SUNSET 2050

The Sunset Strip – a mecca of iconic music venues and nightclubs characterized by its billboard culture—made the dreams of many an aspiring rock star. Its potent milieu of glamour, stardom, melody and mischief carry tales far beyond its two-mile run. In a world that is rapidly redefining the rules of access, the Strip is caught in limbo between its layered iconography and the congestion that has become a hallmark of everyday urban living. In a city that is coalescing into urban gridlock, how can we breathe life back into our streets?

Cut to 2050: the advent of autonomous vehicular technology has rendered a new landscape for the City of Los Angeles. What future can we envision for Rock and Roll's Crawl of Fame?

SUNSET 2050 was a year-long IDEAS Mobility Studio that envisioned a master plan for the Sunset Strip circa 2050. From tackling the nuances of autonomous technology in a ten-week collaboration with ArtCenter College of Design to spearheading a new wave of “visual billboarding," the studio imagined a future for the Strip that champions its innate charm while embracing an optimism promised by the technological advances of tomorrow.

Following the end-of-year exhibition at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, the SUNSET 2050 exhibition was featured at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles and at the Cooper Hewitt in New York.

Students: Abdullah Aiqabandi, Xinyi Cao, Jiahe Chen, Miao He, Sweta Joseph, Nikita Kumar, Hanzhi Liu, Yixue Liu, Yazhen Luo, Prajwal Prabhudeva, Maryam Toossi