Judging from the winning entries in the History Channel’s ‘City of the Future’ design competition, the world to come–at least in New York and Chicago–is, well, all wet. Los Angeles manages to stay afloat only to build upon one its most famous features: freeways. Last November, the network invited noted architectural firms in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to come up with a vision of their respective cities 100 years from now. At separate events held in each city, a winner was awarded $10,000. Firms had a scant week to prepare their presentations, consisting of models, renderings and explanatory text. The Los Angeles prize went to Eric Owen Moss Architects. As director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture since 2002, Moss, a resident of Pacific Palisades, is one of the city’s guiding lights. His design for this competition, lauded for balancing artistic innovation with pragmatism, is now facing off with the two other top designs for an additional $10,000 prize via an online public vote (the last day to cast a ballot is tomorrow, February 2). In New York, what skyscrapers were in the 20th century, vanes–an entirely new type of building–will be in the 22nd, according to the Big Apple’s winning firm ARO (Architecture Research Office). Their vision, at once catastrophic and optimistic, assumes that global warming will cause water to pour into Manhattan. Faced with a city starved for square footage, architects will build directly on the flooded streets, with newfangled vanes feathering upwards and outwards to create homes, offices and parks. Water is also the inspiration for UrbanLab’s victorious plan for Chicago, but instead of coping with too much of it, this firm calls for ‘growing’ it. The project envisions that by 2106, water will be the world’s most valuable resource, and Chicago will evolve into a model city for ‘growing’ and recycling it. Eco-boulevards will function as a giant ‘living machine’ treating all of Chicago’s wastewater and storm water naturally, using microorganisms, fish and plants to create a closed water loop within the city. In Los Angeles, at an event held at LACMA on December 12, honorable mentions went to the Office of Mobile Design and the team of Xefirotarch and Imaginary Forces. Both visions involve bioengineered buildings made of living plant material (the latter plan presupposes working with a clean slate after L.A. is devastated by the great earthquake and flood of 2022!). Ultimately, the nod by a five-person panel of judges, including architect Thom Mayne and city planning director Gail Goldberg, went to Moss for a plan deemed visionary yet practical: it stood out among the submissions as the only one to take a realistic view of building a future city on an existing metropolis. Moss and his team unveiled a plan to revitalize the eastern end of downtown L.A. by building over, under, around and through the freeways, rivers, power grids and tracks while filling the concrete-trapped Los Angeles River into parkland and a center for tourists. Models and renderings show a network of flowing, curvilinear structures enveloping and joining the area. ‘The infrastructure has subdivided the city in many ways,’ Moss said during a recent phone interview, referring to how giant freeways like the Ventura and 405 perpetuate social divisions. ‘We’re using what have become barriers more as connectors and unifiers that allow the city to be high density.’ Despite L.A.’s fame for innovative architecture, Moss said his sense of the city is rarely that. ‘Fundamentally what organizes it are enormous pieces of infrastructure, and it’s hard to imagine all of this going away. I don’t think you compromise radical ideas by looking at how the city stays the same.’ Part of the discussion of looking forward is looking back, one of the thematic threads of the History Channel’s series ‘Engineering an Empire,’ where the ‘City of the Future’ competition was born. Moss cited ancient Rome, how Trajan used the foundation of Nero’s colossal house to build baths, as a vivid illustration of the age-old practice of adaptive re-use and the inevitability of connections to the past. ‘I’m not particularly interested in a Flash Gordon future,’ Moss said. ‘There’s a fascination with new technology just for the sake of technology. This misses the human side of urban equations and the need to focus on public policy-related decisions in cities.’ To that end, Moss is encouraged by how the competition has attracted the attention of people like Mayor Villaraigosa and Eli Broad, both of whom came to LACMA for the presentation. ‘The discussion is as important as the solution,’ Moss added. ‘If this competition contributes to a bigger public discussion of the issues facing American cities, especially in light of what happened in New Orleans, then it’s all good.’ To learn about the winning projects and to vote (the deadline is February 2), go online to www.history.com/designchallenge. The site includes commentary from architect Daniel Libeskind. The victor will be announced mid-February. —————– Reporting by Staff Writer Nancy Ganiard Smith. To contact, e-mail: smithpalipost@gmail.com.
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