This is Matness! by Ashley Morgan Hastings

This is Matness!

Copyright ÂŠ 2018 by Ashley Morgan Hastings All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America, digitally depicted globally First Printing, 2018 Issuu, Inc. 131 Lytton Ave. Palo Alto, CA 94301 issuu.com/ashleymorganhastings

“But I don’t want to go among mad mat people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mat here. I’m mat. You’re mat.” “How do you know I’m mat?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” Alive in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, 1865

Los Angeles: weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all mat here

GRATITUDE

Marcelyn Gow Florencia Pita Marrikka Trotter Ryan Tyler Martinez

CONTENTS

madness, n.

/’madnes/, /’mædnes/ 1. Imprudence, delusion, or (wild) foolishness resembling insanity; an instance of this. 2. Wild excitement or enthusiasm; ecstasy; exuberance or lack of restraint.

matness, n. or adj.

/’matnes/, /’mætnes/ 1. Radically pragmatic approach to extreme architectural intervention in urban design 2. Wild excitement or enthusiasm for the design of cities; ecstatic enjoyment of planning; exuberance or lack of restraint for containment See also: horizontal dynamism

STATEMENTS

PROVOCATION

How can a city like Los Angeles continue to be desirable and accessible if density becomes the planning focus? What role would the architect play in generating clever design solutions that give the illusion of space, while also housing or entertaining larger populations? Los Angeles is a city forever questioning its relationship to the automobile. How does our approach to urban design impact the importance of efficiency and transportation? How does density affect the urban environment in the era of constant development? Density is an integral factor in designing cities that accommodate rapid change and resilience. As cities and suburban regions boom during this millennium, regard for pliable social and ecological contexts dictate that increased densities in cities worldwide will redefine the future of the built environment.

THESIS STATEMENT

Why build up when we can spread out? Why divide when we can multiply? Why stay sane when we can go a little mat… This is Matness! addresses what it means to push the limits of density in architecture. It reimagines what a city could look like by introducing radical strategies to urban design. In short, it requires a hint of madness and a nod to history. Mat buildings were the 20th century’s proposal for creating urban connectivity, community, and green space using specific organizational techniques and passive design. They introduced horizontality as a means to think about urban design and brought the idea of filling in, instead of building up, to bear on city planning. While the skyscraper exemplifies developed cities, it has also served as a way to divide people through

isolation in boring, shiny towers. Skyscrapers have disconnected Downtown LA from the rest of the city. Los Angeles is best known for its sprawl -- we are a city without a center, but one with many networked neighborhoods. However, while the city has spread out, its density has remained at nearly 1:1, with development opting for the single-family suburban ideal. Automobiles are required and walking is almost always out of the question. Reyner Banham documents it best by describing his four ecologies, each distinct in character, and without strict boundaries -- the characteristics flow freely between each neighborhood. Similarly, matness connects districts within Downtown LA by threading public circulation through an otherwise private model. For example, where Banham’s Autopia placed mobility solely in

STATEMENTS

Clockwise, from top left: Banhamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s four ecologies from Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies -Surfurbia, the Foothills, Autopia, and the Plains of Id

STATEMENTS

the lanes of the interconnected freeway system, matness imagines a post-automobile scenario of urban circulation where walkability and cyclability are the focus. Buildings, in this case, no longer act as auxiliary components to infrastructure -- matness sees buildings as infrastructure. This thesis proposes to pursue the yet unrealized potential of matness by subjecting the eight tallest towers in downtown to an unbuilding -- a breakdown of floors into pieces that, once recombined, will create a new network of interconnected public and private spaces. Original square footage is maintained, but fantastically reimagined through stacking, weaving, and overlapping of new forms. The identity of each tower, initially tied to its program and primary tenants, is also reconceived as a new district defined by social activities and environmental qualities, rather than by ownership. Unlike the vertical cities we know today, matness has its own unique characteristics. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve determined that matness involves being flat, outside, lively, open, rhizomatic, and urban -- utilizing these characteristics, I think we can elevate how we plan and design cities. Matness opposes congestion and creates healthy density. It ruffles and wanders. It activates the void, and incites curiosity and connection. The drawings pictured later in the book depict the overall site plan of how matness intervenes with the current downtown model, with most activity occurring over existing streets. This infill of reconstructed buildings can be seen in the perspective vignettes, depicting the new urbanism as it impacts city life. Additionally, the two sections show how matness interacts with existing buildings while street level remains unchanged. Keeping the matness above allows for a more pedestrian-friendly, greenspace-oriented urban experience. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to ditch the status quo, and go a little mat.

Los Angeles, Andreas Gursky, 1998

Centraal Beheer Floor Plan Diagram, Herman Hertzberger, 1969

BACKGROUND

Centraal Beheer Floor Plan Diagram, Herman Hertzberger, 1969

BACKGROUND

MAT BUILDINGS

During the 1960s, we saw the prime times of urbanism and modernism occurring simultaneously. Cities were built up towards the sky, leaving many behind at ground level. As a result, a new typology was drawn out of the desire to stay low and connected: the mat building. Key players at this time were those architects within Team 10, a group of young Europeans who desired to build a ‘utopia of the present’ – they believed in cities as being habitats for people to thrive in and grow together. Their cities would help develop communities and built environments that were as organic and dynamic as their inhabitants. Within Team 10 was a core group of architects who were the most active, outspoken, and rigorous in their work – this inner circle included Shadrach Woods, Georges Candilis, Jaap Bakema, Aldo van Eyck, Giancarlo De Carlo, and husbandand-wife team, Alison and Peter Smithson. As part of Team 10, Alison Smithson acted as unofficial historian and record-keeper. Publishing the Team 10 Primer, she also taught us how to read and recognize mat buildings, and understand what made them special.

Venice Hospital, Le Corbusier, 1965

HOW TO RECOGNISE AND READ A MAT-BUILDING

Mat-building can be said to epitomize the anonymous collective; where the functions come to enrich the fabric, and the individual gains new freedoms of action through a new and shuffled order, based on interconnection, close-knit patterns of association, and possibilities for growth, diminution, and change. The way towards mat-building started blindly enough: the first Team 10 review of the field of its thought became collectively covered in the Primer (AD 12/61). The thought gradually got further bodied-out in projects and these in the early ‘seventies began to appear in builtform. At this point mat-building as an idea becomes recognizable. To be able to recognize the phenomenon at the end of this, its first, primitive phase, calls for a specially prepared frame of mind…to deliberately not look too closely at the detailed language, for this is still developing. And some

practitioners, to achieve something through the bureaucratic machine of their country, have chosen to normalize their language…(you might say so that the client did not become frightened by the appearance of the mat proper). So at present the built-field is rather mixed, and realized examples on the whole tend to have something of the not-quite-recognisable-order of the Olympian Zeus temple, all different wood/stone columns; or the crazy-paving terrace that is the top surface of the platform of the Argive Heraeum. Mainstream matbuilding became visible, however, with the completion of the F.U. (Berlin Free University) A building that co-dates the finishing of the FU – the Insurance Building at Appeldoorn – is, in its form, an off-shoot of the mat-building phenomenon (to deal with the offshoot first, and perhaps therefore with ‘casbahism’ as a formative

BACKGROUND

influence from the immediate past). Appeldoorn’s architect, by using his own particular inheritance – the Children’s House…the Schroeder roof – utilized a heavily loaded language to produce what can best be described as Giant’s Causeway architecture…but you have to enter with special protective-visualclothing, and to want to see it as part of the new phenomenon of matbuilding. Causeway-architecture can most easily be seen to be this something else if walked into (in the mind) and compared with similar mental-walking-into, the Ford Foundation Building NY or the Boston City Hall, where, in both, quite different Central American historical-food is being drawn on, and has in the end produced old-style civic monuments. If still unconvinced that these are isolates, acting as such on the area around them, unto themselves alone, think of the Trenton Bath House (early ‘50s but first personal awareness ’57),

in which there is a clear indication of the mat-building urge towards collective grouping, and firm but recessive compatibility – seen again in the Baltimore Inner Harbour Project (1970). The Berlin FU as realized, enables us to recognize what has gone before and, allowing for personal receptivity, recognize those things that led up to it. The calmer, mainstream matbuilding, not in the consumer’s terms normalised, is what attracts our personal attention and we tend to like the FU for the very reasons Aldo van Eyck does not like it to paraphrase badly… the impenetrability of Corten steel…on the inner face the same impenetrability of the white skin… the changeable façade that does not change the overall effect… the carpet that changes its colour but not the effect of the corridor street. We don’t resist the fire doors (which ruin, Schiedhelm claims, the

Toulouse Le Mirail, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1971 Freie UniversitĂ¤t, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1962

BACKGROUND

Frankfurt Masterplan, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1963 Bilbao, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1961

Clockwise, from top left: Freie UniversitĂ¤t, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1962; Toulouse Le Mirail (STEM), Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1973; Centraal Beheer, Herman Hertzberger, 1961; Burgerweeshuis, Aldo van Eyck, 1961

BACKGROUND

corridor streets); the problematic detail can be brain-washed out of what one is trying to get from the FU…again wearing protective-visual-clothing in order to see better what might be there; what might be in it for us. The FU built makes matarchitecture recognizable, and now, by tracking back down selected antecedents – as we see them, not necessarily as Woods, or Candilis, or Josic, or Schiedhelm would severally see its antecedents – it should be possible to make clear how signs of matarchitecture can be read. Remember…we are tracking back… (referencing mat-building timeline) Given the discipline of a continuous system frame, functions may be articulated without the chaotic results which obtain when we pursue only the articulation of function without first establishing a total order. Indeed, it is only within such a frame that function can be articulate. The parts of a system take their identity from the system. If there is no order, there is no identity but only the chaos of disparate elements in pointless competition.

