Runner-Ups of the Los Angeles Cleantech Corridor and Green District Competition

In a previous post, we just published the First Place-winners in the Professional and Student category of the Los Angeles Cleantech Corridor and Green District Competition.

Now in this post, we also want to give the ideas and concepts from the runner-up entries some exposure.

Cleantech was an open ideas competition sponsored by SCI‐Arc and The Architect’s Newspaper that invited entrants to use the competition as a forum for provocative, even revolutionary, reconceptualizations of L.A.’s urban fabric.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says of the competition’s implications for the City’s future: “This competition showcases both the national and international draw of SCI‐Arc, and our combined efforts to make Los Angeles the creative and innovative capital of the world. With our world class universities along with our other unparalleled resources, Los Angeles offers the perfect competitive operating environment for the clean tech sector to thrive and grow.”

Here are the runner-ups in the Professional and Student category:

Professional Category Second Place:

GREENOPLASTY by LABTOP: Thomas Sériés (France), Vincent Saura (France), Vuki Backonja (USA), Amanda Li Chang (USA), Eduardo Manilla (Mexico)

 "We believe that the key to a successful green corridor lies in the ability of the built environment to inspire its residents to look beyond the common, the materialistic and the easily consumed in favor of the stimulating, the daring and the whimsical. Only with this premise may we start to break our old habits and consider radically new, more environmentally conscious ways of living. The urban approach we took in designing the Cleantech Corridor was to compress the nearly four mile site by implementing a local tram way, then rezoning specific areas in order to give space back to the pedestrian. At the local scale this translates into the opportunistic retrofitting of the existing environment along with the inclusion of highly visible urban markers. At the scale of the Cleantech facility we sought to embody our commitment to keeping as much of the existing context intact while also giving the residents of the corridor a monument to the seemingly impossible."

 

Professional Category Third Place:
Cleantech Competition Entry by Buro Happold / Mia Lehrer & Associates / Elizabeth Timme / Jim Suhr
Los Angeles, USA

"The urban character ot the Los Angeles industrial corridor is a paradoxical blend of functionality and disregard. Currently rnost of the cities distribution, shipping and freight storage occurs witnin this zone. However, there is no structural logic or organization to this corridor. Freight modal hubs are littered along Alameda and Olympic. Additionally, a huge residential population to the east is cut off from accessing the city by thls blanket ofabsolute, thoughtless lndustry. In part, because of the lack of organizational clarity to these transit systems, 20-30 percent of the 'industrial buildings that populate the site are outmoded buildings with no inherent flexibility or market value - currentiy shuttered, and derelict. Conversely, this is part of makes the corridor site so provocative - its raw space and potential for industry and innovation. But to function within a modern metropolis what the corridor needs is a systemic overhaul, a retrofitting to transition into an intermodal landscape."

 

In the Professional Category, also three Honorable Mentions were given to Escher GuneWardena Architecture, Los Angeles; Zoltan Neville, Los Angeles; and ZAGO Architecture, Los Angeles.

Student Category Second Place:

Integrated-Creative-Factory, Downtown LA by Ji Hoon Kim

Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London, UK

"Two key features of this area that easily lend themselves for the investigation of this new urban space are physical and network adjacency. Firstly, the site is physically adjacency to the Arts District, as well as a specialised education facility, called Sci-Arc which is dedicated to XYZ. Both are physically adjacency to the existing massive rail yard. In short, Sci-Arc and the Arts District are already engaged in a specialised urban interaction with each other and the rail yard by physical adjacency. It is the key point for the formation of a new physical adjacency between the new creative industry and the current specialised industrial area in downtown LA. Secondly, the site includes another urban feature, which is the huge rail infrastructure, and this railway system extends to the other industrial area. It can be started that the rail infrastructure is the key urban factor for creating a networked adjacency between the new site and other industrial area in downtown Los Angeles."

Student Category Third Place:
LocAvore Agritech by Ryan Lovett and Jesse Keenan
Columbia University, New York City, USA

"LocAvore Agritech (LAA) is a revolutionary plan for vertically integrating food production and distribution systems technology. These new systems of production will provide a platform for emerging for-profit businesses who seek to create additional value built upon Los Angeles's existing food infrastructure and human capital. There are over a 150 non-restaurant food businesses providing over 15,000 jobs in theClean Tech Corridor alone. LAA's value creation mechanism will not only provide additional jobs, but will work to meet head on Los Angeles's emerging public health crisis in accessing healthy food. LAA's foundation is based upon four pillars: (i) localized dense urban vegetable production; (ii) agritech education facilities; (iii) mobile food distribution network; and, (iv) kitchen incubators. Each one of these components will integrate technology, labor and space in order to create the synergy required to attract and create the capital necessary for sustainable economic development. There is nothing more sustainable than food."

In the Student Category, also one Honorable Mention was given to Lydia Lee Kemppainen, Interior Design Program, UCLA Extension.