What is a city? The experience, memory, parameters, systems and personality of Los Angeles are collapsed in 4 volumes of conceptual and graphic alamnacs and resesarch proposals.
In 2002, the L.A. Now series was launched as a collaborative effort between the Now Institute, UCLA and Rand to investigate, grasp and define what Los Angeles — as a city, a concept, an experience — really is. The L.A. Now Project encompasses a rigorous analysis of hard data to a series of design proposals that innovate for a future Los Angeles that catalyzes its latent resources. Four volumes produced in four years were received with much acclaim, eventually earning the prestigious Progressive Architecture Award in 2006.
The research and speculations from Volume 1 & 2 were expanded in LA Now Volume 3+4 with a deliberate focus on revitalizing the Arts District, Little Tokyo and the LA River in downtown Los Angeles. As the last of the series, this volume continues explorations on Los Angeles’ future, focusing on the Chavez Ravine. Centrally located and gifted with commanding high view of the city, the project proposes the relocation of Dodger Stadium to downtown and the infusion of a 30,000 resident community on the site that integrates and expands Elysian Park’s potential.
L.A. Now: Volume 3 offers a set of proposals based on research and analysis to introduce housing into a specific site in the Los Angeles downtown core. Bounded by the 101 Freeway, the Los Angeles River, Alameda St., and Fourth St., the Arts District site mediates between downtown Los Angeles and East Los Angeles. Taking into account the increasing population and the rising demand for housing in the central district of downtown, Volume 3 examines the implications and viability of housing on the fringes as well. The projects take advantage of the area’s adjacency to several culturally rich neighborhoods and the Southern California Institute of Architecture, as well as the planned connection of the Gold Line from Pasadena. Though this neighborhood currently has an underdeveloped identity, it has the potential to evolve into a vital cornerstone of downtown.
L. A. Now: Volume 4 continues the speculation on Los Angeles’s future, employing the conceptual framework established in the first three volumes, while shifting focus to a different geographic node within greate Los Angeles – Chavez Ravine. Volume 4 presents new research and proposals for simultaneously relocating Dodgers Stadium in downtown Los Angeles and developing housing in Elysian Park. The projects reclaim Chavez Ravine as a historical residential area, fusing its identity with Elysian Park and examining the hyper-densification a stadium brings into the city. The polarization of program and site spurs an intense investigation of the role of varied infrastructure systems—nature, culture, and transportation—as critical infusions into urban housing and stadium development plans.
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