The systems will be sufficiently flexible to permit growth and change within themselves throughout the course of their lives. The systems will remain open in both directions, i.e. in respect to smaller systems within them as well as in respect to greater systems around them. The systems will present, in their beginning, an even over-all intensity of activity in order not to compromise the future. The extent and character of the systems will be apparent, or at least ascertainable, from the perception of parts of the systems. We feel that Web, by which word we mean to designate Stem to the next degree, may provide a way to approach the search for systems and, hence, for a true poetic discovery of architecture. Alison Smithson, 1974

The systems will have more than the usual three dimensions. They will include a time dimension.

TOTAL SPACE

The following is a paper I wrote in Fall 2016 for Architecture and Urbanism II, taught by Alex Maymind.

In 1928, the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) formed and became the most influential gathering of Europe’s leading modern architects. With Le Corbusier, Hendrik Berlage, and Siegfried Giedion (as secretary and resident historian) at the forefront, CIAM set the standard and wrote the manifestoes for how the world would be impacted by the modern architecture movement. CIAM was comprised of twenty-eight architects from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, the Soviet Union, and the Netherlands. Over the course of nearly thirty years, the group held conferences around Europe to reflect on issues addressing their work and current projects, as well as how to further the grander scheme of developing ‘The Functional City’. Similar to his approach of creating a ‘machine for living’ with his residential projects, Le Corbusier and the other twenty-seven members of CIAM sought to mechanize the city at large and impact the realm of urban planning through Burgerweeshuis, Aldo van Eyck, 1961

BACKGROUND 33

BACKGROUND

a rational tactic of categorizing, or zoning, areas of the city for distinct elements of life. This deductive grouping of living essentials directly reflected a simplified version of human life, in both urban and rural capacities, and offered a basis for developing compelling and thoughtfully constructed cities—CIAM identified these categories as: dwelling, work, recreation, and transportation. As a prime example of these distinctions, Le Corbusier offered his concept of Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) to serve as a tabula rasa for new urban design. While completely logical, there is a cold, almost sterile read in the understanding of Le Corbusier’s proposal. Mid-rise apartment towers next to highrise corporate towers in the center of the city serve as uniform living spaces for the masses, answering the call of a new social housing contract. Thousands of people—large and small families alike—would be able to live and comfortably operate in these fifty-meter-tall towers, as they not only provided physical shelter. Each of the towers, or unités, would house a community space, kindergarten, pool, and other similar amenities in order to accommodate the immediate needs of growing families, small children, and also the comfort of childless tenants. This approach to consolidated design creates a kind of repeatable, vertical village, in a sense. In this way, Le Corbusier aimed to develop uniformity and order outside the immediate city center, but still within the greater metropolitan area—because of this approach to urban expansion, geometry then experiences no limits. Due to its tessellated architectural features, the city begins to grow not only horizontally, but also extensively into the sky. The new city begins to radiate, physically and metaphorically. Its radiance, additionally, is expressed through its order and geometric alignments, equity of space, appropriated gardens, and mechanization of the city through

Ville Radieuse, Le Corbusier, 1930

increased utilization of mass transportation. As stated in his foreword in The City of Tomorrow and its Planning:

Geometry is the means, created by ourselves, whereby we perceive the external world and express the world within us. Geometry is the foundation. It is also the material basis on which we build those symbols which represent to us perfection and the divine. It brings with it the noble joys of mathematics. Machinery is the result of geometry. The age in which we live is therefore essentially a geometrical one; all its ideas are orientated in the direction of geometry.

Despite all of their proposed work and conferences, CIAM disbanded, and some of its members came together in a newer, younger, and wilder group of architects: Team 10. Founded foggily out of the dissolution of CIAM XI in Otterlo, the Netherlands in 1959, the members of Team 10 referred to themselves as a small family group of architects who have sought each other out because each has found the help of the others necessary to the development and understanding of their own individual work. Team 10’s modus operandi focused on a similar approach to CIAM’s method of urban planning; however, with the ‘core’ members including Jacob Bakema, Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Peter Smithson, Georges Candilis, and Shadrach Woods, a freer design aesthetic was encouraged, and while still impeccably logical, Team 10’s less rigid planning approach began to take shape in the form of mat buildings. Mat buildings are repeatable units, designed to be easily manipulated (by rotation in the x direction), and have all of their layouts, accesses, daylighting

Noah’s Ark Diagram, Piet Blom, 1962

BACKGROUND 37

conventions, and ventilation requirements solved—as the focus is on perfecting the functional elements of the unit, the formal interest and language can be read on how the assembly of pieces occurs in plan. While in 1924 Ville Radieuse proposed perfectly geometric forms and layout, the Smithsons developed an urban plan for the Berlin Hauptstadt competition in 1957. This plan differed from Le Corbusier’s in that it focused primarily on the idea of connection in the city through transportation and mobility, as well as the integration of mat buildings as the primary architectural element. This approach to urban planning looked at creating systems, or buildings as organisms with the ability to ‘grow’ and expand in ways that would not disturb the initial agglomeration of units; this

system of architectural elements would offer a less rigid, less Brave New World segregation of areas, but still a mechanized, modern plan for cities. Mat buildings responded to a highly-interwoven structure that was supposed to be able to grow in space in a potentially unlimited way and to be modified in the course of time, adapting to the multiple contingencies that would take place. In the case of the Berlin Hauptstadt competition entry, Peter and Alison Smithson designed the city plan with mat buildings, in a way that would act as a cellular structure. The cellular design would allow for “the feeling of change, so that buildings, roads and services can develop freely according to their own laws without compromising the development as a whole.” Similar to how Le Corbusier wanted to allocate specific urban functions

BACKGROUND

to specific areas of the grid, the Smithson’s Hauptstadt plan was instead divided into corridors with discrete functional purposes for both pedestrians and automobiles. This notion of addressing the city in a horizontal, cellular way, as well as developing verticality through layers of these functions maintains with it a deep relationship with the individual—in place of the rigid and sterile mechanization of the city à la mode du Corbusier, the Smithsons’ proposal addresses how individuals can help to create their cities by determining the extent of function, instead of vice versa. Other prime examples of this lowrise, mat building plan can be seen in the Smithson’s Freie Universtät Berlin and, on a smaller scale, in Aldo van Eyck’s Municipal Orphanage in Amsterdam. Nicolai Ouroussoff discusses Team 10 in his article for the New York Times, “In the group’s ability to

slip so casually between scales— embracing both narrow urban alleys and sprawling neighborhoods—its work anticipates the freewheeling computer-generated designs of today.” Similarly divided into functional sectors, the orphanage was designed to accommodate children of all ages, and would house them in units comprised of sleeping quarters, a kitchen, laundry room, gymnasium, library, and administrative spaces. Van Eyck considered this project as a small urban study. Most notably at this time, in van Eyck’s essay ‘Steps Toward a Configurative Discipline’, he states that “a house must be like a small city if it’s to be a real house, a city like a large house if it’s to be a real city.” Here we come to understand the personal relationship developed between housing and the larger urban context, one that Team 10 sought to further develop and understand,

more so than their contemporaries in CIAM. In this way, we see the successes of radial symmetry paired with distinct pattern recognition of repeatable facilities in modern architecture.

that existed in a particular physical, social, and historical context, a postwar modern architecture that was based on the core values: particularity, integration, and change.

Architect Jacob (Jaap) Bakema, a colleague of van Eyck’s in Team 10, summarized these ideas under the terms architecturbanism and total space. These terms helped to define how Team 10’s approach to urban design expanded on the unité concept, and created neighborhood units and residential districts within the larger metropolitan area that would directly impact a city’s infrastructure.

The modernist movement took on the added responsibility of nourishing the hierarchical needs of the people in order to create a semblance of utopic urban life. Both the members of CIAM and Team 10 sought to further the proposed ideal of ‘the Functional City’, either in ways of pure mechanization of the urban environment in Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, or through consideration of the individual’s impact on the growth of cities in the Smithsons’ Berlin Hauptstadt plan. While sharing similar ideals as well as opposing methods, both groups took action in the modernist era through appreciation and emulation of symmetrical values, implementation of urban order through repeatable elements, and creation of unity with village-like elements residing within complex cellular units. Housing and the inefficiencies of urban design still prevail, but works proposed and completed during the twentieth century provide an excellent foundation upon which we can build, up and out.

