Chris Reed
SMO PARK+ Climate Infrastructure Arid Landscape
Spring 2020
Studio Report
Chris Reed
SMO PARK+ Climate Infrastructure Arid Landscape
Foreword This interdisciplinary, advanced elective studio focused on the proposed conversion of Santa Monica’s 227-acre municipal airport into a public park. More pointedly, it asked students to conceive of the park as a new kind of climate infrastructure—an active, multifunctional landscape that could mitigate the causes of climate change, or provide new open space models that could help the city adapt to the climate emergency—and to do so especially tuned to the dynamics of the arid urban landscape of Metropolitan Los Angeles. Food, water, energy, ecology, biodiversity, and heat were all fecund starting points for both deep research and imaginative park proposals. Beyond the content and pedagogy of the studio, the COVID-19 pandemic required a quick transition from in-person to online learning—as well as inventive and productive methodologies for new forms of virtual collaboration and interaction.
Studio Instructor Chris Reed Teaching Assistant Koby Moreno Students Kofi Akakpo, Lamia Almuhanna, Karissa Campos, Hannah Chako, Lu Dai, Liza De Angelis, Dana Hills, Zoë Holland, William Ma, Gena Morgis, Mengying Ouyang, Shi Tang, Haoyu Zhao, Xiaoji Zhou Lecturers Shana Bonstin, Tom Campbell, Karen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Kay Miller, David Moreno Mateos, Deborah Helaine Morris, Eleni Myrivili, Pablo Perez Ramos Intermediate and Midreview Critics Danielle Choi, Jill Desimini, Craig Douglas, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Rosalea Monacella, David Moreno Mateos, Pablo Perez Ramos, Bry Sarte, Emily Wettstein Final Review Critics Bradley Cantrell, Julia Czerniak, Aroussiak Gabriellian, Nina-Marie Lister, Eleni Myrivili, Charles Waldheim, Mimi Zeiger, Anita Berrizbeitia, Sarah Whiting
Title
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Introduction
09 Context 11 Santa Monica Municipal Airport 15 Prompt Research
Projects
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Food Park Shi Tang, Ouyang Mengying
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Freakish Grounds Karissa Campos, Hannah Chako, Zoe Holland
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Generative Fluidities Lamia Almuhanna, Lu Dai, Haoyu Zhao
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Constructed Geologies William Ma, Gena Morgis
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Infrastructures of Urban Propogation Kofi Akakpo, Liza De Angelis, Dana Hills
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City of Angels HOT Kofi Akakpo, ZoĂŤ Holland
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Of Surplus and Squander Dana Hills, Gena Morgis
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Cosmopolitan Biogeography Karissa Campos, Hannah Chako
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Disastrous Dualities Haoyu Zhao, Xiaoji Zhou
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Food Displacement Shi Tang, Ouyang Mengying
Guest Lectures and Reviews
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Two-Faced Energies Lamia Almuhanna, William Ma
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Guest Lectures Reviews
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Quest to Sequest Lu Dai, Liza De Angelis
Context
Chris Reed
“Cobbled together out of swamp, floodplain, desert, and mountains, short of water and painfully dependent on far-away resources to survive, Los Angeles is sited on inhospitable terrain, located where the continent runs out of land. No city should be here.”
Southern California has long been known as a playground— surf, sand, and sun where the mountains crash into the ocean. Purportedly always 72 and sunny. This particular set of environmental circumstances has produced unique cultures, unique lifestyles—and distinct counter cultures that have appropriate the city’s back lots, backyards, and freeway underpasses as recreation space, as improvisational public realm. Yet the last decades have seen a maturation of Los Angeles as a city— open space re-appropriated from infrastructural spaces, like Silver Lake Reservoir, rediscovery of the value of remnant landscapes right within the city itself, creation of a new set of public spaces, a demand for a new public realm that is manifesting itself across the region, turning empty lot, underutilized properties, and the remnants of infrastructural projects into new parks. Also reflected in significant investments in and an outward expressions of culture and cultural institutions, densification of urban districts, the continued diversification of its people, significant investments in public transit, and discovery of the potentials for a truly vibrant public realm.
