What's happening with Frank Gehry's masterplan for the LA River?

2016-06-20T17:44:00-04:00

River LA is less interested in giving a clear picture of what Gehry’s plan eventually may include than in tamping down charges that it has been born of secrecy — and worries that it may operate as a Trojan horse, a kind of high-design architectural cover, for rampant real-estate speculation [...] A central goal of this master plan... will be to strike an effective balance between maintaining flood-control measures while opening up the river to new kinds of public access.

The two designers from Gehry's office leading research on the River's masterplan, Tensho Takemori and Anand Devarajan, emphasize that the approach now is about learning, not designing: “This is just meant to be information,” said Takemori. “There’s no designs, no proposals or anything like that.” Devarajan adds, “We’ve tried to take an inform-ourselves approach before we make any decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong.”

While nothing close to an official proposal has yet been discussed by River LA (formerly known as Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation), Christopher Hawthorne does interpret information from their website as hints about what might lie in store for the River:

One section, “Water Recharge,” suggests that by redesigning the river to capture more storm water — directing it to aquifers rather than allowing it to flow via the river out to sea — the region could decrease its reliance on water imported from other parts of California and the Western U.S. by as mu...

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What's happening with Frank Gehry's masterplan for the LA River?