During the early 1900s, the conceptual framework of modernism evolved due to the devastating effects of two world wars— priorities shifted from economic efficiency, rationalization, standardization, existence minimum, and the disavowal of history, to totalities, integration,relationships, neighborhoods, communities,sociogeographic differentiation, identity, and history; from physical needs to spiritual aspirations, from idealism to reality as it is, from top-down rationalist methods to more empirical bottom-up processes, from universalism to a modern architecture

BACKGROUND

Clockwise, from top left: Toulouse Le Mirail, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1973; Berlin Hauptstadt, Alison + Peter Smithson, 1957; Cluster City Diagram, Alison + Peter Smithson, 1952; Centraal Beheer, Herman Hertzberger, 1969

BUILD-UP

VERTIGO

When we think of cities, as Americans we typically start with the vision of the New York City skyline. Or San Francisco, Los Angeles, even Boston. These images all have remarkable similarities in that, at their most basic, they are all the same. Tall towers, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight, reaching far into the limitless sky. Towers were a product of our own unfathomable dreams during a time of industrial revolution and exhilarating change. At that time, building up was a sign of progress, innovation, and prosperity; however, in the last century, we have begun to observe the limits of a vertical, capitalist society. The gradual accumulation of tall, shiny, boring towers has lead us to an urban crisis. In this moment, when we are all too high to realize where we are, it is time to come back down to the streets. Starting in the lobbies of the Wilshire Grand Center, U.S. Bank Tower, the Aon Center, Two California Plaza, the Gas Company Tower, 777 Tower, Wells Fargo North, and Figueroa at Wilshire, I am taking down LAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eight tallest towers and redistributing their areas, floor by floor, in order to make better use of more than 9.5 million square feet. Wells Fargo North and South, One and Two California Plaza

Wilshire Grand Center – 1,099’ U.S. Bank Tower – 1,018’

BUILD-UP

Aon Center – 858’ Two California Plaza – 750’

Gas Company Tower – 749’ 777 Tower – 725’

BUILD-UP

Wells Fargo North – 723’ Figueroa at Wilshire – 717’

Wall art near the Gas Company Tower, Grand Avenue Photo Credit: Ashley Morgan Hastings

BUILD-UP 51

777 Tower

Wilshire Grand Center

Figueroa at Wilshire

Aon Center

BUILD-UP

U.S. Bank Tower

Gas Company Two California Tower Plaza

Not pictured: Wells Fargo North (Wells Fargo South blocks it)

Imagine your typical tower â&#x20AC;&#x201D; tens of thousands of square feet of usable floor area per floor, surrounding a mechanical core (vertical transportation, fire stairs, HVAC, plumbing, and electrical all contained within). Each plan nearly identical to the floors above and below, with minor changes due to office layouts and tenant improvements. The floors are predictable, plain, but potentially full of the character and personality of its inhabitants. Regardless, each floor is the same as the last, and will continue to be so until one reaches the roof or the lobby. The sameness continues from floor to floor, building to building, block to block, until the city is filled with plainly fraternal siblings, or downright identical twins. Where is the imagination? Where is the connection between man and metropolis?

Matness is also matte. Happy coincidence or intended punny consequence? The following attributes contrast matness with its tower counterparts: Formal

Functional

Shiny Vertical Closed Smooth Thin Unnatural High Condensed Inside Closed Individual Conservative

Mat(te) Horizontal (Flat) Open Rough Dense Natural Low Spread Outside Permeable Collective Bold

Stagnant Divided Terminal Building Sparse Simple Broken Limited Passive Inanimate

Dynamic Multiplied Rhizomatic City Dense (Urban) Complex Interconnected Expandable Active Lively

Floor plans (top, left to right): Wilshire Grand Center; U.S. Bank Tower, Aon Center, Two California Plaza, Gas Company Tower, Wells Fargo North, 777 Tower, Figueroa at Wilshire

BREAKDOWN 57

SECTION TITLE BREAKDOWN

SLICE + DICE

Included in these pages are relevant stories, talks, or interviews with QR codes that send you to related content. In addition to my definition of matness, here I also break down the breakdown of DTLA towers. Matness appreciates floor area â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the more expansive, the better! In this instance, the eight floor plans from each tower are simplified: perimeters and building envelope are maintained, mechanical cores are removed, and the square footage of each floor plate is reconfigured. With each floor plate stripped of its former identity, new forms begin to take shape. Matness in Downtown Los Angeles means that density is now designated above street-level, so the form of each piece is determined primarily by typical street width; however, matness configurations are not limited to pre-existing less effective density practices. Matness can come in many shapes and sizes. Each piece of matness in Downtown Los Angeles represents another way to think about how the city can be engaged, and how its people can be activated. Matness encourages wandering â&#x20AC;&#x201D; get to know your city, one piece at a time.

Diagram of revised tower floor plans

Matness, Floor plates as reconstructed pieces

BREAKDOWN 61

WHY GLASS TOWERS ARE BAD FOR CITY LIFE, AND WHAT WE NEED INSTEAD

The following is a transcript of a TEDNYC talk given by Justin Davidson in March 2017:

Imagine that when you walked in here this evening, you discovered that everybody in the room looked almost exactly the same: ageless, raceless, generically good-looking. That person sitting right next to you might have the most idiosyncratic inner life, but you don’t have a clue because we’re all wearing the same blank expression all the time. That is the kind of creepy transformation that is taking over cities, only it applies to buildings, not people. Cities are full of roughness and shadow, texture and color. You can still find architectural surfaces of great individuality and character in apartment buildings in Riga and Yemen, social housing in Vienna, Hopi villages in Arizona, brownstones in New York, wooden houses in San Francisco. These aren’t palaces or cathedrals. These are just ordinary residences expressing the ordinary splendor of cities. And the reason they’re like that is that the need for shelter is so bound up with the human desire for beauty. Their rough surfaces give us a touchable city. Right? New York City,: roughness and shadow, texture and color

BREAKDOWN 63

Clockwise, from top left: Houston, Guangzhou, Frankfurt, Los Angeles

BREAKDOWN

Streets that you can read by running your fingers over brick and stone. But that’s getting harder to do, because cities are becoming smooth. New downtowns sprout towers that are almost always made of concrete and steel and covered in glass. You can look at skylines all over the world-- Houston, Guangzhou, Frankfurt -- and you see the same army of high-gloss robots marching over the horizon. Now, just think of everything we lose when architects stop using the full range of available materials. When we reject granite and limestone and sandstone and wood and copper and terracotta and brick and wattle and plaster, we simplify architecture and we impoverish cities. It’s as if you reduced all of the world’s cuisines down to airline food. Chicken or pasta? But worse still, assemblies of glass towers like this one in Moscow suggest a disdain for the civic and communal aspects of urban living. Right? Buildings like these are intended to enrich their owners and tenants, but not necessarily the lives of the rest of us, those of us who navigate the spaces between the buildings. And we

expect to do so for free. Shiny towers are an invasive species and they are choking our cities and killing off public space. We tend to think of a facade as being like makeup, a decorative layer applied at the end to a building that’s effectively complete. But just because a facade is superficial doesn’t mean it’s not also deep. Let me give you an example of how a city’s surfaces affect the way we live in it. When I visited Salamanca in Spain, I gravitated to the Plaza Mayor at all hours of the day. Early in the morning, sunlight rakes the facades, sharpening shadows, and at night, lamplight segments the buildings into hundreds of distinct areas, balconies and windows and arcades, each one a separate pocket of visual activity. That detail and depth, that glamour gives the plaza a theatrical quality. It becomes a stage where the generations can meet.You have teenagers sprawling on the pavers, seniors monopolizing the benches, and real life starts to look like an opera set. The curtain goes up on Salamanca. So just because I’m talking about the exteriors of buildings, not form, not function, not structure, even so those surfaces give texture to our lives, because buildings create the spaces around them, and those

spaces can draw people in or push them away. And the difference often has to do with the quality of those exteriors. So one contemporary equivalent of the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca is the Place de la Défense in Paris, a windswept, glass-walled open space that office workers hurry through on the way from the metro to their cubicles but otherwise spend as little time in as possible. In the early 1980s, the architect Philip Johnson tried to recreate a gracious European plaza in Pittsburgh. This is PPG Place, a half acre of open space encircled by commercial buildings made of mirrored glass. And he ornamented those buildings with metal trim and bays and Gothic turrets which really pop on the skyline. But at ground level, the plaza feels like a black glass cage. I mean, sure, in summertime kids are running back and forth through the fountain and there’s iceskating in the winter, but it lacks the informality of a leisurely hangout. It’s just not the sort of place you really want to just hang out and chat. Public spaces thrive or fail for many different reasons. Architecture is only one, but it’s an important one. Some recent plazas like Federation Square in Melbourne or Superkilen in Copenhagen succeed because they combine old and new, rough and smooth,neutral and bright colors, and because they don’t rely excessively on glass. Now, I’m not against glass. It’s an ancient and versatile material. It’s easy to manufacture and transport and install and replace and clean. It comes in everything from enormous, ultraclear sheets to translucent bricks. New coatings make it change mood in the shifting light. In expensive cities like New York, it has the magical power of being able to multiply real estate values by allowing views,which is really the only commodity that developers have to offer to justify those surreal prices.

Lever House, Skidmore, Owings + Merrill, 1952

BREAKDOWN 67

BREAKDOWN

In the middle of the 19th century, with the construction of the Crystal Palace in London, glass leapt to the top of the list of quintessentially modern substances. By the mid-20th century, it had come to dominate the downtowns of some American cities, largely through some really spectacular office buildings like Lever House in midtown Manhattan, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Eventually, the technology advanced to the point where architects could design structures so transparent they practically disappear. And along the way, glass became the default material of the high-rise city, and there’s a very powerful reason for that. Because as the world’s populations converge on cities, the least fortunate pack into jerry-built shantytowns. But hundreds of millions of people need apartments and places to work in ever-larger buildings, so it makes economic sense to put up towers and wrap them in cheap and practical curtain walls. But glass has a limited ability to be expressive. This is a section of wall framing a plaza in the pre-Hispanic city of Mitla, in southern Mexico. Those 2,000-yearold carvings make it clear that this was a place of high ritual significance. Today we

look at those and we can see a historical and textural continuity between those carvings, the mountains all around and that church which is built on top of the ruins using stone plundered from the site. In nearby Oaxaca, even ordinary plaster buildings become canvasses for bright colors, political murals and sophisticated graphic arts. It’s an intricate, communicative language that an epidemic of glass would simply wipe out. The good news is that architects and developers have begun to rediscover the joys of texture without backing away from modernity Some find innovative uses for old materials like brick and terracotta. Others invent new products like the molded panels that Snøhetta used to give the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that crinkly, sculptural quality. The architect Stefano Boeri even created living facades. This is his Vertical Forest, a pair of apartment towers in Milan, whose most visible feature is greenery. And Boeri is designing a version of this for Nanjing in China. And imagine if green facades were as ubiquitous as glass ones how much cleaner the air in Chinese cities would become. But the truth is that these are mostly

