Flower Street Bioreactor Our point of departure for this project was to engage the nascent cultural paradigm shift from thinking about energy as something which comes magically from distant sources to something which can be generated locally in a variety of ways. Our goal was not, however, to undertake an engineering experiment, or to simply express material processes, although this is certainly one dimension of the project. Our primary goal was to create a sense of delight and exotic beauty around new technologies by decontextualizing them and amplifying their potential atmospheric and spatial effects. The project is an aquarium-like bioreactor inserted into the facade of the building (our given site), which contains green algae colonies that produce oil through photosynthesis. The aquarium is made of thick transparent acrylic, molded to create the intricate relief on the front. This relief tracks along with and supports an internal lighting armature which is based on the Bio-feedback Algae Controller, invented by OriginOil in Los Angeles in July of 2009. This new type of bioreactor uses tuned LED lights which vary in color and intensity to support algae growth at different stages of development, maximizing output. According to OriginOil, "this is a true bio-feedback system... the algae lets the LED controller know what it needs as it needs it, creating a self-adjusting growth system." At night, when this system intensifies, it generates a simultaneously urban and jungle affect: glittery reflections on acrylic combine with an eerie élan vital of glowing algae. A solar array, used to collect energy during the day, spirals and winds up into the branches of an adjacent tree jungle-style. This energy will be stored in a battery and used during the night to run the various systems.

Hollywood's hidden treasure of public and private alleyways has the potential to create an interstitial network that will move people off busy boulevards into byways that create places to congregate, shop and seek respite. A consortium of public, private and nonprofit players have succeeded in bringing this vision to reality with the city council's adoption in July 2009 of the first pedestrian mall in a public alley. The East Cahuenga Corridor Alley (ECCA) vision, inspired by Old Pasadena's alley transformation and spearheaded by a BID staffer's masters thesis, is heading into the implementation stage after nearly two years of community organizing and design. A team consisting representatives from Council District 13, the city's Bureau of Engineering, the Community Redevelopment Agency, and an ad-hoc committee representing Hollywood Entertainment District adjacent property owners shepherded this project through the adoption of the ordinance. The ECCA alley is envisioned to link Selma Avenue to Hollywood Boulevard buildings with a pedestrian mall spanning 15 feet across. A state of the art drainage system incorporates permeable pavers and will create a clean passageway, replacing the current conditions which are characterized by cracked pavement, unpermitted gating, pooled water, trash and vermin. Business owners will have the ability to seek revocable permits to install tables and chairs, thus creating a European ambience and a location for community celebrations and markets. It is hoped that this demonstration project will inspire other alley-adjacent owners to commit to similar cooperative efforts in an effort to optimize Hollywood's unique alley network.

One of the recent big ideas in Los Angeles is to create the 44-acre Hollywood Freeway Cap Park over the 101 Freeway spanning from Bronson Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard. Hollywood resident and engineer Ed Hunt came up with this idea some 25 years ago and it was recently revived by ULI member and banker Don Scott. Local politicians, neighborhood councils, local and state agencies have all coalesced aroung this idea to create a needed urban park in an area of the city which is in serious need of green park space. This Hollywood neighborhood is also one of the most dense and diverse in the city and is a working class area. EDAW AECOM was commissioned to conduct a feasibility study for the Hollywood Cap Park after an intense public bidding process. EDAW AECOM's feasibility study was completed in October 2008 and in general deemed the cap park a feasible idea. The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) completed a planning study for the cap park in November 2008. CalTrans has fully committed to this big idea as has the City of Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). The cap park idea was incubated in the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Once the feasibility study was completed a new 501c3 organization, The Friends of the Hollywood Cap Park, Inc., was founded to lead the efforts to create the Hollywood Freeway Cap Park. Made up of local business and civic leaders, the Friends of the Hollywood Cap Park, Inc., has begun organizing itself among committees of volunteers to move forward with this innovative 44-acre cap park.

