City on a Hill

There’s a LOT of process work for this project. Check out the digital publication here!

Chavez Ravine is poised for varietal adaptation. It isn’t an urban relic in the same sense as the High Line, to which Corner was referring, yet it is a set of highly peculiar conditions. So how do we not mess this up? It isn’t a blank canvas. It’s a complex preexisting system of functions that masquerade as an isolated entity nestled within a topographic fortress.

Marooned?

Analogies are extremely useful tools in the process of conceptual development. It is absolutely vital in the context of a project scope such as this to position the scale of utilized analogies appropriately (and any thinking for that matter). The ultimate goal here is the creation of a framework – an intelligently composed fabric that proliferates the best possible opportunities and conditions for function to take place. Sans additional adjectives to further define the specific types, the word function by itself is vague. This is good. Its obscurity is our first clue that we should be contending with systems of particularly large, yet still intimately intertwined scales.

The function of Dodger Stadium is wounded. Games are still played, visitors still come and go, but the latent potential of the site on which the stadium sits is grossly untapped. Patrons arrive in the third inning and leave in the seventh, a flow that is symptomatic of flawed accessibility. This would constitute a seemingly legitimate basis from which to posit an entire focus and argument, but the obligation to tap into larger meanings and scales relegates this condition as a gateway to more, rather than an all-encompassing focal point. Once the task of itemizing effect and tracing cause is set in motion, the adherence to consciousness of scale unveils an opportunity to fold game day traffic flow into a much larger discussion. Dodger Stadium is a Los Angeles icon. It is an organ of the city body. Anything relative to its function that is either helped or hindered will subsequently help or hinder the system of the city. The magnitude of this effect is dependent upon the intensity of the gesture. Chavez Ravine does not need parkification. Chavez Ravine begs to be considered as a component of an organism whose tendrils creep outward along routes both visible and invisible. Marooned? In a sense, yes, but far from an absolute condition. The very entities that appear to produce this perceived state of isolation happen to also hold the greatest potential to enhance a myriad of the site’s functions.

We have found this evident of the sites topographical challenges, yet it is the sterile and alienating nature of transportation infrastructure which lends itself to a more pervasive opportunity.

The infrastructural patterns of the Los Angeles region are the primary organizational elements defining space and providing orientational logic at the broadest scale. The freeways in particular are the most dominant infrastructural pattern and the most useful as an orienting system. To the culture of Los Angeles, these structures are immensely significant; a reflection of the ubiquity of personal transportation and the spirit of individual freedom which comes with it. However, as they were engineered as purely utilitarian means of transportation, void of any significant design influence, they have come to lay over the landscape with little response to the underlying ecological or urban patterns.

At the time when the earliest cities of the region were being founded, railways were the dominant interconnecting infrastructural system. It was the inclusion of rail stations in city planning which allowed an urban center to arise where only a small community may have existed previously. Under this developmental framework, it was the availability and access to transportation infrastructure which acted as a catalyst for urban growth. Once freeways were introduced and became the dominant organizing infrastructure however, the relationship between transportation and urbanity had shifted. Although it is evident that the freeways did allow for the continued expansion of urban development at the fringes of the region, in the places where the freeways cut through existing urban and suburban fabric, the perception was radically different. The physical act of cutting a highway through communities and dividing once contiguous places imparted the freeways with a malicious stigma. This coupled with the fact that many of the freeways run through less affluent neighborhoods (because of reduced opposition during development) created a situation where there was very little motivation or perceived inherent ability of the freeways to be a catalyst for urban development or renewal. Another important factor was that the visual appearance of the freeways themselves were (and still remain) sterile and for the most part completely void of any design influence. These massive concrete constructs were conceived entirely as engineered products in a utilitarian bias to serve a singular purpose. As a result, it came to be the view of most of the inhabitants of the region that freeways were a necessary evil for convenient transportation rather than a monument to the prowess of human ingenuity and a representation of the available independent opportunities so characteristic of Los Angeles. Freeways have been maligned by the communities they serve for nearly the entirety of their existence. They have been demonized as supporters of pollution and inducers of sprawl, yet all of this contention is ultimately tied back to the malformed cultural perception which began at the initiation of the typology. Having been devised as singular in use and since they are often sealed off from the urban fabric by walls, culverts, and overpasses, freeways are seen as transitional spaces -- an alternate realm of being, neither here nor there. There is little inherently malevolent about an infrastructural element which allows the convenience of personal transportation and (sometimes) the speed to reach distant destinations quickly, but because they are so visually detached from their urban surroundings, freeways have become an “other”; an interloper to vilify.

