Category: ARCH 502A: Public Engagement

Block by Block reimagines urban spaces with a community-centered approach by repurposing schoolyards into microfarms, vacant lots into kitchens, and underutilized streets into food markets, creating a sustainable food ecosystem. This locally-integrated food network combats food deserts by redefining the conventional association of fresh produce with luxury dining, making healthy food more accessible to lower-income neighborhoods. By shortening the distance from farm to table and creating employment opportunities within the community, access to nutritious meals within urban landscapes is democratized. Block by Block represents a transformative step towards healthier, more inclusive urban environments, one block at a time.

Architecture’s defiance of personal adaptation exposes a fundamental flaw of the discipline. Permanent spaces and infrastructures struggle to remain socially, culturally, and physically relevant when presented with the changing and variable needs of the people that occupy them. Historical and recent states of emergencies have proven the inherent limitation of permanence as an ideal, as temporary architecture has become a key tool in human resilience. The systematic approach of Permanently Temporary deploys pop-up devices and mechanisms at a daily scale to complete re-use transformations of existing urban conditions. These dynamic additions to public space contribute to an ever-evolving new city, better activating shared spaces and blurring the distinction between relief and leisure.

Sound has the capacity to heal, move, gather, and grow that which it touches. It can serve as a rallying cry or as an opportunity for self expression. If loud enough, it can serve as both a weapon and an inebriant. The Right to Make Noise argues that the role of sound is inherent to collective gathering and unification, and must be employed to both construct and disrupt public space, which may be defined by the boundary of a sound’s reach.

To what extent is a monument representative of a city and its identity?

On Monument interrogates the traditional forms of monumentality and the failure of permanence to capture the ongoing social and political changes of the city. The project challenges the manifestation of deeply embedded social structures in our cities by questioning the static nature of monumental architecture. It proposes alternative perspectives on how cities can represent themselves and evolve in tandem with societal changes through non-traditional and non-hierarchical forms of architecture.

With a focus on Mexico City and Latin American Feminism, On Monument proposes a shift towards recognizing and celebrating change as a significant aspect of urban life while honoring the history and memory of the city. By reimagining monumentality as an appreciation for evolving narratives and diverse voices, the project initiates a dialogue on reshaping urban spaces to be more reflective of contemporary social realities.

Mixed use developments claim to promote urban growth; inclusiveness through walkable
and open areas; social health; and a sense of community. These developments, however, often lead to gentrification, exclusion, and community displacement. In order to leverage the latent, positive potential of this building typology, the concept of liminal space offers a mechanism for the introduction of attributes for social inclusion.

A liminal space is a transitional threshold between two different states that smooths the edges and blurs the boundary between them. As a passageway of an intentionally ambiguous character, a liminal space provokes curiosity and enhances expectations. A liminal space is a connector, eroding the barrier between user and space through a stimulation of sensory perception.

The encroachment of development from Downtown Los Angeles is creating an urgent crisis in the neighboring community of Boyle Heights. The neighborhood has already suffered from the process of gentrification for decades with many low-income families forced to move away. New developments continue to change the face of the neighborhood with business closures and community housing insecurity. The 7th Street Line offers an alternative to existing development models, endeavoring to keep the local population, support small businesses, and honor the vibrant history and diversity of Boyle Heights while offering new opportunities for housing and cultural spaces.

Play is undoubtedly a serious and critical element of culture, and a generative force for
humanity. At present, however, districts of ‘leisure’ or ‘recreation’ either refuse urbanism, like parks, or remain inextricably tied to commerce and consumption, like shopping centers. The Play-Ground proposes an alternative to this kind of district-scale development, reimagining the highly traditional ‘leisure’ spaces of The Grove and Pan Pacific Park as a new kind of public realm that, through the construction of surreal programmatic adjacencies, makes space within the city for play as an end in itself as well as a projective and creative force.

Spaces cannot be truly public when they are created through vertical design processes that are exclusionary and hierarchical. Both top-down and bottom-up design methods marginalize certain groups, creating power dynamics that dismiss the voice of the public. The Lateral Design Process serves as a mechanism for equalizing the design process that is reflective of compromise and equity. Achieving this requires a design toolkit, accessible to all, regardless of expertise and background. Thus, Anchors and Attachments is an adaptive and interactive toolkit, used to demonstrate the potential of collaborative stakeholder engagement.

Our navigations through our cities possess the power to generate distinct emotions and intricate neural patterns. These emotional responses vary based on an individual’s perception, interaction, and frequency of moving through a space. Perceptual Interjections explores haptic conditions that generate positive physical responses within public space. A collection of both material applications and formal additions interact with different senses and parts of the body through haptic qualities such as material texture. These haptic interjections both break the familiarity of a space and change over time based on public use and touch, encouraging new mental impressions and tangible interactions in a sensory-rich collective space. Understanding the influence of perception is certain to pave the way for the creation of happier, more considerate public environments.

Superbia is not a mere alternative but a revolutionary manifesto for the future of the American urban fabric. It goes beyond the failures of suburbia to embrace a vision of communities that are vibrant, interconnected, and resilient. The journey to Superbia is a radical transformation of the way we conceive, build, and inhabit cities. The time for change is now, and the call of Superbia echoes as a beacon towards a new era of urban living.