January 2010 Archives

Applying this to site. Firstly the existing LA grid was deformed to allow for the river to expand in locations and to contract in others to form links between. This new grid defines the Parkorums; the largest of the Forums, that maximises the amount of public green space at ground level for the city. It also forms the connections to the forums that spiral up above the Parkorums.  I'm now looking into how all this works in three dimensions...

There are five forums as mentioned earlier; each successive forum emanating, and being derived from the previous. Where they intersect at the same level, they join up to allow for circulation through and structure. WIP. Next is deforming this logic to the site conditions...

The work shown on Friday, below, very much showed a diagrammatic approach to how the river will be returned to its natural course, and how each successive Forum will be based around the river. Since then, some work has been done to understand how each type of Forum relates to each other and how they can be successfully applied to the site as a plan.
 

Beginning to sketch out the main Forums; Parkorums on the site. These are situated around the amended River; a proposal by the LA River Revitalisation Project to promote habitat, recreation and land value whilst maintaining flood protection.  The spine of the River that also acts as a new and much needed infrastructural route to the centre of LA will be the principal Forum that binds the Parkorums together.  Off from these (yet to be added) will be four other forum types of different scales; Squarum, Halrum, Semorum & Livorum.

The first few site plans will be uploaded on the blog shortly which begin to configure the Forums over the site using the Los Angeles River.  I've also gone through all the work I've done to date and future work that I know I need to cover and have completely rearranged the order to make a clearer argument for the Inverted City. I'll re-organise the White Book soon, below is the new Contents Page as a starter. Each line will roughly correspond to a double page spread and includes the TS outline.
  

THE INVERTED CITY CONTENTS

 

1. Re-Brief

 

                                               i.     Re-imagining an icon

1.     Smithsons Economist Building, London

2.     Rockefeller Center

a.      Rockefeller Center, New York

b.     Rockefeller as an Icon

c.      5 Projects through Rem Koolhaas

3.     MicroCities

a.      The MicroCities of Rockefeller and Exodus

b.     Cities within the City

c.      The Mountain

                                             ii.     Rockefeller Center Ideological Rebrief

1.     Rockefeller Center 1920's Vision

2.     Rockefeller Center Rebrief

 

2.     Iconic Context

 

                                               i.     Manifesto

 

                                             ii.     Four Ecologies

1.     Los Angeles Early Growth

2.     Cinematic Influence

3.     Four Ecologies by Rayner Banham

a.      Surfurbia

b.     Foothills

c.      The Plains of Id

d.     Autopia

 

                                            iii.     Fifth Ecology

1.     Los Angeles since Rayner Banham

2.     Future Growth & The Non Stop City

3.     The Los Angeles Grid

4.     NIMBY

5.     Vision

a.      The Need for Green

b.     Civic Pride

c.      Scale Inversion

6.     The 5^th Ecology: LA Reinvention, The Forum

 

                                            iv.     The River Revitalisation Project

1.     River Industrialisation

2.     Vision

3.     Analysis

a.      Watershed

b.     Natural Habitat

c.      Access to Parks

d.     Land Use

 

                                              v.     The Site

1.     Reasoning for Site Choice

2.     San Fernando Valley

a.      Urban Infrastructure

b.     Rural Infrastructure

c.      Population Density

d.     Programme

3.     Canoga Park

a.      Grid & Infrastructure

b.     Figure Ground

c.      Programme

4.     River Project at Canoga Park

 

                                            vi.     The Knowledge Economy

1.     The Effects on a City

 

                                           vii.     Campus Designs

1.     Utopian Knowledge & Diagram

2.     Analysis

a.      Berlin Freie

b.     Berlin Freie Competition

c.      East Anglia Campus

d.     Chicago Humanities

e.      Bochum Competition

 

3.     Iconic Proposal

 

                                               i.     Manifesto

 

                                             ii.     Initial Studies

1.     The Inversion Principal

a.      On a Plane

b.     In three dimensions

2.     Massing

a.      Volume for a City within a City

b.     Public vs Private Analysis

c.      Initial Configurations

 

                                            iii.     The Forum

1.     Forum Hierarchy Diagram

2.     Site Studies

a.      Boundary Conditions

b.     Revitalising the River

c.      The Forums

                                                                                                     i.     Parkorum

                                                                                                   ii.     Squarum

                                                                                                  iii.     Halrum

                                                                                                  iv.     Semorum

                                                                                                    v.     Livorum

d.     Adjacencies

e.      In Section

3.     Cities within the City

4.     Connecting Urban to Rural

 

4.     Constructing The Inverted City

 

                                               i.     Manifesto

 

                                             ii.     Natural State of Timber

1.     The Vision of Timber

2.     Precedents

a.      Geometry

                                                                                                     i.     dRMM Timber Towers

                                                                                                   ii.     Savill Building, Glen Howells Architects

                                                                                                  iii.     Metz Centre Pompidou by Shigeru Ban

b.     Material

                                                                                                     i.     Japanese Timber Construction Techniques

                                                                                                   ii.     Scandinavian Timber Construction Techniques

c.      Conversations with

                                                                                                     i.     Karl Heinz (KLH Timber)

                                                                                                   ii.     Charles Walker (Engineering Approach)

                                                                                                  iii.     Alex de Rijke (Architectural Vision)

3.     Material Behaviour

a.      Timber Properties

                                                                                                     i.     Solid Timber

                                                                                                   ii.     Engineered Timber

b.     Flat vs Beam

 