Bosco Verticale, Studio Boeri, 2014

one-offs, boutique projects, not easily reproduced at a global scale. And that is the point. When you use materials that have a local significance, you prevent cities from all looking the same. Copper has a long history in New York --the Statue of Liberty, the crown of the Woolworth Building -- but it fell out of fashion for a long time until SHoP Architects used it to cover the American Copper Building, a pair of twisting towers on the East River. It’s not even finished and you can see the way sunset lights up that metallic facade, which will weather to green as it ages. Buildings can be like people. Their faces broadcast their experience. And that’s an important point, because when glass ages, you just replace it, and the building looks

pretty much the same way it did before until eventually it’s demolished. Almost all other materials have the ability to absorb infusions of history and memory, and project it into the present. The firm Ennead clad the Utah Natural History Museum in Salt Lake City in copper and zinc, ores that have been mined in the area for 150 years and that also camouflage the building against the ochre hills so that you have a natural history museum that reflects the region’s natural history. And when the Chinese Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu was building a history museum in Ningbo, he

didn’t just create a wrapper for the past, he built memory right into the walls by using brick and stones and shingles salvaged from villages that had been demolished. Now, architects can use glass in equally lyrical and inventive ways. Here in New York, two buildings, one by Jean Nouvel and this one by Frank Gehry face off across West 19th Street, and the play of reflections that they toss back and forth is like a symphony in light. But when a city defaults to glass as it grows, it becomes a hall of mirrors, disquieting and cold. After all, cities are places of concentrated variety where the world’s cultures and languages and lifestyles come together and mingle. So rather than encase all that variety and diversity in buildings of crushing sameness, we should have an architecture that honors the full range of the urban experience. Thank you.

BREAKDOWN

Clockwise, from top left: Highline, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, 2011; 528 W 28th Street, Zaha Hadid Architects, 2018; Highline 23, Neil M Denari Architects, 2009; IAC Building, Frank Gehry, 2007 + 100 Eleventh Avenue, Jean Nouvel, 2010

What does it mean to be mat? And what does it look like when cities plan for and begin to develop a sense of matness in its streets? As previously defined, matness involves the following conditions: • radical pragmatism in approach • extreme architectural intervention in urban design • wild enthusiasm for the design of cities • ecstatic enjoyment of planning • lack of restraint for containment These qualities focus primarily on a functional approach to architecture, mixed with a healthy dose of enthusiasm for wanting to make cities better. I believe that matness has a place in today’s approach to urban design, and can take on issues of density, sustainability, and

community within downtown Los Angeles; but also with consideration for using DTLA as a case study to use in other cities. Matness seeks to create unity in cities by connecting diversity — circulating through twelve distinct neighborhoods, matness connects people and places throughout downtown. In Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, he documents four distinct areas within greater LA that each have their own discrete characteristics, but are without strict boundaries. Each ecology flows freely between neighborhoods. He names these as The Plains of Id, the Foothills, Autopia, and Surfurbia. Matness mimics Autopia most closely in effect, through its arterial circuitry, though in this case, without regard for the automobile. Matness connects districts within DTLA by threading public circulation through an otherwise private model.

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Where Banhamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Autopia placed mobility solely in the lanes of the interconnected freeway system, matness imagines a post-automobile scenario of urban circulation where walkability is the focus. The key here is that buildings no longer act as auxiliary components to infrastructure -- matness sees buildings as infrastructure. Similar to the Highline in Manhattan, matness creates eight distinct lines through the city, spanning two and a half square miles in total, even crossing parts of the 110, or Harbor Freeway. While the Highline utilizes existing, abandoned infrastructure for its pathways, matness proposes utilizing existing architecture as a new form of infrastructure. Connecting rooftops allows for unchanged interior program within these buildings, but with added exterior function and space.

As the guiding rhetorical tool for the thesis, the four hundred and twelve pieces created from the breakdown of the towers serve as a model visualizing horizontality in the city â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they act as a preliminary idea to what could happen if our zoning code experienced an extreme overhaul, and we began to work differently with the Department of Transportation (in terms of above-street usage), and what it could mean for structural design to build outwards instead of upwards. The following pages detail matness, what it looks like, what it feels like, and how it parallels the comforting chaotic feel of urban madness.

MATNESS CHARACTERISTICS

Flat Flat is misunderstood. It is not dull or boring. Flat is freeing. Those buildings that give us flatness encourage us to wander, to continue down the corridor and into a courtyard. Flatness inspires both active and passive minds, as it piques curiosity and creates niches for comfort in each level of its three- or four-story structure. When it comes to flat matness, academia is a good place to start. Universities offer expansive campuses full of low-rise buildings, courtyards, and easy circulation. In the 1960s, the team of Georges Candilis, Alexis Josic, and Shadrach Woods were completely mat with their proposals for the Free University in Berlin, Bochum University, and a new masterplan for Frankfurt. Flat gives us the groundscraper.

Outside Integral to matness, incorporating the possibility for several hours of daylight into a buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s design is important for not only the occupants but also the architecture. The use of skylights, ribbon windows, and opens spaces found in courtyards and building perimeters offers a unique opportunity for mat buildings to shine. Common within northern European modernist architecture, passive design that includes significant amounts of daylight in addition to natural ventilation and increased indoor air quality makes mat buildings good for us, an obvious healthy alternative to those buildings that suffocate and isolate. Slanted structures yield floor plans that allow mat buildings to grow a bit taller without loss of light for all.

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Lively Matness requires that buildings be a bit coy, never fully divulging all of the secret passageways that lie within labyrinthine corridors. Within mat buildings, we find circulation that flows, is mazy, is smooth and sly in its attempts to key us inside (but then outside, and then inside again). SANAAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rolex Learning Center offers a fresh take on mat circulation by lifting up the building in select areas, waving hello, and welcoming people into its rounded courtyards. Sly and playful, secret and unexpected, mat circulation inspires users to wander freely, meander deeply, and go ahead and take a look around the corner there... just keep going. Follow that matness.

Open Greenspace -- the historically neglected yet obviously necessary component of the design of cities. It is possible to get caught up in the concrete jungle and forget that parks, trees, fresh air, sunshine, private and public spaces can coexist with rigid urban environments. Typically recreated in residential mats, openness is offered as terraces or backyards. In Safdieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Habitat, each unit was uniquely designed to have its own terrace and and create privacy in covered sunrooms. Openness here both connects you with your neighbors in shared public space and provides residents with the freedom to enjoy the outdoor spaces privately within their units.

SECTION TITLE MATNESS

Rhizomatic

Urban

Similar to a plaid fabric, or a fractal pattern, rhizomatic plans in mat buildings give us repeatability. Like tiling or tessellation, repeatable plans create expansive networks of interesting indoor space. Herman Hertzberger’s work in The Netherlands during the 1960s epitomized what it meant to have the possibility of an infinite plan. In this way, Dutch structuralism created a way of connecting people and spaces through duplication. Lévi-Strauss described mat building and structuralism as an ‘abstract organization constructed from relations among elementary units.’ It is through this unitization that matness gives us a checkered floor plan experience.

Matness could be rural, but then who would enjoy it? The metabolists experimented with rural proposals of mat building, but the urban environment is where matness thrives. Or at least, it will. Given the vertical nature of cities, while it has been effective to introduce matness to city officials, it has been historically difficult to implement expansive master plans like the Smithson’s Kuwait project because of the impact to larger swaths of area. However, it is the inherent to the nature of cities to expand -buildings can only grow so tall, but they can extend out exponentially. The final characteristic of being urban is the most important one to note, as it seeks to instigate and infiltrate the city, and allows for matness to spread.

Matness plan diagram, Pershing Square

MATNESS MAP

From the City West part of the Westlake neighborhood just west of the Harbor Freeway, to the Civic Center and Grand Park, down through the Historic Core, over to Skid Row, and back towards South Park and the Financial District, matness networks the eight lines created by the now horizontal towers. This new way of developing pedestrian infrastructure out of existing buildings allows for new connections to be made between the people and places of downtown Los Angeles. The map clearly outlines all of the ‘stops’ throughout the city — key intersections, landmarks, trendy or delicious locations — and how they can be reached by each line, or through a combination of two or more crossings. Each line typically begins in The Financial District, Bunker Hill, or South Park, but will end in one of nine other neighborhoods. In this way, matness enables endless connectivity through the city and the ability to engage with otherwise potentially inaccessible locations. With the elevation above street level, new perspectives of the city are gained, and new interactions with the communities in which matness exists are experienced.

