Liquid State Society

LIQUID STATE SOCIETY

Work by Junzhe (John) Wang (MArch '24) for "Everything to Do with Architecture", a Research Studio taught by Neil Denari. This studio explores a revised history and projected future critical report on Los Angeles County for the year 2033, using photojournalism, documentary techniques, field research, archive searches, categorized image reference searches, data mining, and the tools of LLM Gen AI text and image generators.

Project Statement:

In the 1989 seminal work of Masamune Shirow’s manga series "Ghost In The Shell", he proposed the concept of “Solid State Society”, poetically assuming the world of 2034, where social hierarchy has become near impenetrable due to mass immigration and displacement of wealth, housing, and culture, where the human mind has become ultra-obsessed with mass-produced technologies, as people upload their consciousness onto the cloud, seeking individuality in the ether, away from the city where they no longer belong. As radical as Shirow’s many visions, a considerable amount of his predictions are becoming reality: as Los Angeles evolves with its constant influx of migrants and different cultures, the income disparity grows ever larger, as the average working class find it more difficult to house themselves as mass homelessness becomes a national issue: people are now locked out of their American dream as they are stuck where they were born, trapped by the ever-growing monopolies offering dwindling choices of freedom, gradually eradicating the individual from the city. In wake of this trend, the concept of Liquid State Society, the counter of vanishing of selves in the metropolitan, seeks to preserve the individual mind and the city. In LA where the walls lock out the mind, Liquid State Society offers an alternative speculation into the next half of the century of living in LA.

By 2033, despite signs of slowed population increase, LA has reached the inflection point at which the suburban sprawl could no longer sustain the growing population as the housing prices continue to escalate, up 64% from 2013 to 2023 and another 81% to 2033. The expected ADU and upzoning regulations did not meet close to expectations while West LA reaches recorded high housing deficit as cost of housing continue to rise.
After the successful re-election campaign, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed new addendums to SB9 to reclaim selected city-owned land to be rezoned as residential areas. The section of Ballona Creek which runs through Jefferson Boulevard has been chosen among the first groups to be rezoned. To reduce construction cost and as a form of compromise between single-family homes and housing complexes, the 1200’ long project would span across the Metro E-line and the Ballona Creek to provide 1500 to 2000 purchasable housing lots where owners could build their homes albeit with a tighter footprint and more height restrictions to offer a much more affordable alternative to traditional single-family homes built on private-owned land. To be constructed in phases and expected to reach 50% capacity by 2040, the project, Liquid State Society is projected to finish its final phase of construction and reach 90% capacity in the next 10 years would aim to reduce housing burden for the upcoming Angelenos as it flows and ebbs, adapting to the city’s need for homes.

Everything to Do with Architecture

Instructed by Neil Denari

This studio challenges students to research, design, and develop content for a speculative "Standard Reference Encyclopedia Yearbook: Los Angeles County 2033." Working in pairs, students will document, analyze, and envision the near future of LA across a wide range of social, cultural, political, and architectural topics—organized from A to Z. The project is not sci-fi but a serious exploration of possible futures, using photorealistic AI-generated images and photography to convey ideas.

Through deep engagement with LA’s past, present, and speculative future, students will sharpen their ability to see, document, and design at a broad scope. The studio emphasizes critical observation, technical precision, and the ability to connect disparate elements into a cohesive design position. While individual design projects will emerge from the research, the focus remains on producing work that is rigorous, provocative, and deeply informed.

This studio balances creative freedom with structured constraints, ensuring that the work remains connected to a broader discourse rather than existing as purely personal or isolated explorations. While students have the freedom to shape their research and design direction, the studio provides a framework that challenges them to engage critically, refine their ideas, and produce work that is rigorous, relevant, and thought-provoking. The role of instruction is both to set agendas and to respond to student work, guiding the development of projects that are deeply informed and conceptually strong.