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Context
—Kazys Varnelis, The Infrastructural City
Chris Reed
Santa Monica Municipal Airport (FAA code SMO) is a 227-acre general aviation airport about 6 miles from the Pacific Ocean that largely handles private and corporate flights. It has been the subject of much controversy and many legal fights due to the noise, pollution, and potential safety threats it generates. 1
After many years of battles between the FAA and the city, the federal government agreed to close the airport in 2028 , and it was mandated that the city convert it to parkland.
It borders Santa Monica and City of LA residential neighborhoods on three sides, plus a suburban-style office park to the north. The site is, as you would expect, flat. But its steep topographical edges bely this manufactured flatness, and start to suggest some of the site’s challenges and opportunities. (For one, it creates its own torrential rivers—rare but impactful on nearby roads and in adjacent neighborhoods. And it seemingly sits in some well-to-do front and back yards.
Despite Santa Monica’s relative wealth and prosperity, though, the city is struggling to imagine how it will afford to build and operate a new, large public park. Adding to the complexity, small parts of the airport property are in the City of Los Angeles, and it borders LA residential neighborhoods as well—with residents who also want access and amenities. 1
Dan Weikel and Dakota Smith, “Santa Monica Airport Will Close in 2028 and be Replaced by a Park, Officials Say,” Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2017.
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Santa Monica Municiapl Airport
Santa Monica Municipal Airport
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Introduction
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“This is fire season in Los Angeles, and it has been a particularly early and bad one. Most years it is September or October before the Santa Ana winds start blowing down through the passes, and the relative humidity drops to figures like 7 or 6 or 3%, and the bougainvillea starts rattling in the driveway, and people start watching the horizon for smoke and tuning in to another of those extreme local possibilities -in this instance, that of imminent devastation…”
The studio will take on questions of the role of public space within an arid environment, and in an era of climate change. Students were asked to develop multi-functional park proposals for a large-scale urban site in Santa Monica that integrate climate mitigation and adaptation strategies associated with critical food and water supply; the effects of excessive heat; storm and drought / flood and wildfire cycles; biodiversity loss; and clean energy production and distribution—with potential secondary agendas for social housing and revenue generation. In this park-making project, we will fully and directly take on some of the dualities unique to Southen California—play and work; the extensive and far-reaching drain on natural resources like water; and the differences between the working and housed communities in a relatively prosperous Santa Monica and the proliferations of homeless and homelessness in a housing-challenged region. All of this begs the question of who are we designing for? And how can we recognize a plurality of populations, a diversity of publics—in framing in a park-programming and park-making initiative?
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Prompt
—Joan Didion, The New Yorker, 1989
Research Analysis: Climate Impacts/ Infrastructural Misalignments
“How can public and civic architecture go beyond engaging its users with amenities and instead fundamentally realign and reorient the devices of power toward users’ aspirations, toward creating community, framing the conditions of shared citizenship, of res publica-the commonwealth of diverse social and cultural experiences?”
The first part of the studio is devoted to open-ended research intended to uncover the current and recent effects of climate change in arid areas of the world like metropolitan Los Angeles, and to reveal the ways in which largely twentieth-century infrastructural, production, and supply systems are not tuned to climate change (at the very least) or are contributing to the causes of climate change around the world. Individual research topics uncover leading-edge technologies and programs for embedding these within projects and the public realm. This work begins at the larger district, regional, and territorial scales. Here we explore the altered hydrologies and ecologies, climates, infrastructures, production systems, supply systems, energy systems that characterize, support and feed Santa Monica and metropolitan Los Angeles—with an eye toward how those systems, processes, conditions might be co-opted, catalyzed, or re-thought as our work proceeds.