Matness Map detailing all 86 destinations

Los Angeles Central Studios

LA Grand Hotel

3rd + Hope BOA Park 4th + Grand

Westin

4th + Flower

5th + Fig

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

Grand Park Stanley Mosk Courthouse

Walt Disney Concert Hall

The Broad Bunker Hill MOCA

6th + Bixel

Civic Center City Club

1010 Wilshire

LA Times

Union Bank

Angels Flight

The Piero

Wedbush

500 Days Park

BH Steps

Chase

Two Guns Espresso

Grand Performances Wilshire Grand Line

Central Library

Hilton Checkers

U.S. Bank Line Aon Center Line Two California Line Gas Company Line

Grand Central Market

Maguire Gardens

777 Line

Miro ARUP

Pegasus 7th Street Metro

FigAt7th Malaysia

The Bloc USPS

Wells Fargo Line

Metro 417

Millennium Biltmore

Pershing Square

Astro Seven Grand

Jewelry District

Fig at Wilshire Line

Perch

Buzz The Last Bookstore

Big Wangs

4th + Wall Street

The Regent

Whole Foods FIDM

Art Walk DTLA

4th + Broadway

Pershing Square Metro

Bottega Louie

8th + Grand

Grand Hope Park

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1st + Fig

BH Towers The Park

The King Eddy

LA Theatre

Golden Gopher

LA Athletic Club Coleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Globe Theatre

8th + Olive

San Julian Park Little Damage

9th + Hill

Art Walk Lounge

Mikkeler B+U

7th + Main

Flower District

7th + San Julian

Ace Hotel United Way

DTLA Ramen

Moskatels

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LEÓN FERRARI: THE ARCHITECTURE OF MADNESS

The following is a brief essay written by Maria Clara Bernal – a version of it was published in a catalogue entitled León Ferrari: the architecture of madness, and accompanied an exhibition at the University of Essex in 2002. In an interview published in 1984 León Ferrari described his series of heliographies as plans for what could be seen as the architecture of madness. In them, according to Ferrari, it was possible to see the absurd within contemporary society: ‘a sort of quotidian madness that is necessary for everything to appear normal.’ Ferrari is known worldwide for his polemic work; he achieved notoriety in 1965 when one of his pieces, La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana was banned from a show at the Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires. In this work the figure of Christ is crucified on a North American bomber. From this point Ferrari began to develop works that interrogated structures of power: as incarnated by political, religious, economic, and cultural institutions. As another example of this questioning, Ferrari’s ‘architectures of madness’ can be read in the light of two important and interconnected events in his life and that

of Argentina: opposition to the Argentine military government and, subsequently, exile in São Paulo. Between 1965 and 1975 Ferrari had been part of a group of artists devoted to campaigning against the imposition of successive dictatorships in Argentina. By 1976 these activities had made it impossible for Ferrari and his family to stay in the country: La Junta, the fiercest of military governments, forced him to leave and to take refuge in Brazil. It was there, at the end of the 1970s, that he created his first heliographs. Seen in the context of military repression the heliographs could be understood as a critique of order as imposed by force. For Ferrari, life under a system - religious or political - constitutes the absurd. But for this series, the impact of arriving within the São Paulo megapolis was also a very clear motivation. Rather than focussing on the dense architecture of the city, the artist’s fascination lies with its mass of people. In these plans, typically people invade every space; life at home spills out into the streets, the streets take over the home, everywhere unusual scenes are uncovered: a lecturer reading a paper to a group of toilets, hundreds of people struggling to get into the same bed,

Architecture of Madness #6, León Ferrari, 1976

inanimate objects become mobile and socialise with one another. The exhibition ‘Xerox’ that took place in Sao Paulo in 1979 encouraged experimentation with reproducible media, and it was there that Ferrari met a group of artists including Mira Schendel, Regina Silveira, Carmela Gross, Marcelo Nitsche, Nelson Leirner and Julio Plaza. The determination to remain open-minded, despite Brazil’s own military dictatorship, was a tendency shared by this group; this had an impact on Ferrari, who joined them in showing work in a series of ad hoc exhibitions. These exhibitions not only included techniques of reproduction but also those, such as postal art, which would make the work of art both low cost and widely spread. Ferrari’s series of plans was created using Letraset symbols designed for use in architectural design, and then reproduced using heliography, a technique employed in the reproduction of architectural blueprints. Ferrari was fascinated by the idea of reproducibility and what interested him about using Letraset and heliography was that he could use them to create works that would erase the distance between his

art and the public, works that were not only accessible in terms of materials, but also in meaning. Being overwhelmed by the city was something that artist and public shared. Ferrari’s creativity thus does not lie in the design of the original figures, but resides instead in subverting the order and function of the architectural symbol by turning the scene created into nonsense. He gives personality to these identikit symbols by elaborating contained visual narratives, and each plan is composed in such a way that its appearance will alter as the viewer takes a closer or more distant view upon it. From a distance the figures are identical and insect like (and when the artist was asked for an object to place in the gallery window for this exhibition his immediate reaction was to hand over a bag of plastic cockroaches to fill the space). Although, at one level, Ferrari’s heliographs are composed of modules and patterns, it seems impossible to predict the movement of these tiny readymade human figures. Looking closer, there are no patterns of behaviour, simply infinite possible variations; the Letraset becomes a gesture and the surface becomes texture, before turning into tale. Architecture of Madness #6, León Ferrari, 1976

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GOING MAT — A DISCUSSION

The following is a transcript from an interview I had with Avishay Artsy, journalist and producer of KCRW’s radio show DnA: Design and Architecture in July 2018.

AMH: OK. My name is Ashley Hastings and I’m a graduate student at SCI-Arc. AA: And your research for your thesis has involved your writing about density. Can you tell me about your project? AMH: Sure, I’ll try to eloquently put it. The initial research started with looking at Mat buildings which was kind of mid-20th century idea of creating communities and public spaces and housing or commercial buildings. And I wanted to take the sort of great characteristics of them and put them into an urban situation. And so I’m looking at downtown Los Angeles and I’m kind of taking—SCI-Arc is really known for its formal approach to

design. And so we take extreme measures in our design approach and I’m taking the eight tallest towers and slicing them kind of floor by floor which numbers out to about 412 pieces of these buildings and redistributing them horizontally through the city as a way to kind of infill sort of the spaces above the street for example and into the different plazas and with the hopes of still maintaining the sort of programmatic design of the original intent of the buildings and then reintegrating public spaces so they’d all be sort of connected. And as a sort of proliferation like an organism kind of thing and having more green space and yeah just a more walkable kind of place to be. AA: I love that but why? Why? Why are you taking apart these tall buildings and kind of redistributing the space?

Downtown Los Angeles

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AMH: Well it started as a sort of just a rhetorical tool to use but I think there’s something important to use a real tower and see what the alternative is so instead of going up you spread out and and look at what that looks like. So you know instead of it just being sort of a game we can look at how it could actually affect the city itself. So I think there’s there’s something to be said about density and and the sort of infill approach that could work actually and with high rises do feel like they don’t work. I feel like they there’s a there’s a hierarchy of values in towers I love towers. I think they’re really interesting they give us new perspectives on cities. I actually went to all eight of the towers and wanted to experience at least being in them and in the lobby as far as you can get past security. But at the U.S. Bank Tower for example I went up into the OUE Skyspace and that was fantastic. But at the same time, you’re sort

of disconnected a lot from the city itself, and I think you know L.A. is really known for its sprawl. We’re not a city with one center, we’re many neighborhoods that are all sort of networked together and having a vertical downtown sort of defeats the purpose of the city. And it kind of depletes the identity almost. So we do ourselves a disservice maybe. AA: So you’re pro-density but you’re maybe anti-verticality? AMH: Absolutely, yeah. So, I’m a part of these pro-development groups on Facebook, for example, and the conversations are always focused on ‘yay, building!’. Yes, and like NIMBYism is a big problem. So, density. Absolutely. But verticality is maybe not the only approach we can take. I think it’s sort of limiting, it’s kind of boring. It’s boring. I mean, like, visually, I think one of my favorite things about L.A. is is

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its varied architecture. There’s so much history, so much rich history, and sort of differences in aesthetics and formal identities between all the residential and commercial buildings throughout the city. And, you know, when we build a tower, it’s all curtain wall. It’s glass. It’s shiny. It’s, you know, kind of that bluish, silverish, metallic, reflective kind of sad, sad story for a building. And (laughs) they can be kind of dangerous actually, like when you’re driving up the 110, for example, and that Chase building that’s just to the... it’s actually my neighboring building. But the sun hits it at just the right way and it looks like the apocalypse is happening because there’s such a glare off of it. So, I think this shiny kind of ubercapitalist kind of skyline is maybe not what this city is all about. AA: But you live downtown, so you like the urban... kind of the denseness of urban life. It’s just

that the scale you think it’s out of scale... out of the human scale? AMH: Yes, and I think we don’t we don’t utilize the space properly. There’s so much empty space. And I know that it’s a much bigger task to structurally build above the street, for example. But I think it’s underutilized—our zoning code is ancient and it’s still a long way to go in the process of revising it. And so there is a lot of bureaucracy that has to be gone through first before that can ever change. But I think, idealistically, we can start thinking about how we build and develop cities much more differently to start integrating more... ‘sustainable’ is a sort of buzzword... but more sustainable cities, more resilient cities, and more pedestrian-friendly cities. AA: I’m going to an event that Metropolis is having at the end

of the month for prospective tenants, and I’m really curious to hear why people would want to live in a place like Metropolis. I’m not exactly sure why they would want to live in one of those high rises, but maybe it’s just that they want to live downtown and that’s what’s available. I don’t know. AMH: I think... I think that’s true. That’s really all that’s being built. You know, my building is only seven stories. And I think that’s enough. The sort of tall towers, there’s... you know what’s his name? H.G. Wells? AA: War of the Worlds? AMH: No, High-Rise. AA: J.G. Ballard. AMH: J.G. Ballard, yes, sorry. Similar, but yes, so High-Rise as

book-then-film really illustrates it best. I think it goes back to what I mentioned earlier about the hierarchy of values, and the sort of ‘luxury at the top’ and the ‘commoners at the bottom,’ that may or may not be true in all cases, but I think it’s something. It’s an analogy that holds true in a lot of ways. AA: I’m going to show you a picture taken from the thirtyninth floor of Metropolis. If you’re in the buying market, it’s a 6 million dollar penthouse suite. So, here’s let’s see. (looks up image on phone) So, here’s the view from up there and you can see the... AMH: Yeah, I mean the view is outstanding, of course. AA: But this is not the kind of place you’d want to live?