Due to the undeniable convenience of freeways, their continued use in the foreseeable future, and the synonymous nature of the private car with the identity of Los Angeles, it will become increasingly necessary to organize the urbanity of the region in response to this transportation infrastructure and to embrace it as an integral aspect of the region’s vitality. Doing so will necessitate a shift in the cultural perception of freeways, yet fortunately this may come naturally as infrastructure is shifted from sterile utilitarianism to designed spaces responding to local geographic and cultural identities. (It’s difficult to hate something you see as part of yourself). Advancements in automobile technology will facilitate this shift as well, allowing sound wall removal and closer building proximity as the noise and emissions from vehicles decrease. If the region as a whole begins to organize as a networked infrastructural and urban system comprised of series of locally responsive elements Los Angeles may begin to reveal veiled qualities of its identity in profoundly beautiful ways.

The Dodger Stadium Site is a location fertile for the introduction of a new urban archetype aiming to make meaningful connections to the transportation infrastructure of Los Angeles. The existing site’s most pressing dilemma is a dire need for enhanced transportation facilitation to serve the massive fluctuations on game days. The site is also immediately adjacent to SR-110, the Arroyo Seco Parkway, historically notable as the first freeway in the western United States and remaining as a significant conduit into downtown Los Angeles. Additionally there exists a dynamic set of proximal resources from which a highly complex local identity may be crafted: Elysian Park as public open space and part of the ecological system of the Santa Monica mountains, the Los Angeles river to which site hydrologic systems drain, a diverse array of adjacent residential communities, a highly complex topographic condition, and of course the substantial cultural attraction of Dodger Stadium itself.

The proposition developed for this site was conceived as a diverse, yet highly interconnected framework which seeks to pose an argument of infrastructure’s ability to guide Los Angeles to an adapted future. Our manifold goals are to: merge urbanity and infrastructure spatially, allow bold infrastructural acts to facilitate density, balance the transportation modes of walking and driving more evenly, develop structural components which permit and conduct movement, ease and distribute rapid and direct movement, weave systematic typologies and avoid mono-use, respond to and enhance inherent site conditions, and create an archetype for intervention elsewhere in the Los Angeles region.

Our conceptual basis for urban intervention on the Dodger Stadium Site derives in part from a specific understanding of “mat urbanism” as a typology and framework inherently concerning itself with the facilitation of movement and interaction over the figural representation of form. Mat type constructs act as conduits through which the life and energy of a city flows, whereas a conventional urbanity consists primarily of separate and defensible enclosures which relegate moving systems to the streets. Mats are amorphous, creating space where necessary; they are adaptive to change over time and responsive to unpredictability; they connect spaces, merge uses, and organize intervallic voids. They are also fractal, each part representing the design and intent of the system as a whole. The conductive nature of the mat typology is advantageous as an urban framework on the Dodger Stadium Site as a facilitator of movement. It is also highly appropriate as a typology capable of interfacing with transportation infrastructure at large; a means of engaging and intertwining an urban system across and through infrastructural spaces.

Another systematic model used to devise an urban strategy stems from the idea that all types of urban growth in general can be described as if they are biological processes. Beyond mere metaphor or visual similarities, comparisons to living organisms can accurately model the functions and processes that occur within a city at a broad scale. The dominate ephemeral processes which occur regularly at Dodger Stadium is the massive influx and efflux of fans on game days. These movements have strong comparisons to tidal actions. In order to mitigate the volume of these flows, to relieve congestion and disperse crowds, corals were investigated as a biological model. Coral accretion occurs in direct response to ocean currents and their form comes from an organizational necessity to trap the microorganisms on which they feed. This form appears as an array of hyperbolic shapes, a conglomeration which focuses a broad volume about a series of smaller points, facilitating feeding and slowing the tidal flow rate. This geometric reference is ideal for implementation on the Dodger Stadium Site as the creation of subsidiary urban spaces in a non-linear fashion will slow the flow rates in and out of the stadium as well as providing the site with greater economic gain potential as fans will be inclined to remain on site for a longer duration both before and after games.

