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LA Markings
Los Angeles, California |
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The marking sites are those leftover moments, engineered into the fabric but otherwise forgotten. Each site is intrinsically compromised, but through this compromise comes the potential for its exaltation. These markings are moments with the city that provide for the statement of individual and re-appropriation of moments thought lost to the broader networks of controlling interests., thus these moments do not interfere with the systems they piggy back upon or even confront their host in anyway - they simply join and adhere and through this juxtaposition find a collaboration.
These sites are all a product of coming to a new city that is so full and so costly yet at the same time so open. These moments of development within the city remain and opportunity for architects to address these fragments of open poche and find opportunity in the scraps - the margins. These designs are marks on their forgotten surfaces -installations and appropriations that maintain the “there” and context but suggest a new “their” for program and ownership. Site Types: Lodged within every city are the infrastructures that provide its presence. Linked to transportation, safety, commerce, energy, water, and utilities - these infrastructures provide the necessities of the fabric. The 8 types of conditions that are identified as uniquely LA and marked for consideration are: Billboard, Culvert, Power Lines, Overpass, Railway, Lifeguard Tower, Pier, and Oil Derrick. Each of these Types exists as serial systems. Each marking occurs upon a specific moment but these moments are within the broader repetition of their systems. Issues of scale and density are determined by need and geography. Each network develops differently: |
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Lifeguard Tower
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The Lifeguard Tower is a beacon for safety. Located as outposts incrementally spaced along the coastal edge, the lifeguard tower is an icon and a staccato rhythm. The premise is an elevated platform to survey the water and provide rescue, security and first aid as required. Their gaze is always forward - scanning the horizon and identifying need. Their position is an increment of speed and the human body. The lifeguard towers are always watching deploying as needed. The result however is a backside that is unnecessary. A behind condition that hides outside of the cone of vision of the tower and contaminated by the presence of the tower separating this space form the ocean and vast horizontal of the beach. This no mans land suggest and opportunity for insertion - a public private facilitator that services and fills this prime abandoned location. |
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Power Lines
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The Power Lines are essential to deliver energy to the individuated object fabric of the city. Generated in central plants and then transmitted across the fabric, the lines produce a web of corridors for the high power lines. Studded with engineered lattice towers, the lines span vast distances. Their footprint produces large swaths through the city fabric of undeveloped land. The uncertain health issues associated with the power lines produces skepticism and distrust. The development of this line must shield and engage. |
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Rail Car
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The Railway is an essential artery from an era of product and people movement gone by. Connecting the port of Los Angeles and the former Port of Santa Monica, the rail line was the primary artery for moving freight and people cross country. These lines were left open. The infrastructure of these marks has been abandoned. The legacy of their presence still remains. The mechanics of movement [the rail car itself] and the infrastructural circuit now broken and juxtaposed allows for these lines to be re-occupied. |
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Billboard
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The Billboard condition occurs with densities relative to vehicular traffic and frequency of viewing, the specific geometry of each billboards configuration varies with the sightlines and geography of the local moment. As a network they are standardized in function but are nodal points overlaid on the fabric of the city. The density and frequency determined by the events that occur in adjacency. A typical and semi conventional configuration was adopted for intervention, one embedded along an artery of the city bridging between the speed and visual distances of the automobile and the local conditions of the fixed site. |
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