Olympic West


The overall urban development for the Olympic West District establishes a dialogue between two forces inherent in the American Dream: the pastoral ideal, represented by the landscape garden, and technological reality, exemplified by the automobile, steel and glass buildings, and the lights of the city. The use of the machine of the computer and the repetition and permutation of forms that it encourages, both parallels and contrasts the metaphor of the garden.

Speculative office building projects are driven by economic and market forces that favor undifferentiated, non-hierarchical spaces, but the implied structure of the existing city is the reference for the design of a single block at the northwest corner of Olympic Boulevard and Barrington Avenue. The proposal posits a prototypical methodology for development that resurrects layers of history that are typically obliterated in Los Angeles in the name of progress. The proposal asserts and makes more legible the critical underlying syntax of the existing context in a reconstructive process, which builds on traces of former texts.


Award:
First Stage Competition Finalist