"I'm not going to lie. I was once a litterbug," she said. "But ever since I moved into the green environment, I'm more about picking up litter. Once you go through the gates … it's like a little town of its own — lovely, fresh. I'm excited about raising my child here."

National Landscape Architecture Month

It's April and that means it's National Landscape Architecture Month. The Southern California ASLA Chapter has a number of good events lined up for the month, including a tour this Saturday of the Council District 9 Neighborhood City Hall by Pamela Burton and Company that features a green roof, solar panels, and a graywater reuse system (see poster below).

Other events include lectures by Mia Lehrer and Ken Smith, and tours of Vista Hermosa Park and Valley Crest Tree Nursery.  More information on all of the events is available at the Southern California ASLA webpage.

2010 AIA Los Angeles Spring Home Tour I

 (image from Interior Design Magazine.  All Rights Reserved)

This Sunday, April 11th from 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM is the AIA Los Angeles Spring 2010 tour.  This spring the tour is in Venice, and features homes by Abramson Teiger Architects, Bestor Architecture, Irani Architects, and Tighe Architecture.  Last day for online tickets is today with prices running from $65.00 - $75.00 depending on your affiliations.  Architects / Designers and docents will be on hand to answer questions and talk about the home.  More info available at AIA Los Angeles and a few images from Interior Design.

"Modern Outdoor Living" Event

(Image from LA Times. All Rights Reserved)

Sadly I was on a trip this past weekend and missed the " "Modern Outdoor Living," pop-up store and discussion this past weekend in Chinatown hosted by Shibui Designs.  The event was a show and tell of sustainable outdoor furniture and innovative urban gardening concepts.  One of the highlights noted by the LA Times: Greenades, by San Francisco landscape architect David Fletcher and Los Angeles designers Daniel Phillips and Kim Karlsrud. The design is a bubble gum machine repurposed as a seed dispensary for guerrilla gardeners with seed-bomb choices including one mix specifically devised for planting along the Los Angeles River.

Modular Herb Garden Wall

(images from Sunset Magazine.  All Rights Reserved)

I stumbled on this the other day in Google images.  This creative wall in Laguna Beach is a simple, but great idea that provides privacy for the homeowners through modular and adjustable container plantings.  Not only can you easily change out your plants, but also adjust the design by shifting the boxes around.

The Fifth Ecology - Los Angeles Beyond Desire

The Fifth Ecology - Los Angeles Beyond Desire project is, in their own words:

An urban planning proposal for the Los Angeles River area in downtown Los Angeles. Developed by the post graduate course "Resources 08: Los Angeles Beyond Desire" at The Royal Collage of Fine Arts, Stockholm Sweden.

Sadly, I missed the actual display of this project downtown last November / December, but there is still a digital version of it online.  The project write-up is an intriguing read that provides a number of highly conceptual, but interesting systemized approaches for rethinking the structure and operation of Los Angeles.  Like many other urban transformation visions, it uses the LA river as the key transformation space for a reclaimed LA.  After perusing it briefly, some of the interesting ideas that stood out to me:

* Dog Tongue Town, which uses biomimicry to define new urban form and block pattern based around water channels mimicing water distribution on a leaf.

* Pocket Public Space, which advocates for returning small chunks of land into public space to infuse LA's density with more open space.  (FYI - some of this is already beginning with creative public / private partnerships in West Hollywood among others)

* Agrimids, or dense, multi-dimensional housing units that produce their own crops through a mix of private gardens, community gardens, and large-scale agricultural terraces incorporated into new building prototypes.

 Below are some images from the project, highlighting the Dog Tongue Town and Agrimid.