                                            iii.     Structural Solution

1.     Hypothesis

2.     Geometry & Material Behaviour

a.      Hyperbolic Surfaces

                                                                                                     i.     Stressed Skin

                                                                                                   ii.     Multiple Stressed Skins

                                                                                                  iii.     Seam Behaviour

b.     Load Transfer

c.      Deflection

3.     Environmental Conditions

a.      Light Requirements

b.     Air Requirements

 

                                            iv.     Application to Site

1.     The Logic in Detail

a.      Plans

2.     The Logic in Whole

a.      Plans

 

                                              v.     Construction

1.     Material Waste vs Overdesign

2.     Transportation

3.     Sequence

4.     Fire-proofing

5.     Replacing Segments

 

                                            vi.     Models and Prototype

 

 

 

An appreciation of LA, its movies and architecture.... Los Angeles Plays Itself

The weekend has been looking at the notes I wrote from the Jury last Friday. Some amazingly positive and constructive comments came from the floor which will inevitably change the direction of the project.  There are however also some concerns and further questions, not least around one of the comments to hold back on TS for now (We only have a few weeks until our first draft submission..!  Ahhh...)

A few main points. Firstly the criticism that I've proposed a geometry that couldn't possibly be the golden key to solving the 'problems' of LA. In addition to this, LA won't necessarily buckle under the strain of its bulging infrastructure. Instead LA is highly adaptable and have proved the critiques wrong on many occasions. In fact, many including one of the jurors believe LA is a great success.  Further criticism came from not using my argument for Rockefeller with LA. I adapted Rockefeller in a fictional way to once again become an iconic city within a city to meet the challenges of today, in the same way that it did in the 1930's when it was built.  Then, it solved challenges with the American people, such as building an iconic building after the Great Depression.  So taking this logic to LA; how can I fragment, scale, rotate LA and reconfigure it in a fictional way to meet the challenges of today...

This is something I've been thinking a lot about aver the weekend, but so far not sure at all how to start doing it.

Another main point was looking at the urban scale; not focusing in on a building part that I did for the jury.  I really need a strategy for the site as a whole before I can even begin looking at smaller scales.

Thirdly, I really need to redo my presentation and include more work that I've done and expand on others, such as talking more about Rayner Banham.  This is something that will hopefully become clearer as I continue with the White Book.

Model:

The Jurors mentioned I need to hold off for a while with TS.  I really feel TS should be integrated within the project from the outset, so there is plenty to get on with including case studies etc.  Below is a sketch model that was meant to be produced for Friday and something I took into a TS tutorial today.

This is where the real criticism came from: One of the jurors referred to it as scrambled eggs. They are tests which need to go back on to make sense of. But here they are:

Plate 03 Geometry: This was the great leap of faith that I was criticised on for taking too soon. I also failed to fully explain the build up to it - why I've chosen the path that I did. Either way, here's the plate:

Plate 02 The Strategy: An aerial view of folding the periphery to centre of San Fernando.

Last Friday's Jury was very positive and direct and gave a clear direction in both what to do next and how to modify the presentation to make it more clear for the next. Before summerising, here's a few of the Plates I presented...

Plate 01 The Conflict: a vision of LA in 2050 

This is a single unit for the 3D version. This has taken most of the weekend to figure out the geometry for. I'll colour code it to show the difference between Forum, Vorum and AntiForum(?) for the next upload.  It's different from the previous 3D entry in that this one is able to continue to grow in a similar fashion to the 2D version. Working on this multiple version in Rhino...  I can then manipulate the angle and length of each route to inform the boundaries which are shown in green and their adjacencies with each other...  Getting there (I think).

Working out the geometry is completely doing my head in. It's complex to say the least! I think I've nailed it though. The image below really doesn't say much with out annotations and a key - it's a line render from rhino so needs some work to it I know... Hence WIP.

It's a 2D version of the 3D version I ultimately want to do. The colours are arbitrary - I just put random ones in in photoshop. Roughly, the straight black lines indicate the route for the Forum, the blue are the Vorum (vertical forums, hence isolated in the plane), and the private dwellings or infill in green. Once again going in multiple directions hence being isolated, although in 3D, they should all link together...

For the Plate as a whole, the six plate for Friday's Jury will be something along the following:

Plate 01: THE CONFLICT: The demise of LA. A projection to the year 2050 showing a render of LA desecrated. The inability of the grid to provide public space and civic centres, and the growth in sprawl suffocating the city in congestion and smog will be portrayed in single render.

Plate 02: THE STRATEGY: Through shrinking the proposed expansion of the city to a hyper dense centre, based on the Los Angeles River, a new '5th ecology' is proposed. A city within a city that omits the automobile and promotes public interaction. A rendered aerial view of the proposal situated at the head of the Los Angeles River in San Fernando.

Plate 03: THE PROPOSAL: Los Angeles today is highly individualistic and private. The Inverted City not only proposes to reverse the scale of the city, but also reverse the public to private ratio. Three interweaving strands will make up the ingredients to the city. The Forum, Vorum and Infill. A diagrammatic plate showing the logic of the weave and associations between each constituent part.

Plate 04: THE PLAN: A typical plan of part of the city (Scale 1:100) that focuses on programme adjacencies, circulation and structure.

Plate 05: THE SECTION: A typical section through part of the plan from Plate 04 that highlights in particular the Vorum and vertical circulation.

Plate 06: THE PERSPECTIVE: Interior view of part of the proposal with emphasis on materiality (timber).

Work in Progress for Plate 01:

For those who haven't seen the TS Contents and outline.

The three week break has been simple; Christmas with family and girlfriends family and a two week excursion to the United States to test out the snow they have other there.  It's been a break of epic proportions and now the reality has sunk in to kick start some serious work on the Inverted City...

My brother and I after inspecting the quality of the snow - was good.