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AMH: I mean, I don’t... let’s see. I don’t want to get so political on it. I just don’t know that it’s... I think that’s a kind of view that everyone should get at some point. You know, I don’t think it should just be for the rich, or for those who can afford it, I should say. That’s the kind of place where, you know, you’re up on the mountain and you can look down, and realize ‘I’m a part of this. This is really awesome.’ Like in the original sense of the word. AA: So, you’re part of the city but you’re looking down on the city. You’re not engaging with the city? AMH: Yes, and it’s funny because I’m not typically like a ‘people person’ (laughs). I like my introverted, sort of personal time, but there’s something incredibly important about building communities and having people engage with their

environments, and not just being in their enclosed spaces. Talking about homelessness today*... we do some work with our student union and the Skid Row Housing Trust, and we’ve talked to people before about what it is about Skid Row that you enjoy. And they say it’s the community. It’s about the friends they’ve made, and family that they may have around Skid Row, and while they may not be in ideal circumstances, if they ever left that what they would miss: a community. The attachment to their neighborhood. So, I think that’s what’s lacking—when we look at the things that we could build or give more to people as architects and designers, it is about community, connecting people and connecting spaces better.

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Agadir Convention Center, OMA, 1992

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THE DREAM OF THE PUBLIC REALM

The following is a paper I wrote in Fall 2017 for a class called The Architecture of Politics, taught by Alejandro Hernandez Galvez.

There is a symbiotic relationship between humans and the environment in which we inhabit. While we may not always treat it with the dignity, equality, or respect it deserves, it is a product of our own design and by own hands, and we are therefore responsible for it, not entitled to it. In Hannah Arendt’s book The Human Condition, she describes the vita active, or ‘the active life’, in which the activities of Man are those that imagine and fabricate the world around him. Man is a creator – not to be confused with ‘the Creator’ – and therefore dictates the lives of those around him based upon the design of spaces in which he exists. Out of these designs, there is both a physical and psychical effect on the conditioning of others – it was through design, architecture, engineering, and an urbanistic (versus a ‘ruralistic’) drive toward control, both direct and subliminal in nature. The people, the polis, the public are forever at the mercy of the world existing around them, created by them, and looming over them; however, it is with the awareness of this control Plaza in Bratislava, Slovakia

Clockwise, from top left: Jane Jacobs; Robert Mosesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; highway proposal; poster advertizing for Death and Life

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that we are enabled as designers and creators, and given the ability to reimagine public space in ways that can be less political (‘by them’) and more powerful (‘for us’). In her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, journalist and neighborhood political activist Jane Jacobs writes the word ‘public’ three hundred and thirty-two times. During her life, and particularly in the 1950s and 60s in New York City, Jacobs took a stand with her community and fought against the billionaire developer, Robert Moses, in an effort to preserve the sanctity and sanctuary of her local community and those around her throughout the city. Public projects were at the forefront of city planning and urban design at the time and, while positively influencing the growth and development of some cities around the country, the projects proposed by Moses were designed to rip through the diverse, established neighborhoods built by immigrant populations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When Moses proposed his expressway project in 1955, it was with the intention of dividing the city, most notably Lower Manhattan. Ironically, Moses held multiple public offices, including that of Parks

Commissioner – and his project would have razed Washington Square Park and areas of the West Village. In a letter to the mayor in response to the proposal, Jacobs wrote, “It is very discouraging to do our best to make the city more habitable and then to learn that the city is thinking up schemes to make it uninhabitable.” Here, we may refer back to Arendt and her notion of homo faber, or ‘man the maker’ – it is by our hands alone that we construct our environments, and through these environments how we control our fate. In Death and Life, Jacobs details the urban elements typically overlooked or otherwise invisible to the layman, though it certainly does not require an expert’s eye to note the simple genius of the sidewalk, or the appropriate scale for maximum safety on a city block. These elements and others like it are still at the core of city planning, and unfortunately there is often an approach of ‘bigger is better’ for the creation of new infrastructure; but, unless it is by introducing ‘bigger parks’ or ‘bigger plazas’, the notion of ‘bigger’ most likely lends itself to ‘bigger headache’ or ‘bigger traffic problem’. Despite the creation of public space always being at the hands of humans, the regard for human scale

can be overlooked. Smaller moves can have larger impacts – the introduction of plazas or parks at urban intersections of cities is not an inconvenience, but instead of welcoming of human activity. During two different eras, the idea of ‘thresholds’ arises, most notably in a piece written by Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis, and then following in a book by Stavros Stavrides titled Towards the City of Thresholds. In his book, Reflections, Benjamin travels to Naples in 1925, accompanied by Lacis, and during their trip, they write incredibly colorful depictions of the people and their city, and about its ‘porosity’ – literally, the carving out of volcanic rock over time on which the city was developed, and figuratively through the transition of spaces throughout the city, where otherwise personal space becomes public (living rooms, dining rooms, etc.). The public realm is constantly engaged outside of the home – the streets are active, the piazze are alive, and the city is humming. There is a need for private space, obviously, but the development of the public space is just as, if not more important than the development of private residences. It is within public space that communities are

grown and neighborhoods thrive – our humanity is tested and we are encouraged to interact with the city on foot and through our eyes, instead of from within our cars and through windows. Stavrides postulates that, similar to how one crosses a threshold and immediately enters a new space, the need for transition spaces or a city devised of thresholds introduces a kind of freedom to the people. Parallel to Arendt’s view that we are what we create, Stavrides suggests that the creation of these types of spaces leads to the development of new types of social relationships, or the betterment of old ones. In addition to thresholds, we are also confronted with the concept of boundaries, or borders. Politically, the idea of ‘the border’ is often loaded with controversy, but it can also be used as a catalyst of positive change. When borders are defined, whether as a nation for geopolitical purposes, or within personal boundaries or ‘bubbles’, there is a discipline, a clearly defined parameter of comfort, security, and understanding for the people within it. Sadly, but importantly, it should be noted that a ‘clearly defined parameter’ of security does not necessarily indicate safety. Trafalgar Square, London:

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Superkilen, BIG, 2012

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Within the United States and the United Kingdom, there are currently vibrant and meaningful discussions occurring on the topic of borders, border security, immigration,

and the potential for terrorism. While these topics very quickly escalate toward inciting fear, the level-headed and rational discussion of boundaries is well-within the interest and continued potential prosperity of the people in which the border discussion arises. In these instances, the idea of nation building (or sustained nation growth) is decidedly similar to the necessities and requirements of city planning – only the scale is different, and thus the political charge associated with it. Referring back to Arendt and The Human Condition in the discussion of action and politics, she describes the etymological differences between the words ‘social’ and ‘political’. Whereas human activity and the notion of fabrication relates heavily to an idea of collectivism and the need to congregate, or act together, with and among others (‘socially’), the modern understanding of the word ‘political’ connotes something different than its original Latin definition. Here, Arendt links Aristotle’s zoon politikon (‘man as a political animal’) and Seneca’s homo socialis (‘man as a social animal’) that later led to Thomas Aquinas’ translation of homo ist naturaliter politicus, id est, socialis (‘man is by nature political, that is, social’), where we understand that being political means to be social, and to be social means to convene in public space. Why would we then

otherwise create uninhabitable or worse yet, inhibiting spaces within any scale of urban environment? It is again the responsibility for, not the entitlement to thoughtfully, sustainably, and efficiently design urban projects. Despite the overarching and unavoidable bent of control that accompanies architecture and urban design ad infinitum, there is still a strong sense of agency we can take within city projects and the proliferation of effective public space. Regardless of whether we are the designers or simply those who benefit from their creation, public projects inculcate those to which they affect – the people, the polis, the public – with an informal education in social behavior and psychology, and evolve within us a deeper sense of humanity, compassion, empathy, and appreciation for not only the cities in which we live, but also each other. Homo faber is responsible for the emancipation of or, alternatively, the conformity of him or herself and her environment; therefore, it should be remembered that the power of the people lies within and not without. Now is the time to interact, intersect, and interconnect with each other and build the reality of the public realm.

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NEW BABYLON: THE NETWORK

It is obvious that a person free to use his time for the whole of his life, free to go where he wants, when he wants, cannot make the greatest use of his freedom in a world ruled by the clock and the imperative of a fixed abode. As a way of life Homo Ludens will demand, firstly, that he responds to his need for playing, for adventure, for mobility, as well as all the conditions that facilitate the free creation of his own life. Until then, the principle activity of man had been the exploration of his natural surroundings. Homo Ludens himself will seek to transform, to recreate, those surroundings, that world, according to his new needs. The exploration and creation of the environment will them happen to coincide because, in creating his domain to explore, Homo Ludens will apply himself to exploring his own creation. Thus we will be present at an uninterrupted process of creation and re-creation, sustained by a generalized creativity that is manifested in all domains of activity. Starting from this freedom in time and space, we would arrive at a new kind of urbanization. Mobility, the incessant fluctuation of the population — a logical consequence of this new freedom — creates a different relation between town and settlement. With no timetable to respect, with no fixed abode, the human being will of necessity become acquainted with a nomadic way of life in an artificial, wholly ‘constructed’ environment. Let us call this environment New Babylon and add that it has nothing, or almost nothing, about it of a ‘town,’ in the traditional sense of the term. The town is a form of urbanization characteristic of utilitarian society: a fortified place for protection against a hostile external world, it becomes, as a mercantile center, an ‘open town,’; then, with the advent of mechanization, a center of production -- and at all these different stages it is the place where a stable population resides, rooted there by a particular way of life. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule: certain relations between towns enable a

