Discussion // BOOM & Street Art

BOOM!!!

I was astounded, shocked, appalled, surprised, inspired...a whole host of verbs...to see a proposal on ArchDaily for a new large, low-lying luxurious residential / resort complex in Palm Springs entitled "BOOM." Geared towards retirees from the LGBT community*, the project is a bold and creative approach to the standard American mega-development, and raises some fascinating questions about economy, sustainability, timeliness, sexuality and social living.

[*Palm Springs is a mecca for LGBT's on the West Coast / in LA]

The "fact sheet" is standard for recent models of  high-end, large-scale development in the United States: not-too-densely-packed apartment and condo units; unique internal "neighborhoods" each designed by a different well-known architect, in this case by boundary-breaking contemporary firms including Diller Scofidio + Renfro, J Mayer H, Joel Sanders, Surfacedesign, Lot-Ek, etc; and a variety of amenities including swimming pools, gyms, restaurants, nightclubs, and on and on. I've worked on a similar project, albeit of different scope and style (think: New Urbanist) that has collected dust on the drawing board for the past three years; landmark proposals of this sort are common, but not often built.

Discussion // Contractors, Politicians, Education...and Diversions

Building A Better Education

Is architecture to blame for the decrepit state of American education?

Well, from the position of the designer, no. But the process by which public educational facilities are built, especially on public campuses of all levels of education, is certainly part of the issue. In the LA Times this morning there was a terrific series of thorough and informative exposés revealing wasteful spending, poor planning, potential corruption, hidden agendas, and during a decade of expansion on Los Angeles's community colleges.

[Suits and s***. Hope you kids like a leaky roof!]

Part I - Overview: here

Part II - Case Study: here

Contractor Kickbacks: here

Future Articles: here

Not all educational projects that require the services of an architect run into budget issues (I have had very positive experiences in this regard). Not all contractors are cheapskates (lots are) or incompetent (many are actually very very good) and not all politicians are corrupt (ahem). But when political and financial argy bargy / backroom deals begin to stain the process of building public facilities, which, by their nature, are to be cost-effective, efficient, durable, and well-suited to their tasks, huge problems can arise. Unfortunately, I believe these conflicts are more prevalent than one might imagine. They are damaging to the people who are supposed to benefit from facilities expansion, and damaging to the reputations of all parties involved (architects) no matter how much sway each held in making decisions.

Discussion // Residential Towers

In response to the need for architectural compromise (as directed) and other ideas of scale and aesthetic I enumerated in the previous post, I've diverted my approach to answering the question of urban housing in the United States from the all-encompassing block plan and instead begun to explore the viability of residential towers in relatively low-density neighborhoods. The first order of business, I suppose, is to come up with a sort of ad-hoc list of advantages and disadvantages of the tower typology, and to find ways of enhancing the positive aspects and reversing the negative. I've also listed a wide variety of potential precedents; any suggestions for others would be appreciated.

[Literal translation of the Morphosis model.]

Discussion // Potpurrtecture

Wide range of topics on tap for today, starting with some links...

How Skyscrapers Can Save the City (The Atlantic)

A sociocultural look at the benefits of high-density living, the article makes some interesting points about the perceived economic influence of scale and provides a counterpoint to the timeless cries of Jane Jacobs for preserving the scale of the street. The author is correct in his assertion that "historic districts," though they acknowledge the sanctity of heritage, actually become completely unaffordable in comparison to more dense models. The authors suggestions are not so helpful - if neighborhoods are allowed to determine the extent to which their individual characters are maintained, the status quo will unquestionably be maintained - but they at least make for stimulating debate. The article also ignores the technical aspects of tall buildings - production, fabrication, transportation of materials, assembly, carbon footprint vs. sprawl, etc. I'm not an expert on the science so it's not my place to critique tall buildings on it.

I have mixed feelings on the subject. First, it's obvious and irrefutable that our current use of land is wasteful and destructive. LA, naturally, is the poster child for a decaying ecology as a result of sprawl. Second, it's impossible to ignore that there are problems with housing of any typology without adequate transportation infrastructure. Skyscrapers demand a high-speed, 3d mass transit system of multiple levels. Unfortunately, these types of systems are fading away in the United States, leading to more and more surface sprawl - it's difficult to blame someone for destructiveness when there are so few alternatives, but our thinking definitely needs to change fast.

[Wouldn't be so bad to live here, don't you say? PSFS, Philadelphia, Howe + Lecaze, 1932. Can we update this model to fit our needs? Interesting that this pathfinding building is also in one of the most historical and traditional cities in the U.S.]

There are, of course, examples of good residential density at the skyscraper scale - Hong Kong, Singapore, New York (somewhat) - but also a lot of bad examples. And, tragically, there's no good way to hide a poor skyscraper as opposed to say, a cheaply-built Type-5 courtyard box. So who gets to design these things? How can we be sure that the design will (1) address urban and human scale on the ground level, (2) be as sustainable as possible, to whatever extent technology will allow, (3) be sensitive to surrounding urban fabric, (4) be affordable to a large sample of the population and (5) respond to the future to the degree that the building will initiate positive changes in infrastructure and land use? A tough task, indeed.

Project // Housing

First look at new mixed-use/student housing project (location: Vermont Ave. & Santa Monica Blvd, East Hollywood / Los Feliz, Los Angeles). Though I've spent most of my working career picking apart real projects of this type, I'm looking forward to rethinking it in more "exciting" terms...