WA/SA [waldrip architects/ s.a.] [architecture- los angeles]
Alberti, Sandro 3 Reviews; 1 December, 2001 [text2]
Stan Allen; landscape swatches.
Working 9-5, at...
‘WA/SA’, ‘Aloha8’, and ‘Working 9 to 5, at...’
are fictions of fen-om: [www.fen-om.com]
These past few months I have managed to ‘re-situate’ myself in the city of Los Angeles. There, I have attended various lectures, as usual. Those organized by local universities are always particularly interesting. And, amongst those, the work of 3 architects ‘pops out’. here is some of what we saw in LA over the past few months:
1. Stan Allen, Field Operations: Some of his most recent projects include the New York City landfill competition (www.ci.ny.us/html/dcp/html/fkl/ada/competition/2_4.html) and a house that forms part of Long Island Moderate Housing. In the first, one can most clearly see Allen’s contribution to the ‘field’ of architecture: the consideration of fields as thicknesses that have the capacity of gradual aggregate growth. In his work, we are forced to consider the relationship between landscape and architectural form. A related project is that of the Canal Basin Charette, developed for the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio (it looks at the possibilities for developing an innovative urban park in Cleveland’s river valley). Here, Stan Allen phases the project in over 5 temporal periods (0-5 years: establishment of infrastructural pathways; 5-15 years: development; 15-30 years: evaluations and changes). What I ‘learned’: a. Fields can be considered from multiple definition-perspectives: military, spatial, mathematical. b. Horizontal surfaces are related to performative conditions. Fields inspire activities, and vice versa. c. We should not forget that surfaces are not simply 2d. They have depth. Surfaces depend on thickness, on mat-like conditions. As an example, sports fields depend on soil depth for the allocation of grass. Another example, the infrastructure underneath the horizontal layer of freeways in our cities. In both cases, the supporting structure is NOT a ‘stack’. Rather, it is a ‘weaving’. d. Architecture firms can deal directly with the design, not only of architecture, but also of urban design and landscape. e. Landscapes can be used to inform, improve, and generate architecture (and not the other, typical, way around). Improved landscapes becon architecture. f. Urbanism has the potential to be porous to landscape. g. Whereas a city like NY lacks differentiation over most of its vertical levels (an example of ‘stacking’), a city like Tokyo is woven through into the underground.
Stan Allen; project site.
Stan Allen; superimpositions.
Stan Allen; flows.