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Climate Impacts / Infrastructural Misalignments
—Okwui Enwezor, Gestures of Affiliation
Research
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Research Analysis
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Climate Impacts / Infrastructural Misalignments
Heat: City of Angels HOT
Kofi Akakpo ZoĂŤ Holland
Research
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Los Angeles is a city built on the promise of hotness; the weather, the people, the action. Postcards of sunny beaches and palm lined streets drew people from all over the country during the turn of the century. Today hotness is no longer a simple aspiration, rather an undesirable reality. Urbanization of this native chaparral arid landscape artificially warmed the climate in the city leaving shade as the only respite from the heat baked roads and parking lots. How can we reconcile with the ‘leisure lifestyle’ born upon this climatic manifest destiny with ever increasing extreme heat?
Research
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Heat
Research
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Dana Hills Gena Morgis
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Water
Water: Of Surplus and Squander
Water systems in the State of California rely heavily on snowfall and snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas. This frozen form of water creates an extensive water resource that is released over time within the warming months of spring and summer. Trends observed by the Department of Water Resources are showing that increased temperatures during the winter months are resulting in rainfall precipitation thus increasing runoff earlier then historically documented. While infrastructures are in place to transport a surplus of water from the mountains, local water resources in the city of Los Angeles are wasted. Channelized rivers and streams connect into local storm drain networks and capture urban runoff that is then directed into the ocean. With emerging uncertainty with climate, operations and management of this system need to be reevaluated.
Karissa Campos Hannah Chako
Given its unique physiological and cultural context, the Los Angeles basin has a global ecological reach. While urban expansion threatens native biodiversity, dozens of introduced species have established themselves as integral parts of the urban landscape. Naturalized species line the city streets. Imported ornamentals flourish in wealthy enclaves. Guest species introduced through global shipping take hold in places where other species could not survive. By some estimates, LA will transition from a Mediterranean climate to a Steppe climate within the century. This change demands a broader definition of what species are “valuable� in a city facing ever harsher climatic conditions.
Biodiversity
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Biodiversity: Cosmopolitan Biogeography
Flood and Wildfire: Disastrous Dualities
Haoyu Zhao Xiaoji Zhou
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Flood and Wildfire
The Los Angeles basin experiences “cyclic stress”: floods and mudslides during wet winters and wildfire during dry summers. More destructive and costly damage to outdated infrastructure is expected as rising temperatures increase wildfire risk. Diminishing water supplies underscore the need for better stormwater management practices. New infrastructural approaches demand a paradigm shift that recognizes the coupled nature of Los Angeles’s environmental challenges.
Shi Tang Ouyang Mengying
Research
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Food Supply: Displacement
Los Angeles was founded as a region economically fueled by agriculture because of its mild weather. Beginning in the 1920s, the government sponsored small home-based, family run farms on 3 acres of land or less. By the 1940s, nearly 50% of the LA food supply came from farms within 50 miles of the city. After World War II, heavy infrastructure and residential developmet began to take over, displacing the local food supply and shifting it northward. Today only !% of the food consumed in LA County comes from the region, and reduced access to healthy produce has contributed to obesity and diabetes among the urban population
Research
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Lamia Almuhanna William Ma
California has a long history of pushing for renewable energy. The state has committed to 100% renewable energy by 2045. However, oil and gas still currently make up the bulk of its energy consumption due to out of state energy imports. Nonrenewable energy sources are reliable when renewables can’t meet demand. Experimental energy sources provide alternatives to achieving the state’s energy goals while market limitations pose challenges. The airport property presents a rare opportunity to implement large scale energy structures in an urban context.
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Energy
Energy: Two-Faced Energies
Lu Dai Liza De Angelis
Accelerated urban growth in Los Angeles has contributed to atmospheric carbon concentrations while also destroying sites of natural carbon sequestration. Wildfires, global commerce, transit, construction, and other emmison factors add carbon to the atmosphere. In considering the future of SMO airport, natural and artificial carbon sequestration strategies should be employed alongside construction materials and techniques that limit carbon emissions and demonstrate a more responsible approach to park making.