Building on their existing Academy of Entertainment Technology institution, the Media Technology Campus of Santa Monica College was conceived as a bringing together of synergistic media programs to form a creative community. Digital animation, journalism, graphic and interior design, communications, radio and film would be gathered together to form a rich cluster of convergent specialties that would feed off each other's creativity, and provoke new directions in future media development. In addition, the inclusion of the immensely successful radio station of KCRW meant that education programs could learn from an established and diverse media enterprise functioning on site. Three main concepts underpin the planning of the campus. The first appropriates and extends the language of the existing building to form the architectural composition. The second appropriates urban planning and ancient university clustering forms to make an inward focused, courtyard campus arrangement. The third addresses sustainability needs by re-using existing fabric, clearing the site of asphalt surface parking by compacting cars into a vertical structure, and creating loose- limbed, flexible and extendable new structures which should endure through changing educational developments over time. The SMC buildings, in addition to providing updated classrooms and student workspaces, will maximize reciprocal collaboration with KCRW via jointly-used production studios, a communal café and courtyard, and a shared auditorium. Students will thus earn a real-world media education; KCRW will acquire a diverse community of student volunteers; and millions of listeners, in Los Angeles and worldwide, will enjoy the creative efforts of both.

Bert Green Fine Art Gallery has revitalized Downtown Los Angeles through the introduction of arts enterprises, arts events (most notably the Downtown Art Walk) and the broad and vigorous participation in organizations and initiatives to advance the vitality of Downtown and its place in the urban consciousness of Los Angeles has been transformative - contributing to the evolution of Downtown as a cultural focus for the LA region. The Gallery has allowed for the interaction of residents, property and business owners and local government to promote downtown as an intact, inclusive and diverse urban enclave and has extended the relevance of the central city in a region that has historically been identified with sprawl and diffusion. This notion of downtown's role promises to focus more attention on the qualitative enhancement of the city, preservation of its institutions, its specific character, its architecture and its remarkable human geography. The Art Walk draws ever increasing crowds (10,000+) to participate in the free exchange of ideas and the enjoyment of the urban core. Attendees are of all ages, all backgrounds, and come from all over Los Angeles. With no advertising beyond word of mouth, people are discovering the Art Walk and by participating - as musicians, craftspeople, fashionplates, observers-- becoming a part of the living museum that feeds energy of this extraordinary event. Launched five years ago this month by Bert Green Fine Art Gallery which made a stand for art and culture on Skid Row, this grassroots public event has fed the astonishing transformation of L.A.'s Historic Core, and created a zone of positive, non-corporate public space seen nowhere else in Southern California.

Mott Smith's Civic Enterprise Associates complete the Maltman Bungalows using the City's Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance. At a time when the administrative and bureaucratic approval process of Small Lot projects was still very vague, Mott's company dove into this project head first. While most would just throw their hands up in frustration, Mott's team worked hand-in-hand with the City's staff to solve the problems with the ordinance, streamline administrative process, and put into motion legislation that would prevent the same thing from happening to another project. The result: CEA's Maltman Bungalow's is widely recognized as being the project that changed it all. It saved an older property that otherwise would have been bulldozed to make way for a project that would have changed the neighborhood fabric.

The recently completed New Carver Apartments provides 95 efficiency units of affordable, supportive housing for homeless and medically fragile individuals in a dazzling and innovatively designed structure located in the South Park neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. This project has succeeded in its mission to create satisfying living accommodations for people who are often shunted into anonymous, leftover spaces in the City. The New Carver reinforces Skid Row Housing Trust's ambitious vision that combines the social imperative to offer permanent housing with support services to the City's most vulnerable population while creating unique building designs that enhance the communities in which they are built. Designed by the renowned local architect Michael Maltzan, the building gained national notoriety in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal while still on the drawing board. Located on a corner site at 17th and Hope streets in downtown Los Angeles the New Carver is composed of 5 stories of residential housing and public spaces above a ground floor podium containing the main lobby and supportive services spaces. Above the ground floor, the residential units radiate outward from a centralized circular courtyard open to the sky; the courtyard is enhanced by reflective metal vertical elements that contain structural and mechanical system that energize the four-story courtyard . The building offers numerous spaces for residents to interact, including a 6th floor view porch with magnificent views of the downtown skyline, a community room that overlooks the Santa Monica Freeyway, and a green roof.

