ReForm: A New Civics Institute
︎
Grad Studio Three
ARCH 587
Fall 2020 ︎
Los Angeles
Fall 2020 ︎
Los Angeles
Instructor
Cody Miner
Cody Miner




Work by M.Arch student Bailey Bestul
Architecture in its disciplinary form has expressed a desire to continue the project of autonomy, that being a project unencumbered by circumstance. But architecture never operates purely in a vacuum, forces cultural and political, influence the world in which it operates and amends its ontological shape and sensibilities. This allows for the architectural project to maintain its relevance while exploring new territories in values, all of which should be enticing to the architect.
The semester focused on a historically loaded site in
Downtown Los Angeles, formally known as the Parker Center, home to the LAPD
from 1950-2009 and also used as a symbolic prop for the police in its Hollywood
representation. With the recent demolition of the building, the site had a
vision within a larger master plan of a civic center office tower housing
government workers. This concept met its demise as it was plagued with internal
corruption with city council, a sketchy financial backing, and a climate
fraught for change. The students aimed to rescue the site from its toxic
history new and old and return it back to the people in way of a Cultural
Development Center & Civics Academy. A new utopian style typology, the
Civics Academy acts as an institutional campus style program, built to enhance
its citizens with knowledge of their rights and the functions of government.
Work by M.Arch student Clayton England



Work by M.Arch student Meruzhan Kartapetyan
Work by M.Arch student Emily Vanags
Within our exploration of the new Civics Academy the students pursued several factors engaged within a comprehensive project including ground, mass, tectonics, façade articulation, interiority, and infrastructure, all while negotiating issues of context, or what does it mean for the project to be contextual. Ideas and the default form of contextualism rely heavily on the replications and reproduction of its preconceived urban existence. Should this culminate in what already exists? This element of developer friendly notion to contextualism ignores the process of reformation. Investigations in existing facades and form while be our drivers in expressing novelty and interaction with the city. Our new proposals jostle, lift and reposition in order to allow itself situated amongst its predisposed ground and proximities.
Lastly the studio focused on the types of people or personalities that inhabit the projects. Usually architectural renderings are filled with generic silhouettes with grey fill, expressing no personality. Each student explored the making of their own entourage and individual personalities in order to answer the question: Who will inhabit this project?
Work by M.Arch student Pan Ying
Catalog Description
The systemic understanding of architecture is broadened through examination of the architectural object as a microcosm of an ever-expanding context, of a community or city as re-cycled. Building is introduced as infrastructure and infrastructure as intervention within ecology, land- and urban-scape, site, and territory.
The systemic understanding of architecture is broadened through examination of the architectural object as a microcosm of an ever-expanding context, of a community or city as re-cycled. Building is introduced as infrastructure and infrastructure as intervention within ecology, land- and urban-scape, site, and territory.