For decades, the concrete-lined L.A. River has been more famous for being a bone-dry iconic conduit for films like Terminator 2 than a major watery artery, but that may change: in a talk with Christopher Hawthorne on Monday, Frank Gehry mentioned that his design may just save the city significant amounts of cash when it comes to buying water. Per the Hollywood Reporter:
The river, which was bound in concrete beginning in the late 1930s after a series of damaging floods, is also frequently blamed for wasting water, one of Los Angeles’ most embattled resources. Because the river’s concrete binding was designed to channel floodwaters swiftly into the ocean and away from properties on the banks, the city now loses more than 28.6 billion gallons of water a year, according to River L.A., a nonprofit working with Gehry’s firm and funded in part by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.
“We think we can save the city one-third of what it now pays for imported water,” Gehry said in conversation with Christopher Hawthorne, the architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times. The one-on-one discussion took place as part of the Times’ Ideas Exchange speaker series.
For more on Frank Gehry:
3 Comments
It's still suspect, but now it's also intriguing.
Capturing 18 billion gallons of water along an 11 mile stretch will require that the team treat the river as a field- the alluvial floodplain it is and not just as an object, and pushing well beyond the borders defined by the channel. This means architecture may come into play as hybrid reservoirs in a manner similar to the LOHA watershed proposal, along with hybrid public/infrastructural spaces akin to the work of De Urbanisten.
It could also spark a local resource conflict...
...and there's still the impact of "natural amenities" on the desirability of property and increases in value.
It would be interesting to see how they arrive at the 1/3rd number or what type of climate projections they are using to determine those numbers. While I recognize the role of design thinking and architecture's ability to operate in the space of a river/park/infrastructure design, I don't explicitly recognize this project/scope as "architecture".It's too complex to be understood from the paradigm of a building.
I wish we could hear from Olin in all this.
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