In July 2009, the Inglewood City Council voted to approve one of the largest urban infill projects in Los Angeles County, Hollywood Park Mixed Use Project, marking the end of a tremendous public review process that brought together plans of the developer with the community's priorities. In supporting the Hollywood Park Mixed Use Project, City Council praised the developer's outstanding effort to include the Inglewood community throughout the planning process. The plans for the property reflect the suggestions of hundreds of residents who participated in workshops and planning meetings over a three-year period. Comments, opinions and ideas shared by local residents were encouraged and became the core part of the community plan ultimately proposed by Hollywood Park Land Company. After formulating a dynamic project plan that corresponded with the opinions and needs of the community, we took the proposed plans to the streets. Materials, including brochures, interactive website, print advertisements, direct mail, flyers, handouts, giveaways, media interviews and press releases, were developed to spread information about the project and build support for the program. The development team participated in nearly 200 townhall, community, block clubs, civic and social club meetings throughout the City of Inglewood. In a city of 129,000 residents, the development team actively engaged close to 25 percent of the community. In addition to extensive community engagement, the development team conducted a number of workshops both with planning commission and the city council. "We see this as a partnership with the community," said Chris Meany principal of the development team, "and we look forward to strengthening that partnership as Hollywood Park Tomorrow comes to life in the years ahead.

Through grass roots awareness building initiatives, the community of Mar Vista has taken an eco-leadership role in the City of Los Angeles. While many are talking Mar Vista is doing. With strong community council support and volunteer efforts of local citizens, Mar Vista has accomplished: 1) Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase This first of many annual event was a tour of nearly 50 drought resistant and edible gardens that drew 1,000's of visitors. http://marvistagreengardenshowcase.blogspot.com 2) Go Solar Mar Vista Mar Vista residents encouraged a change in public policy by working directly with LADWP management and the LA City Council to make affordable solar available. http://www.openmarvista.net/gosolarmarvista 3) Wise Water Use Expo Community informational event to drive awareness of our existing water crisis. http://wisewateruseexpo.blogspot.com 4) Mar Vista Farmers Market http://marvistafarmersmarket.org/ 5) Open Wi-FI Internet access throughout the Mar Vista town center, bridging the digital divide and encouraging local commerce. http://www.openmarvista.net 6) Mar Vista Green Committee Weekly eco guest at the Farmers Market to address challenges and connect the community to local solutions. http://marvistagreengardenshowcase.blogspot.com 7) Rain Harvesting pilot project. Selection by the City of LA. http://www.larainwaterharvesting.org 8) LA Park Recylcling Program Sanitation Department Pilot program exclusively at Mar Vista Park. With "community organizing" at their core, Mar Vista residents have shown what can be achieved by empowering one another and sharing the talents and passions of individual community members. Mar Vista is quickly being recognized as a proof of concept to the future of green living and an inspiration to other communities. At a time when many in the City of Los Angeles realize we need to make changes toward greater sustainability, creating community, and heightening citizen awareness, rather than waiting for City officials to make our lives better, a top down approach, residents of Mar Vista have taken the initiative and are doing so in many areas of life, bettering their community and the lives of the local residents. With a very strong green community, through their individual and collective efforts and activism they have initiated programs, worked with City agencies and officials and have become a progressive model of what communities can do. The results of which were all accomplished voluntarily and with little to no money.

YOLA, Gustavo Dudamel's signature program to transform young lives Can you imagine a Los Angeles where every neighborhood's pride is its youth orchestra? The LA Phil's vision is to build youth orchestras in 'underserved' communities so that children can come together for music making that's both rigorous and fun. The aspiration that every child has access to the experience of playing in an orchestra is shared by a community of music education providers. The LA Phil brings these diverse organizations together to think big in service of children, recognizing that we can accomplish more together than we can on our own. This is our YOLA Stakeholder Network.

