Proposal_X

The Second Pass at "X"

T H E G I V E N

Los Angeles

It is unlike many east coast cities – it does not have a “center”.

T H E P R O M P T :

Enriching the experience of driving

The German Autoban

"Recommended Speed"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn) is about 81 mph but, 178 mph is "still something legal there" (www.nytimes.com/.../Subjects/T/Transportation)

T H E P R O C E S S :

The car is been villainized in recent history because of its energy consumption, increased traffic, pollution (you say Los Angeles and most people thing of stars and smog). Yet one can hardly deny that the freedom that the automobile brings is a vital component in west coast culture. With the car comes a sense of independence and adventure that cannot be matched by other modes of transportation.

Because of the stigma associated with individual transportation, I often feel that there is guilt associated with taking pride in car culture. For example – a Prius is much more honorable than Hummer, etc etc.

Sure there is something to say about how LA is not a pedestrian friendly city. However, it must be recognized that once a city is planned, born and now thriving you cannot pull out the infrastructure that has allowed the city to grow the way that it has, and characterizes so much of what makes LA, LA.

With new energy initiatives and research into effective alternatives to oil, I think the car will once again become a “hero” in the epic play transportation. It all comes back to infrastructure – slowly but surely replacing gas stations with newer means of fuel/power – electric/ hydrogen etc. However, replacing/ changing infrastructure takes time.

T H E T A N G E N T

Adventure

My problem is that I really don’t think there is a problem that needs to be solved but there is definitely an opportunity to enrich the experience of driving

But how does that matter? Why does that matter?

I guess coming up with an idea for a project specific to this topic is so difficult for me because I don’t see how it would help anything…or anyone, even though I love it.

I also don’t want to change this overall feel – I mean I know LA has its problems and its not pedestrian friendly etc but, every city has its pros and cons. Los Angeles, is successful and can sustain such a large population because it’s a network tied together by nodes not a city center knot with threads tying into it. It’s a very different dynamic. Its not tangible – its cool because when you meet people from different parts of so cal, you bond over the fact that you are from so cal but, you each have street knowledge to offer to the other person.

You never know every part of the city, every part that makes up the whole of Los Angeles…

I guess that’s something that could be addressed

T H E P R O D U C T

An elevated sense of adventure…

Some kind of thing that would make you aware of all of the different places that one freeway connects you too?

Or – something that heightened this sense of independence and adventure….a race track?!

The freeways system is the landscape architecture of Los Angeles.

I’m going to let this percolate – more articulation tomorrow.

What is "X"

Slight C H A N G E of plans


I love freeways
I love LA
I love to drive

Most people who know me know that I am from LA and that I have a less than justified pride in being Californian – and particular pride in SoCal.

I know I am home when I fly over LA and see the overlapping freeways (not highways – we call them freeways) framing views of the city and the rest of this impressive infrastructure that defines Los Angeles in many ways. I admittedly do not mind traffic and enjoy perfecting the art of weaving in and out of lanes with efficiency and edge.

There is a different type of energy in Los Angeles. It may not be the most beautiful to some but there is a vibe that you cannot ignore and that cannot be duplicated. What is that attributed to? I don’t know for sure but I do believe the free spirit is somehow intertwined with the sense of independence once gains from driving.

After living in Boston for 3 years and going from one extreme of transportation to another, having the terms independent and dependent redefined every time I cross the country- there is something to be said about transportation in Los Angeles.

If you do not have a car in LA – you limit your social activity and your professional activity to your walking radius and occasionally to the bus routes you are comfortable taking. Unlike NY and Boston, most professionals in LA proper (not Downtown, but Santa Monica, West LA etc) do not take public transportation – they drive.

It is true that you cannot reorganize a city, and redo the infrastructure that holds it together but, you can revamp.

How did this change so much?

From the previous post…
“Could these types of project take place in the U.S, in a city like Los Angeles? Do I want to consider this…the idea is not that appealing right now. Moving forward!”

Moving forward - coming full circle back to that idea.

After talking to Nondita about thesis thoughts so far – it became very obvious that the stream of consciousness from the previous post was very heavily influenced by my studio project.
My beliefs are true and I am concerned about those issues but they relate so much more to the project in Mumbai right now. However, when speaking to her,“Los Angeles”/ urban setting seemed much more appropriate. Also, I think thesis should be an opportunity for me to explore something else…

So ----

Given: I am enamored with Freeways

New variable: Los Angeles

Question: How do you integrate public transportation into the existing freeway structure to make it accessible

The Equation
Given + Los Angeles + Question = X




Factors to define X:

Somewhere in the middle of the city. Light rail system/ subways etc exist in downtown and Long beach, once you get out of West LA. Yet when you are in West LA or in the heart of the city it is not time efficient or convenient to take a bus due to traffic.
LA is spread out and its not a strong grid structure like NYC – would the question and solution focus on one major junction/ part of the city?

The structure that would house the exchange would no disrupt the flow of traffic or the sectional/ elevation motif created by the overlapping freeways.


Research:

Precedents of other cities with existing transportation infrastructure similar to LA. Do they incorporate Light Rail systems? Why? Why not?

Chicago?

History of Los Angeles city planning - Why wasn’t public transportation accounted for? What has been done and why. What has failed?

Why is this necessary?

