Archinect - News2024-12-22T07:06:24-05:00https://archinect.com/news/article/149952791/what-s-happening-with-frank-gehry-s-masterplan-for-the-la-river
What's happening with Frank Gehry's masterplan for the LA River? Amelia Taylor-Hochberg2016-06-20T17:44:00-04:00>2024-01-23T19:16:08-05:00
<img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/vb/vbpfbl0af2trrvei.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><em><p>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.</p></em><br /><br /><p>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.”</p><p>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 <a href="http://www.riverla.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">website</a> as hints about what might lie in store for the River:</p><p><em>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...</em></p>