One thing, though, is different this time around. These days the city and county are busy investing money and lavishing attention on public spaces across L.A. — and even producing some from scratch...In a range of ways, Southern California is beginning to make up for neglecting its public realm for the bulk of the postwar era. — L.A. Times
With two park design competitions currently underway (linked below), Downtown L.A. is eager to boost its amount of green space. But will those ambitious plans pan out in a tricky cityscape? Christopher Hawthorne gives his two cents on the potential of each park.
Previously on Archinect:
Take a look at these bold visions for Downtown LA's next park
Pershing Square Renew competition narrows down to four finalist teams
9 Comments
Interesting to look at "parks" by landscape firms vs arch firms...The ones done by the landscape archs for the Pershing redo are really good...the arch firms doing the other are too form driven and clunky...poor urban design...repeating several of the mistakes that made Pershing a disaster in the first place like too many elevation changes, rape nooks, etc...
Do you really need to propose innovative forms to address fundamental needs of connectivity and interaction?
The architecture driven projects seem to be concerned with the block as a site for a "new" building, whereas the LA's are really concerned with sight across the block and through to adjacencies.
^agree.
Architects should stop being invited to Landscape competitions. LA's don't sit around designing buildings and don't pretend to know anything about them. Architects should stop pretending they understand public space. There might be a good idea or two in there but overall its a mess. If they want to go and study landscape thats fine - but until then stick to architecture! There are several practitioners who have degrees in both - there should be more people like them who truly understand good (public) space - both soft and hard.
Saying landscape firms are always better is a bit reductionist. It depends. Weiss and Manfriedi did a good one in Seattle, the Olympic Sculpture Park. Archs probably tend to be riskier, and seem predisposed to cheesy moves, like the folding ground plane crap. But every designer is different.
Weiss and Manfredi did a good job largely in part thanks to Charles Anderson Landscape Architects. Those parts of the project they completed w/o them were susceptible to slope failure.
So maybe both are needed!
Agreed, provided the project does not become an opportunity to create a site that features a work of architecture.
The sculpture park (I'd contend it is more of a garden in program and operations) works because the site and infrastructure needed make the circulation work are at the forefront. Arguably the architecture attached to the sculpture park could disappear if there wasn't a need for an education component (we always need those) and gatehouse.
So stepping back, Pershing needs to be more much more park and less garden.
A garden is a "closed" space. Maybe not physically closed always, but it acting as a refuge or microcosm. A park is an open space. It is integral and woven into the surrounding fabric. That's the difference in my opinion between the two terms imo.
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