Projected population growth of Los Angeles – already traffic/ congestion/ etc. There has to be some alternative

Without a car in Los Angeles, you really can’t get to know the city, take advantage of it, and go much outside your living area – that seems absurd, and oddly restrictive for a city like Los Angeles.

Sources:

TBD

Draft_Thesis_Maybe

PSUEDO PROGRESS

a s t r e a m o f c o n c i o u s n e s s

It’s been a month…but not necessarily a month’s worth of progress.

I’ve been having an internal debate about what kind of thesis I want to do and what I should be doing as a different approach to guiding me towards narrowing these large ideas of culture, mythology, and development.

Coming to no avail with internal discussions, I decided to leave it loose and see if our studio trip to Mumbai (9/18 – 9/25) would inspire me/ direct me…help me at all. I think it did. A socio economic challenge is exciting, it’s real, it needs attention; solutions need to be innovative, they need to be well researched, they need to be culturally sensitive and they need to happen now.

So now what? I have identified the arena in which I would like to work but how somehow this realization does tie into the ideas from my first post, somehow this needs to be narrowed within a manageable scope.

What am I going to do?

S a v e t h e W o r l d

Kidding! Not yet – maybe later. In any case, I wouldn’t save the world, I would give them tools to save themselves. Survival isn’t easy and if these people have survived this long without the infrastructural amenities we depend upon, they can surely advance given the right environment, the right training and the right capital.

Wait. Maybe I am on to something?

I have always argued that

a) progress by definition is a process and must be implemented in steps

b) intervention (whether is political, architectural etc) MUST MUST MUST be culturally sensitive in order for it to be adopted a community and in turn propagated through the society.

c) an architectural intervention can be so much more than a new building in a community, it can be

1. a means of implementing infrastructure by training local people in craftsman skills

2. a way to propel the local economy by employing local people and using local materials.

3. More indirectly - a way for the people of that community to take pride in their history and culture and in doing so become self motivated to advance their community

In short – it’s a cycle.

My concerns:

1) This has been done before, is being done now and is being done well – an example is the Serena Hotel done by the AKDN, mentioned in the previous post.

2) Is this architectural enough for this thesis? I am learning more and more than my directions veer towards that of a planner and even a developer – whether that is good, bad or just observation I don’t know.

3) Location. Location. Location.

Continuing with the thought process:

From my limited knowledge of these types of projects it seems that they are always in developing countries, in cities that may be more touristy and not necessarily “urban”.

Could these types of project take place in the U.S, in a city like Los Angeles? Do I want to consider this…the idea is not that appealing right now. Moving forward!

Another thought – Lets play with the scale of this type of project.

What if I took this big projects, hotels, huge cultural centers and categorized them as the “macro” versions of these projects ( yes, “these projects” is how I am going to define this idea of cyclical progress for the time being), analyzed the components, logistics etc and brought it down to a micro scale – a modular scale? So these modules of cyclical progress could be group together to form bigger centers/schools of craft/ commercial areas or they could be as small as a stall in a slum.

Ok – so I think I’ve answered most of the questions in Assignment # 2 in part

“ PREPARATION FOR UG ARCHITECTURE DESIGN THESIS

FALL 2008

4.119

ASSIGNMENT # 2

Produce a “draft” The Thesis Statement (300 words) and post it on your blog

- What are you going to do?

- Why are you doing it? What questions are you trying to answer?

- How are you going to do it? What methods?

- What are you going to learn about? What methods?

- What are you going to learn about? Area of research material?

- Why is it important?

Post by Oct 12 etc etc etc”

The two questions that pop out as “not having been answered” are the following

1. Why am I doing this?

If we don’t enable all classes of the population to progress, I truly believe the urban environments in developing countries (Mumbai for example, since I am most familiar with it at this point in time) will completely degrade and the little infrastructure that enables the city to function will eventually collapse under the pressure of population growth combined with the lack of educational opportunities. Large scale interventions and changing the city is all fine and well, but an organization or the government has to have the means to fund something like that and right now that is not an attainable goal. I think you have to start at the grass roots level if you want to educate a large population so they can help themselves get the amenities the deserve (like plumbing and waste removal) and they do this by legitimizing their trade and their right to the land they live on (now, maybe this sounds a lot like our current studio project dealing with the slum/fisherman’s village in Back Bay, Mumbai but, I think its all related).

2.Why is it important?

I mean, I’d like to believe that these two questions answer each other. Why is it important to do this now? I think architecture cannot and should not be practiced in isolation. I think architecture is going to become this central hub type thing for interdisciplinary work: planning, economics, policy will all feed into this hub to improve our built environment. It’s exciting and I would hope that the work and research I produce now gets more people thinking about the nature of architecture in the future – as a tool of social progress.

So I think I’m done for tonight. Id like to get some feedback and then go back and answer the quantitative questions solidly.

P.S.

Yes, I do write in lists compulsively and often talk that way too…It helps me organize the “internal discussion”.

Preliminary Thoughts

a)Thesis = Possibilites
b)Thesis = Opportunites
c)Thesis = Consequences?!

Right now --> I am in the exploration phase with the intent to avoid c.

Thoughts:

1. Architecture as a means of economic development (AKDN?)

2. Disaster Relief ( taking a previous studio project and taking it the next level - research material, means of assembly, specific locations)

3. Looking into the relationship between architecture and the values of a society. In the past, specific architecture and planning was very indicative of a societies cultural values, does architecture and the build environment have that retroactive power in today's society?

4. Mythology and Architecture