THINKING OUT OF THE BIG BOX Big box retailers, with their strong brand membership and large tracts of underutilized land, represent the next frontier of public/civic life. This design proposal, entitled Thinking Out of the Big Box, leverages the well-developed brand of one retailer to exploit our desire for unique urban experiences as a means of establishing a more open type of public space. While denigrated by traditional urbanists, big box sites offer economies of scale that justify onerous entitlement processes and can achieve critical mass as immersive environments. However, growing community opposition to their deleterious effects upon the surrounding urban fabric and pedestrian life, combined with the dramatic increase in the value of urban real estate, increasingly suggest that the current "stand-alone" formula of such retailers no longer justifies the land cost. At the same time, those same retailers are eager to penetrate the urban market, faced with statistical data that shows a steady population shift back to cities. Thinking Out of the Big Box is an architecture-cum-business plan. Like a Trojan horse, it harnesses the vagaries of private investment and NIMBYism as a means of introducing a new politics of community. The project is predicated on the idea that today's urban dweller is no longer a member of just one, but rather many differing communities---traveling from place to place in search of new and entirely unique destinations that satisfy different aspects of her lifestyle: she likely lives in one place, works in another, shops at a third, etc. Through extensive plans, diagrams, ground level and aerial perspectives, and models, the proposal specifically explores how, using Target as a case study, the expansive surface parking lots that surround the big box might instead be the site of open rather than controlled auto and pedestrian-oriented development that, centered on a new type of public space, is a direct outward expression of the retailer's own website identity and merchandise. In this proposal, three such scenarios are explored, each in a different geographic context: Target Green (all things green, in every senses of the term); Target Play (recreation, performance, gaming, etc.); and Target Town (urban life: car washing, commuter stations, post office/convenience store, gyms, workplaces, residential).

The Imagine Mars Project. In New Orleans, after Katrina, while the adults began to rebuild, we worked with the children and asked them "If you could build a community on Mars, what would it be like? Would it be like your community here on Earth or would it be different? What parts of your community would you take with you and which would you leave behind? What is important is that the students come up with their own vision of what they want their community to be like. Once empowered with this vision we ask them to design it and make it withstand the harsh environment of Mars (not an easy task). In New Orleans, as in other sites, we partner students with NASA scientists, architects, and civic leaders to think critically about potential design solutions. What I think is special about Imagine Mars is that it provides a context where science and technology skills are relevant and useful, both on Mars and Earth. In New Orleans, the overwhelming feedback from teachers was that the students used what they had learned to contribute back to the recovery of their own community. We describe Imagine Mars as a way to teach science and technology through the arts and humanities, but I have seen that it does much more than that. It cultivates ideas of career potential, it reveals leadership qualities and hones critical thinking skills, and... catches the many smart students falling through the cracks of the "teach to the test" system. We have momentum to make a change. We have gone from serving 300 students in 2005 to 4200 in 2009. We sponsored a stage production for kids called "Peril on the Red Planet" based on the concept of Imagine Mars that reached 20,000 students in FY 2009. Our partners are growing quickly as people realize that a new way to connect students to useful information and life skills is desperately needed. Our current partners are: Housing and Urban Development Neighborhood Networks; Girl Scouts of America; Citizen Schools; LA's Best (LA); Youth Policy Institute (LA); Upward Bound (LA); Glendale & Pasadena School District; Art Center College of Design Public Programs (Pasadena); Huntington Gardens (Pasadena); Open Dream Ensemble (North Carolina); NHP Foundation (New Orleans); Michaels Development Group (New Orleans); New Orleans Recovery School District (New Orleans); Discovery Science Place Museum (Texas); HESTEC - Hispanic Engineering Science and Technology (Texas).