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Missed out on Next Up: The LA River, Archinect Sessions' podcasting event? Now you can listen to the first half all at once, on One-to-One, recorded live. Next week we'll release the full second-half.This playlist of live recordings features interviews with:Frances Anderton (host, KCRW’s DnA)... View full entry
Our penultimate Mini-Session interview from 'Next Up: The LA River' pairs architects Renee Dake Wilson and Alexander Robinson. Dake Wilson, principal at Dake Wilson Architects, was appointed by LA Mayor Eric Garcetti to serve as Vice President on the city's volunteer-based Planning Commission—an... View full entry
Los Angeles' Metabolic Studio, run by architect and visual artist Lauren Bon, creates site-specific, temporary "devices of wonder" that interpret landscape in new ways, shifting public perception of land and waterways. One of their most recent projects, 'Bending the River Back Into the City'... View full entry
As Chief Architect and Chief Deputy City Engineer presiding over a group of 800+ architects and engineers, Deborah Weintraub has a big picture of LA infrastructure in mind when it comes to the river. She also has a fair amount of historical perspective, having overseen the implementation of... View full entry
Steven Appleton and Catherine Gudis are some of Next Up's most active participants when it comes to physically being in the LA River. Appleton co-founded LA River Kayak Safari, which has lead over 6000 people on kayaking tours down the river. He's also a public artist, and has made work that... View full entry
Our second conversation from 'Next Up: The LA River' is with Marissa Christiansen, Senior Policy Director of Friends of the Los Angeles River. FOLAR, as the non-profit is known, turned 30 this year, and was founded on the mission to "protect and restore the natural and historic heritage of the... View full entry
When Frank Gehry's office was first attached to the L.A. River's master plan and redevelopment, the river began attracting fresh attention over a project that had already been evolving for decades. This October, in an attempt to do justice to the river's complexity and history (and the... View full entry
The L.A. River's redevelopment is one of the most challenging, and exciting, projects currently underway in Los Angeles. Accounting for the River's 51-mile stretch, and all the neighborhoods it runs through, is a mammoth endeavor—and one that will necessarily involve contention and compromise... View full entry
For the latest installment of Archinect's live podcasting series, Next Up, we're focusing on the L.A. River, and the wide swath of urbanist concerns within its ongoing master planning efforts. It could be the project that makes, or breaks, Los Angeles. With a complex historical legacy and an... View full entry
River LA, formerly the Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation, has posted a video interview with Frank Gehry about his work on the LA River revitalization project. The nonprofit organization works to build public support for the project. “I think when I started it I had trepidation,”... View full entry
“By accident, we’ve created the perfect habitat there. People don’t think about that because they think that this part of the river is ugly and concrete, but it’s a critically important habitat for these shorebirds.” [...]
As the city makes its decisions about the river’s future, it is called upon to be sensitive to all life that has managed to grow around it, despite its not-so-green surroundings.
— kcet.org
For more on the LA River's redevelopment:Will Gehry's L.A. River plan result in water savings?Gruen Associates, Mia Lehrer, Oyler Wu appointed to design L.A. River Greenway in San Fernando ValleyWhat's happening with Frank Gehry's masterplan for the LA River?Before the masterplan gets underway... View full entry
Los Angeles wants to rethink its river. [...] And LA isn’t the only metropolis looking to reclaim its once-mocked waterway. Cities around the world are realizing that water can be a cultural and recreational asset, not something to hide or pillage, and it seems no waterway will be wasted for long. — wired.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Gruen Associates, Mia Lehrer, Oyler Wu appointed to design L.A. River Greenway in San Fernando ValleyWhat's happening with Frank Gehry's masterplan for the LA River?A plan to clean up the River Spree around Museum Island in Berlin View full entry
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... View full entry
Mayor Eric Garcetti's office released a statement yesterday announcing that Gruen Associates, Mia Lehrer + Associates, Oyler Wu Collaborative, and civil and structural engineering firm Psomas will design the final 12 miles of the San Fernando Valley portion of the Los Angeles River Greenway. The... View full entry
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... View full entry
