L.A. Now
Thom Mayne
L.A. Now Volumes Three and Four: A Case for Downtown Living
As a frontier for urban experimentation and innovation, Los Angeles has become a paradigm for the twenty-first century global city. Given its influential position, it is essential that the city investigate solutions to large-scale urban issues beyond the current paradigms of planning and critically consider strategies for urban growth that take into account its immense complexity and constant flux. The ideas put forth in L.A. Now: Volumes Three and Four propose new directions and formulate desires for the future of Los Angeles. The methodology establishes a middle ground between the spatial, intuitive, and qualitative processes of architecture and the analytical, quantitative procedures of urban planning. The resulting solutions interrogate a broad range of socio-economic, political, cultural, demographic, and infrastructural issues in spatial and architectural terms.
This integrative investigation of alternate solutions responds to the myriad exigencies of the real world, yet remains unburdened by the political and administrative status quo. As a proposition of possibilities and desires, this work is intended to inform subsequent urban planning and development and to change the very nature of the conventional planning process.
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