Research
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Carbon: Quest to Sequest
Projects
Shi Tang Ouyang Mengying
Los Angeles County and Santa Monica have a long history of agriculture, but food cultivation has been displaced largely to the Central Valley; the consequent trucking of food from the Valley and other places contributes to regional pollution and carbon imbalances, and creates food insecurity issues locally. We propose a FOOD PARK that includes the whole system of food cultivation and distribution (food production, food processing, food retail, food education), that negotiates and revives the city’s historical agricultural identity, and that creates a place where agriculture and social uses intersect. It is a speculation on how to experiment with food production, food processing, and food landscapes in an era of climate change. Gradually the FOOD PARK takes over more and more of the site, allowing local suppliers to meet growing demands—and remaking a consumptive infrastructure into a productive, multifunctional hybrid that extends Santa Monica’s reputation as a foodie haven.
FOOD PARK
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FOOD PARK
FOOD PARK
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Shi Tang, Ouyang Mengying
FOOD PARK
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Shi Tang, Ouyang Mengying
FOOD PARK
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Shi Tang, Ouyang Mengying
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FOOD PARK
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Shi Tang, Ouyang Mengying
FOOD PARK
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Shi Tang, Ouyang Mengying
Karissa Campos Hannah Chako ZoĂŤ Holland
Freakish grounds is a botanical collection for a hotter LA. Its unity is not derived from a master plan, but from a method of preparing the ground. The new SMO park does not adhere to the formulas and funding structures that have dotted Los Angeles’s urban fabric with patches of delusive green. Aridity and urban heat demand a landscape that is as tactical and savvy as the desert ecosystem. The cosmopolitan urban landscape is presented as an outcome of technological advancement in dialogue with natural process. Here, Angelinos encounter the hyper-artificial environment stripped bare. In this park, contradictions are not resolved, but emphasized. Cloistered native remnants are invaded. Here, ornamental species facilitate ecological process, native species are displayed as botanical specimens, and volunteer plants of many origins are welcomed as guests. The urban park of the future must offer an alternative to the narrative of loss. It cannot placate the public with a stage set of a lost landscape, or one that never existed. It must embrace the identity of the urban desert, assembled ad hoc.
Freakish Grounds
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Freakish Grounds
Freakish Grounds
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Karissa Campos, Hannah Chako, ZoĂŤ Holland
Freakish Grounds
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Karissa Campos, Hannah Chako, ZoĂŤ Holland
Freakish Grounds
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Lamia Almuhanna Lu Dai Haoyu Zhao
Santa Monica is facing the challenge of extreme drought; the current water infrastructure is not only a wasted resource, but also a producer of high levels of carbon. SMO park aspires to create self-sufficient green infrastructure to recycle the city’s wastewater through a series of water treatment processes. Algae cultivation is also utilized for energy generation, farming operations and innovative design practices. Both systems contribute to distinct ecological, spatial, and social dynamics that are experienced through a series of gardens and recreational programs on the site. They also play a part in the health and well-being of the larger urban environment.
Generative Fluidities
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Generative Fluidities
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Lamia Almuhanna, Lu Dai, Haoyu Zhao
Generative Fluidities
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Lamia Almuhanna, Lu Dai, Haoyu Zhao
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William Ma Gena Morgis
The project taps into rich native geological material currently wasting away in Los Angeles’s Sediment Placement sites. Through a process of human transportation, deposition, and design new constructed geologies are created within the landscape and facilitate opportunities to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Sediment profiles will support the recharge of precious water resources to underground aquifers and establish new cultures that focus on reconnecting people to the foundational ecologies embedded within processes of the past. Designed pile landforms are constructed with a diverse set of geologic materials ranging from fine clays to large boulders. With these sediment characteristics, new forms of social program emerge and generate expansive landscapes to be occupied by human and non human actors. Overall, the site looks at establishing stronger connectivity to foundational soils and set new permeable precedents in the Los Angeles urban fabric
Constructed Geologies
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Constructed Geologies
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Constructed Geologies
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William Ma, Gena Morgis
Constructed Geologies
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William Ma, Gena Morgis
Constructed Geologies
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William Ma, Gena Morgis
Kofi Akakpo Liza De Angelis Dana Hills
In a city dominated by concrete, heat, and consumptive urban sprawl, we aim to cultivate an oasis of entropic verdant proliferation. Sewing the seeds for a new-native Santa Monica landscape, SMO Park+ propagates new forms of social, ecological and urban life through cultivation and naturalization techniques for arid-adapted plants throughout Santa Monica and Los Angeles. We strategically deconstruct the airport tarmac to reuse those materials on site, to reduce carbon emissions associated with land use change and to re-frame urban possibilities.