Conceptual Drawing of New Babylon, Constant Niewenhuis, 1965

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small number of individuals to change their place of residence, and in so doing trigger a process of acculturation in which the town acquires, aside from its utilitarian function, the function of a cultural center. But this phenomenon is relatively infrequent and the number of individuals involved is not great. The culture of New Babylon does not result from isolated activities, from exceptional situations, but from the global activity of the whole world population, every human being being engaged in a dynamic relation with his surroundings. There are no a priori links between anyone. The frequency of each man’s movements and the distances he will cover depend on decisions he will make spontaneously, and which he will be able to renounce just as simultaneously. Under these conditions social mobility suggests the image of a kaleidoscopic whole, accentuating sudden unexpected changes — an image that no longer bears any similarity to the structures of a community life ruled by the principle of utility, whose models of behavior are always the same. In our case, the urban must respond to social mobility, which implies, in relation to the stable town, a more rigorous organization on the macro level, and at the same time a greater flexibility at the micro level, which is that of an infinite complexity. Freedom of creation demands in any case that we depend as little as possible on material contingency. It presupposes, then, a vast network of collective services, more necessary to the population in movement than to the stable population of functional towns. On the other hand, automation leads to a massive concentration of production in gigantic centers, situated outside the space of daily life. The centers of production outside this space and the collective facilities inside it determine the general lines of the macro-structure in which, under the influence of indeterminate movements, there will be defined a more differentiated and necessarily more flexible

micro-structure. From these two preconditions -the optimum organization of material conditions and the maximum development of each person’s sense of initiative -- we can deduce the essentials of a structure that is no longer composed of nuclei, as in the traditional settlement, but is organized according to the individual and collective covering of distance, of errancy: a network of units, linked one to the other, and so forming chains that can develop, be extended in every direction. Within these chains are found the services and everything pertaining to the organization of social life, in the “links” of the network, the entirely automated units of production, from which man is absent. The basic elements of the network, the SECTORS, are autonomous units of construction, which nevertheless intercommunicate. The sector network is perceived from within as a continuous space. New Babylon ends nowhere (since the earth is round); it knows no frontiers (since there are no more national economies) or collectivities (since humanity is fluctuating). Every place is accessible to one and all. The whole earth becomes home to its owners. Life is an endless journey across a world that is changing so rapidly that it seems forever other. This excerpt on The Network is taken from Constant Niewenhuis’ writing on New Babylon, an anti-capitalist city potentiality he conceived of and designed between 1959 and 1974.

Conceptual Drawing of New Babylon, Constant Niewenhuis, 1965

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MATNESS

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MAPS

Topography: Part of LAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s contours

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Maps are beautiful objects. Accurate depictions of land, streets, buildings, area, waterways, and infrastructure. They incite curiosity and want us to get lost, while helping us not to. Maps always operate, even if drawn incorrectly â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they can tell us where something is and where it is not, how big it is and what its neighbors are, and options of routes to get there. We find our way through getting lost in maps. The following pages depict simply how matness immediately interacts with the existing urban environment, as well as its relationship to parks, metro stations, surrounding neighborhoods, and key or historic buildings located within a five mile radius. These maps show how matness acts as a complement to existing infrastructure, as well as an innovative design for replacing dying roads and freeways over time.

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MAPS

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES

Current Status, 2018

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METRO

M M

Purple Line

Blue Line

Red Line

Expo Line

Matness in relation to existing Metro stops

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MAPS

GREENSPACE

Parks + Plazas

Matness in relation to spaces within the city classified as parks* (*Note: Not all areas are green or landscaped)

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NEIGHBORHOODS

The Historic Core Financial District Temple-Beaudry Westlake Civic Center Bunker Hill Gallery Row Theatre District Old Bank District Toy District South Park Fashion District Jewelry District Skid Row

Matness in relation to the neighborhoods it spans

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MAPS

KEY BUILDINGS

Key Buildings

Matness in relation to significant or landmarked buildings in the City

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DRAWINGS

URBAN GRIDS

Everything that we see and do can be connected to a point, a line, or even a thing. We are all connected in some way, and grids give us a way of understanding how these networks act and react together. Similarly, perspective drawings utilize grids in order to accurately depict a scene in a sketch or photograph. Composition serves as an organizational tool to understand what is happening and how it is acting through time. In creating my drawings, I looked immediately to the grid â&#x20AC;&#x201D; first as an architectural drawing technique, and second as a way to acknowledge and see the city in a new way. The perspective vignettes that I sketched digitally were borne out of flatness: two dimensional images taken from the three dimensional world, and meticulously replicated through digitized linework, using vanishing points and horizon lines that I experienced myself. Each drawing is an example of how matness intervenes with the existing urban grid of Downtown Los Angeles, simultaneously creating a new one on top. This new grid acts as a supplement to pedestrian transit, meant to create new methods of planning versus replacing. Perspective, Pershing Square

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DRAWINGS

Perspectives, preliminary sketches in Rhino of Matness based on images taken in the city while on walks

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Overpass, Matness crossing the Harbor Freeway

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SECTION TITLE DRAWINGS

Go Metro, Matness near the 7th Street Metro Station

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Looking Down, Matness from above

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DRAWINGS

Section 1:475

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DRAWINGS

Library, Matness as seen from the Westin Bonaventure

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SECTION TITLE DRAWINGS

Disney, Matness passing The Broad and Walt Disney Concert Hall

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DRAWINGS

Section 1:500

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DRAWINGS

Pershing Square, Matness moving through Pershing Square, as seen from Perch

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SHORT STORIES

WILSHIRE GRAND LINE

If you want to get anywhere in Los Angeles, you start at Wilshire Boulevard. East or West, the fastest way used to by car, driving lazily along Wilshire; however, car culture has led us to clogged urban arteries over time. As a response to broken infrastructure, matness complements public transit by offering connections through downtown that promote walking, interaction with greenspace, and no loss of commercial area. Coming from the City West neighborhood into DTLA, the Wilshire Grand Line connects the Financial District, South Park, and Westlake to the Fashion and Broadway Theatre Districts. Taking the Wilshire Grand, there is instant connectivity to hip, new restaurants, arts and culture, and the 7th Street Metro Station. Looming above 7th Street, the Wilshire Grand Line is accessible directly outside the station, with stairs leading up and over bridges, onto the buildings. Glass and steel, green and native â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Wilshire Grand creates balance, and connects each neighborhood with its long, slender forms. Slight curvatures in each piece encourage wandering and movement, both inside and out of the buildings.

Detail, Wilshire Grand

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U.S. BANK LINE

It was my first visit to downtown Los Angeles from London and for a town which was historically car centric, the level of foot traffic seemed to be exceeding it’s internal combustion engine counterpart. As I joined the masses headed to work in the various financial centers dotted along the route, there was a definite identity to this area of town. The restaurants and shops which lined the way provided welcome breaks from the corporate march. Having said that some of the apartments that were located within stumbling distance of the offices were pretty impressive together with their views of the historic financial district. Stepping back to the restaurants, you can’t really walk this line without a visit and maple bacon donut from Astro’s. A genius location for the ‘terminus’ and great before heading out onto the XXX line to grab the train to Santa Monica back to the hotel and a pint at Ye Olde Kings Head. (It’s just like home, but you’ve got the weather!) Speaking of weather, at 95 odd degrees (30 odd in real units) it was great to be encased in A/C and not sweating all the way. And before everyone jumps on me, the whole urban development is ‘mixed mode’ allowing for a ‘double skin facade’ to provide natural ventilation in the more temperate winters here. Glad to see things are getting more sustainable since both Trump and Pence got impeached! It’s not quite the tube, but it’s getting there, and it’s way easier to find things....

Detail, U.S. Bank

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AON CENTER LINE

I have lived carless since the matness arrived years ago after I moved to Los Angeles, after spending the better part of a decade in London. What I’ve discovered is that cities by car tend to be ugly, drab and devoid of wonder. By walking along the buildings, through them, and between them, I have been better able to understand the culture and people of the cities that I have lived in. Little details that you catch when you’re walking somewhat eyelevel with another person’s window, like when they chose or not to close their apartment curtains or wether they create small sacred religious spaces I have managed to create a deeper empathy and understanding of the way of life, not just ‘life’ in the city. Walking the Aon Line through the Historic Core always lands me in two places: The Ace Hotel and the Golden Gopher. Epic venue in restored historic theatre space paired with epic venue shrine to Old Los Angeles and the glory days before the car, when the Pacific Electric Railway was the only way to get around. The idea of mass transit in crowded, growing cities has only proliferated in the world’s big names, but for some reason it had gone backwards in Los Angeles for roughly half a century, with the admiration of the automobile kept people mobile... until they stopped. Because of traffic. Matness keeps me going and keeps me engaged with the city — whether it is going to local and historic bars and venues, or exploring new and previously undesirable neighborhoods. Matness makes me wonder... and that’s it.

Detail, Aon Center

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SHORT STORIES

TWO CALIFORNIA LINE

Seeing One, you remember Two. Two California extends out above the rest, from its raised bed along Grand Avenue, TwoCal sweeps down 4th Street, up along Hill to the Civic Center, and south through the theatre districts and into the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles. Parts even reach into Bunker Hill, and while residents there questioned the matness As I walk along, Line cafes jingle with drinking glasses. Traffic stops and starts below, hardly audible from up here, time hangs. Aimless walkers look around and absorb the scene, unlike typical urban destinations. Los Angeles is true to form, the smells, the sounds of outdoor concerts and occasional solo players grace the line, as the tall buildings watch. Los Angeles is beginning to feel like a city that combines the better qualities of urban space with an enduring love of life and community.

