Archinect - News

Before the masterplan gets underway, artists turn the LA River into their gallery

2016-05-06T14:09:00-04:00

Bardell and Howe have been working together for the past decade and have started executing guerrilla-style living sculptures in the river, a project they call the River Liver Series. [...] “One of the things that keeps us here is how exciting we think the next 10 years is going to be,” Howe says of L.A. “When they actually do this river revitalization, it’s going to be L.A.’s Central Park. Culturally, I think it’s the spot to be on the West Coast.”

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A river of solar power: a scheme for the Tijuana river

2016-03-23T18:30:00-04:00

In Tijuana, another architect is devising a plan to turn the Tijuana River channel into a solar farm that could provide power to as many as 30,000 homes. Rene Peralta, co-founder of the Tijuana firm Generica and director of an architecture master's program at San Diego's Woodbury University, thinks that his city can transform this unwieldy piece of infrastructure into a renewable energy plant and water-cleaning station.

February 2016 was the hottest month in several thousand years, so it seems like a good idea to start transforming erstwhile urban heat islands into power-generating rivers. Below, Generica's rendering of the proposed redesigned Tijuana river channel:

For more on projects that turn seemingly intractable swaths of infrastructure into gorgeous urban amenities:

Take a look at "6," an experimental documentary that memorializes the recently-demolished Sixth Street Viaduct in LA

2016-02-11T18:35:00-05:00

These days, it’s hard to think clearly about the Los Angeles River. Once the lifeline of the city and, before that, the Tongva people, the river was paved in the early 20th century following a series of devastating floods and then – at least according to a well-worn narrative – forgotten by the public.

After years of potamic amnesia, or so the story goes, Los Angeles suddenly remembered its river, finding in the thin stream a possible answer to both its growing thirst and perpetual identity crises. Now, nobody seems to talk about much else besides “our forgotten river”. In a sense, the LA River is the ecological inverse of Kim Kardashian: famous for being not-famous.

Of course, endless editorializing belies this apparent obscurity. It wasn’t just Frank Gehry’s arrival that heralded the return of the LA River to public attention, or the concatenation of activists and designers that preceded him. In a way, it had never really been forgotten at all. After all, the river has appeared i...

A closer look at reasons why the Los Angeles River revitalization is taking so long

2015-12-03T13:40:00-05:00

From a concrete ditch, the river is now, very, very, very slowly becoming that green, recreational space many supporters have imagined. But, the question is, what's taking so long? As anyone who's ever set out to build in Los Angeles knows, things aren't always as simple as they seem. A vision becomes reality at a glacial pace, which can be a good or bad thing.

In other LA River-related news on Archinect:

Does Frank Gehry – or his firm – have what it takes to save the LA River?

2015-10-26T18:06:00-04:00

When Mayor Garcetti announced Gehry’s appointment, he declared him to be the “Olmsted of our time,” referring to godfather of landscape design, Frederick Law Olmsted, creator of New York City’s Central Park. He is nothing of the sort. As Gehry himself admitted: “I told them I’m not a landscape guy.” What he might prove to be is the funding-friendly, catch-all solution to pulling the river’s statutory partners together to make something happen.

"If he can suppress his expensively eye-catching cliches and channel the spirit of his early work – when he was a rough-and-ready bricoleur of everyday LA, a magician of chain-link fencing and corrugated sheeting – he might well be the man for the job. Like the rest of this chaotic infrastructure-riven mess of a city, the LA river’s character as a seductive, abrasive edgeland must be celebrated for what it is."

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