Infrastructures of Urban Propagation
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Infrastructures of Urban Propagation
Infrastructures of Urban Propagation
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Kofi Akakpo, Liza De Angelis, Dana Hills
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Infrastructures of Urban Propagation
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Kofi Akakpo, Liza De Angelis, Dana Hills
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Infrastructures of Urban Propagation
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Kofi Akakpo, Liza De Angelis, Dana Hills
Guest Lectures and Reviews
Arid Ecologies
Guest Lectures + Reviews
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David Moreno Mateos Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture Restoration Ecologist
The Oasis Effect
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Guest Lectures
rere Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture
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Research Review
Research Review
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Guest Lectures + Reviews
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Midreview
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Midreview
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Guest Lectures + Reviews
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Midreview
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Guest Lectures + Reviews
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Midreview
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Guest Lectures + Reviews
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Midreview
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Guest Lectures + Reviews
Final Review
Aroussiak Gabriellian Eleni Myrivili Anita Berrizbeitia ZoĂŤ Holland
Bradley Cantrell Julia Czerniak Gena Morgis Kofi Akakpo
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Final Review Nina-Marie Lister Mimi Zeiger Shi Tang Dana Hills
Charles Waldheim Chris Reed Karissa Campos William Ma
147 Constructed Geologies William Ma Gena Morgis
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Colophon
SMO PARK + Instructor Chris Reed Report Editors Chris Reed, Hannah Chako Report Design Hannah Chako A Harvard University Graduate School of Design Publication Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture Sarah Whiting Assistant Dean and Director of Communications and Public Programs Ken Stewart Publications Manager Meghan Sandberg Series design by Laura Grey and Zak Jensen ISBN TK Copyright © 2020, President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Harvard University Graduate School of Design 48 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 publications@gsd.harvard.edu gsd.harvard.edu
Acknowledgments Thanks to Karen Ginsberg, Director, and Tom Campbell, Senior Park Planner, of Santa Monica’s Community and Cultural Services Department, and to Shana Bonstin, Deputy of the City of Los Angeles for their time and insights on the airport and related issues relative to its proposed closure and conversion. Thanks also to the amazing array of lecturers and critics who informed great conversations and the trajectory of the studio work, and to a staff and administration at the GSD who are always diligent and supportive. Koby Moreno was an especially helpful teaching assistant who assisted with researching the project and organizing base materials, essential tasks for the work. And biggest thanks to 14 amazing students (13 after Xiaoji wasn’t able to leave Wuhan!) for their thoughtfulness, their enduring efforts, and their incredible grace in handling an unexpected transition to virtual learning: you have my enduring respect and gratitude. Image Credits Lane Barden, Mike Belleme, David Fletcher, Bethany Mollenkof, Chris Reed, Google Earth, NASA Earth Observatory The editors have attempted to acknowledge all sources of images used and apologize for any errors or omissions.
Studio Report Spring 2020
Harvard GSD Department of Landscape Architecture
Students Kofi Akakpo, Lamia Almuhanna, Karissa Campos, Hannah Chako, Lu Dai, Liza De Angelis, Dana Hills, Zoe Holland, William Ma, Gena Morgis, Mengying Ouyang, Shi Tang, Haoyu Zhao, Xiaoji Zhou