Detail, Two California Plaza

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THE GAS COMPANY LINE

Skid Row has its ups and downs. As long as I’ve lived in LA, it’s only been down -- run down, shot down, slowed down -but the people who live on its streets and in its alleys have managed to keep it lively. If you accidentally find yourself on San Pedro south of 6th Street, you’ve arrived. And maybe you’ve kept your head down and walked a little faster, and maybe people have made comments about your walking speed -- ‘damn, you need to go that fast…’ -- signaling that maybe your prejudice is showing. But since the neighborhood has filled in, it has a new lifeline to the rest of Downtown. The Gas Company Line hovers above the Flower District from 7th and San Julian, with Skid Row access starting from Wall Street, just south of Boyd. Leaving SCIArc one day, I decide to grab a green tea and experience life above the street, and mingle with those who have recently gotten off of it.

with ample greenspace in an area only known for its dirt. Hopping up the stairs, I appreciate the shade and sunshine that welcomes me above in equal parts. Walking towards the Flower District, I walk past wholesale toy stores and silk flower shops, but I don’t see their storefronts. I only hear the bustle of the street below as I continue past the glass curtain wall of Deloitte’s offices, now clad in brises-soleil to help shield the southern sun. Turning right at 6th Street, I pop down the stairs and cross Los Angeles Street for a stop at Cole’s. It’s October, and the feeling of summer is ever-present, but the idea of autumn is in the air and it’s time for lunch.

Matness in this part of the city takes everyone by surprise, as it truly blends in with the mid-rise warehouses and hipster mixed-uses. While the city was growing up, it was leaving behind those most vulnerable, but the line here offers a bit of sanctuary to the neighborhood Detail, Gas Company

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777 LINE

Musings on the future. There will come a day when someone will say, ‘I live in Los Angeles and not a single day goes by where I don’t walk.’ And what a day it will be — it could even happen here, along the 777, where the city has placed most of its parking lots. It’s great to see them empty these days. Walking to work or for appointments is for me a mental therapy, preparing what I need to do during the coming hours. When I feel down, I look for matness. Strolling through the different pathways above the streets, looking at the architecture always cheers me up. Especially when I feel lonely, the city reminds me that I am not alone. Matness reminds me that I will be alright. It is because of the combination of parks, architecture and influx of even more tourists that help me feel like I’m not that alone. Instead of staying inside, I always find a way to go out and run into friends and strangers alike, all along this new extended neighborhood.

Detail, 777

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SHORT STORIES

WELLS FARGO LINE

LA first thing in the morning is uncanny — for the briefest moment, the streets are empty, the lights change for no one, and the sun quietly rises. First light reaches the top of Grand Avenue, striking the sides of the swooping titanium of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Small rays of soft light drift into the nooks and crannies of The Broad’s cast façade. The square windows of the offices within the Wells Fargo Line are lightly illuminated, taking in the sunrise, and welcoming the first runners and yoga enthusiasts to its rooftops. It is possible to walk the elevated pathways at whatever pace desired without the impediment of other people, and without breathing in the choking pollution of what is otherwise considered rush hour traffic. Layers ofnewly built history are revealed in tiny details. Walking this line lends itself to seeing two sides of Downtown: the civic and cultural histories and influence blending together between Grand and Bunker Hill. It is possible to feel old and new at sunrise, and these early walks balance my psyche, connecting me with the city.

Detail, Wells Fargo North

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FIG AT WILSHIRE LINE

Mondays would be much less bearable without caffeine. Sleepily stumbling down Wilshire, slyly smirking as I crossed the 110 — who willingly sits in traffic these days? — I made my way into Downtown. First stop: Two Guns Espresso. Time for a jolt to start the day, and the walk will help with the wakeup. At the corner of Wilshire and Figueroa, matness meets two other lines at this intersection, but with access at all corners. Coffee in hand, I make my way up the stairs and above the newly silent streets and into the throng of commuters walking to work. Strolling above Figueroa, I continue towards Bunker Hill. Before the matness was finished, the sidewalks here were desolate, and if there were people, they scurried quickly into their destination buildings without so much as making eye contact with those around them. Presumably late to a meeting or stuck behind slow-movers in the parking garage — the added pressures of traffic weighing on the lives of Angelenos and subsequently took a toll on how we once interacted with each other. Now, with the increased freedom to roam through the city, people actually enjoy their morning commute.

Sunshine, fresh air, trees — it’s hard to imagine the city without these fundamental qualities these days. The Fig at Wilshire line offers a long swath of uninterrupted walking space between Wilshire and 4th Street, and it’s nice to see so many people out and about. There’s a connection at the Westin that’s one of my favorites — grassy areas along the cocrete deck are dotted with leafy young sycamores, providing shade and a new kind of habitat for all animals, humans and non-humans alike. There are breakout areas along the line also, so the ‘coffeshop workplace’ is now even more remote and disconnected — it’s encouraged to be outside. This line provides an efficient way in and out of the Financial District, and connects on the north end with the ‘culture line’ (Wells Fargo), so access to The Broad and Disney Concert Hall is easier than ever. Today’s destination: Bank of America Park. I had only ever seen it from the digital bird’s eye in Google Maps. Now it’s a greener part of my relationship with the city.

Detail, Figueroa at Wilshire

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New Babylon, Constant Niewenhuis, 1965

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END MATTER

‘In skyscraper type buildings, disciplines tend to be segregated. The relationship from one floor to another is tenuous, almost fortuitous, passing through the space-machine lift. In a groundscraper (i.e. mat building, matness) organisation greater possibilities of community and exchange are present without necessarily sacrificing any tranquility.’ Shadrach Woods, 1963 ‘Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.’ Jane Jacobs, 1961

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VISUAL REFERENCES INTRO Los Angeles: we’re all mat here

STATEMENTS 13 Banham’s four ecologies from Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies -Surfurbia, the Foothills, Autopia, and the Plains of Id 17 Los Angeles, Andreas Gursky, 1998 18-19 BACKGROUND 21 Centraal Beheer Floor Plan Diagram, Herman Hertzberger, 1969 22 Centraal Beheer Floor Plan Diagram, Herman Hertzberger, 1969 23 Venice Hospital, Le Corbusier, 1965 25 Toulouse Le Mirail, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1971 28 Freie Universität, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1962 28 Frankfurt Masterplan, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1963 29 Bilbao, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1961 29 Freie Universität, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1962 30 Toulouse Le Mirail (STEM), Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1973 30 Centraal Beheer, Herman Hertzberger, 1961 30 Burgerweeshuis, Aldo van Eyck, 1961 30 Burgerweeshuis, Aldo van Eyck, 1961 33 Noah’s Ark Diagram, Piet Blom, 1962 36-37 Toulouse Le Mirail, Candilis, Josic + Woods, 1973 41 Berlin Hauptstadt, Alison + Peter Smithson, 1957 41 Cluster City Diagram, Alison + Peter Smithson, 1952 41 Centraal Beheer, Herman Hertzberger, 1969 41

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BUILD-UP 43 Wells Fargo North and South, One and Two California Plaza 44 Wilshire Grand Center – 1,099’ 46 U.S. Bank Tower – 1,018’ 46 Aon Center – 858’ 47 Two California Plaza – 750’ 47 Gas Company Tower – 749’ 48 777 Tower – 725’ 48 Wells Fargo North – 723’ 49 Figueroa at Wilshire – 717’ 49 Wall art near the Gas Company Tower, Grand Avenue 51 Tower Landscape 52 BREAKDOWN 55 Floor plan: Wilshire Grand Center 58 Floor plan: U.S. Bank Tower 58 Floor plan: Aon Center 58 Floor plan: Two California Plaza 58 Floor plan: Gas Company Tower 59 Floor plan: Wells Fargo North 59 Floor plan: 777 Tower 59 Floor plan: Figueroa at Wilshire 59 Floor plates as pieces 60 Matness, Floor plates as reconstructed pieces 62 New York City,: roughness and shadow, texture and color 65 Houston 66 Guangzhou 66 Frankfurt 66 Los Angeles 66 Lever House, Skidmore, Owings + Merrill, 1952 68-69 Bosco Verticale, Studio Boeri, 2014 70

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MATNESS 73 Matness plan diagram, Pershing Square 80 Matness Map detailing all 86 destinations 83 Architecture of Madness #6, León Ferrari, 1976 84 Architecture of Madness #6, León Ferrari, 1976 87 Downtown Los Angeles 89 Agadir Convention Center, OMA, 1992 94-95 Plaza in Bratislava, Slovakia 97 Jane Jacobs 98 Robert Moses’ highway proposal 98 poster advertizing for Death and Life 98 Trafalgar Square, London: 101 Superkilen, BIG, 2012 102 MAPS 105 Conceptual Drawing of New Babylon, Constant Niewenhuis, 1965 105 Conceptual Drawing of New Babylon, Constant Niewenhuis, 1965 107 Topography: Part of LA’s contours 110-111 Current Status, 2018 113 Matness in relation to existing Metro stops 114

Looking Down, Matness from above Section 1:475 Library, Matness as seen from the Westin Bonaventure

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SHORT STORIES 133 Disney, Matness passing The Broad and WDCH 132-133 Section 1:475 134-135 Pershing Square, Matness through Pershing Square, Perch 136-137 Detail, Wilshire Grand 140 Detail, U.S. Bank 142-143 Detail, Aon Center 144-145 Detail, Two California Plaza 146 Detail, Gas Company 149 Detail, 777 151 Detail, Wells Fargo North 152 Detail, Figueroa at Wilshire 154 END MATTER 157 New Babylon, Constant Niewenhuis, 1965 158

DRAWINGS 115 zz in relation to spaces within the city classified as parks* (*Note: Not all areas are green or landscaped) 115 Matness in relation to the neighborhoods it spans 116 Matness in relation to significant buildings in the City 117 Site Plan Detail 120 Overpass, Matness crossing the Harbor Freeway 122-123 Go Metro, Matness near the 7th Street Metro Station 124-125

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