The name of Herzog and de Meuron's proposed new development for downtown Los Angeles' arts district, 6 AM, seems like an hour/mindset that most of its current residents experience only because they stayed up much too late. But no one can stop the dawn of high-concept gentrification from breaking all over the district of former abandoned warehouses, especially when that concept promises to embody the so-called "DNA"of Los Angeles.
According to an article by Frances Anderton, de Meuron purposefully nixed medium height buildings from 6 AM's design in favor of nose-bleed high rises and squat, table-like mixed-use structures, as this was reflective of how he views Los Angeles:
“The high rise for us is important to make a difference between the low and the high because I think this is a part of specificity of Los Angeles. It’s either flat or it’s high. You don’t have in between bulky buildings. So (we’d) rather do extremely low and then you go higher. (The towers are) needle like — it shows something important is happening. So it’s showing that here in the art district, I raise my finger and I say here, that’s something. This is a part of LA, like downtown does or Korea(town) does.”
For more on Herzog and de Meuron:
3 Comments
Are you fucking kidding me? They put the whole project on a giant parking lot to cut it off from the existing fabric. Urban intervention, yeah right...
Finally. Amen. Let’s get it all built asap and clean up this derelict area.
In 20 years this will be the location for a reboot of Hi-rise.
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