These two conceptual references, mat urbanism and the configuration of corals, can be understood as a unified typology as their essential qualities are related. Both are organizational frameworks rather than figural constructs and both are in response to the dynamics of a flowing system. They are each intrinsically fractal: mats containing a series of spaces within a larger spatial network, and coral reefs containing colonies of coral species each consisting of thousands of individual polyps. Also, in that they are each concerned with flows, they both address the efficiency of spatial organization, focusing their attention progressively across a hierarchy of spaces as they are determined by the volume of flows. This desire for efficiency produces an amorphous general form which is highly interconnected, yet leaves gaps where intervention is unnecessary. These gaps in turn provide fertile grounds for other interconnected systems, such as how ecological networks typically occupy inverse spaces from structural development.

Combining the stated conceptual frameworks with our analysis of the site (from which we arrived at a determination that the dramatic topographical changes were more of an opportunity than a constraint) we conceived of an identity for the proposed development as a “City on a Hill.” This name references the perceptual image of medieval European hill towns, and while the amorphous conceptual frameworks and engagement with topographical concerns supports this notion, the resulting urban forms move well beyond historic typologies.

In order to address transportation and movement as the defining characteristic of the site, the elements on site are organized according to their hierarchy of flow facilitation. The first level in this hierarchy is the transportation infrastructure proper. These include adjustments to the ramps on and off SR-100, a proposed highway flyover extending Alameda Street into the site and its connectors to SR-110, expansions of Stadium Way and Elysian Park Way, as well as the hierarchy of roadways internal to the site. Secondary to these are the combined situations which encourage the development of social activities. These include parks, plazas, interior public spaces, and similar environments. Third is the interconnected mat framework which encompasses the totality of all structures on-site (the stadium included); spaces which may be semi-private yet still allow uninterrupted flow throughout the site. Last is the ecologically oriented web of spaces which will see little human use, but will aid in the movement of other indigenous species.

The final significant aspect of the site is a massive parking structure in the ravine to the south of the site proper. This was implemented as a bold infrastructural move initially to service game day parking and free up space for a dense urbanity void of surface parking. However, this structure became much more than a vertical vehicle storage space; it revealed itself as the champion of the array of intents designed to combat the argument at large. Nestling itself into a ravine, the structure addresses the particular site qualities, transforming a topographic challenge into an elegant opportunity. The structure exists neither above nor below ground, or in a sense it’s both ways. The structure sits in a hole which doesn’t require excavation, and it simultaneously creates a direct surface connection in the direction of downtown Los Angeles. Literally it is a infrastructural condition which permits urban density and encourages walking as a means of movement throughout the site, however with its tremendous scale it also supports a layered complex of systems; essentially transforming a banal construct of megapolitan necessity into a conglomerate of dynamic urban conditions. Most importantly, this structure itself became archetypical as a unit; poised to proliferate the broader landscape, both reacting to specific contexts and initiating an adapted urban state.

The current condition of the Los Angeles region already exists essentially as a mat, a low-lying interconnected set of communities tied together by infrastructure, yet as a whole it lacks legibility. The perceptual deficiencies of the infrastructure, and in particular the freeway system, are primarily to blame for the imagined separateness of these contiguous places. The status of automobile transportation (or at least the desire for a personal mode of movement) is unlikely to change significantly toward a more public means as our civilization progresses into the future. It also goes against many sensibilities that we should “give up” our cars. The best direction toward which a civilization can progress is forward. In many ways, increasing the use of buses, trains, and bicycles, is a regressive act, raising the white flag and claiming that our progress is killing us. We don’t need to erase our progress, or retreat toward historic successes to solve our contemporary issues. The vehicles and infrastructure which enable our convenient personal movements are currently dirty, ugly, and exist in many ways apart from what we imagine our homes to be. Yet rather than stigmatizing our progress, instead we must conceive of a future which takes advantage of the best qualities of our current situations and improves upon them.