An important responsibility that you have as an architect whenever you're working in the city is to anticipate or try to anticipate how the city is evolving Welcome to our next sessions one-to-one. I'm Amelia Taylor-Hockert and this week I'm speaking with Los Angeles based architect Michael maltson known for his multiple projects with the Skid Row housing trust and the longer than the Empire State Building is tall Residential mixed-user one Santa Fe. Maltson's office is also designing Los Angeles's new six-street viaduct a since demolished infrastructural icon of the city that bridge the Los Angeles River between downtown and Boyle Heights Michael shares his relationship with the growing identity of downtown Los Angeles and his perspective on the style of urbanism arising on LA's Westside in the Silicon Beach neighborhood of Playa Vista. We also discussed the effect of China's ban on weird architecture for LA architects practicing there To start out I wanted to talk about the six-street viaduct and in particular last year and the at the end of 2013 I believe there was a big party thrown for kind of say goodbye to the viaduct Mariah Chi band fireworks LA Forum I think was involved in hosting it and you were in attendance correct What was that like to see that project kind of being being been very well to not being formally destructive destroyed and not being like raised But to have that point in the project you'd already been very familiar with it And working on the design for the new viaduct for years, but what was it like being there on the bridge knowing that the soon was going to be destroyed?
It makes it very personal all projects are are deeply personal at some level that you're invested in them in very intense ways But when you see when you're able to participate in an event like that and also get a sense Especially from many of the people who are there and come up to you and talk to you about their memories about something like the bridge It's hard not to feel a deep sense of responsibility that these structures Something like infrastructure something like a bridge can have as deep a set of meaning for people as anything else in their life That they are completely entwined with their connection to they're thinking about the city and that you hope that the new bridge is able to Do that as it starts to weave into the life of the city over its over its future But it's hard not to be Sentimental about about the existing bridge and what that has has meant to people so what were some of the things that people came up to? They talk about how both especially people on the east side of the city and Boyle Heights in particular How much that bridge represents that standing on that bridge? It was a perspective of both where they lived and also the city and the skyline of the city specifically in downtown that represents Some idea about potential possibility, but also felt very far away to many people It was a connector for many people to their jobs and in very poignant ways For instance, somebody came up to me and talked to me about how the most important thing that they ever did with their family With their father in particular was to go to Dodgers games and that the beginning of that trip and all of the excitement that In gendered that the beginning of that trip was driving across the 6th Street Bridge Those are those are very specific memories that people have and so in particular that bridge as well because we see also construction going on At least in the last five or ten years with Metro crossing the first street bridge over North on the river And also heading into Boyle Heights and there was a lot of discussion when that was being proposed of kind of fear of gentrification that the Metro going into Boyle Heights Was seen as a very invasive thing that at least to a few very vocal members of Boyle Heights neighborhood that they felt that this was going to be encroaching on their Community in a negative way and in gender gentrification whereas the six-week bridges not just farther south in a much more industrial area It's still of course bridges downtown to Boyle Heights But do you see those two connecting thoroughfares as kind of creating this overall zone of urbanization between the two of them? Is there something happening there that you can kind of describe?
Well for anybody who has spent any time recently in the arts district you can see the the scale of of redevelopment and intense densification of that area very quickly whether that's gentrification in the classic terms or whether that is just a rapid reemergence or emergence of a type of urban density I think you could have many different arguments about that the area in the flats That's immediately under the six-week bridges also an area that has been largely ignored in the city But is increasingly becoming a real destination for galleries and restaurants. It is being remade as well It's a question of how much it will hold on to its industrial character will that start to change? There's a neighborhood or there's housing in that area They're all parts of the city that have had their own identities in somewhat isolated ways And I think Boyle Heights and the question around how Boyle Heights continues to evolve is it's really a part of that question Is this city that continues to be a separate? Set of precincts and districts and silos or does it start to become much more connected and woven together?
I would say that's a positive thing for the city as a whole but it comes with real anxieties and potentially real change and challenges to neighborhoods if those the character of those neighborhoods gets destroyed so that's a I think that's something that the city needs to as a whole collectively continue to have a real debate about and that neighborhoods Especially in places like Boyle Heights should fight to have a strong voice in and it's a very active neighborhood in that way But I would say that one of the most important things for this city to take on is how we begin to make those connections across those divisions and Separations and partners what has been absolutely fascinating I grew up in Pasadena and have been living for overall most of my life in Los Angeles But briefly for a while in my early 20s But when I came back and I was seeing what was happening in downtown in the mid-pots and I guess early teens of the 21st century Seeing specifically what has happened in the arts district and particularly I think you can kind of draw some interesting lines between your projects If you have one Santa Fe directly west of the river in the north kind of area of the Arts District South the first street And you have inner city arts down on seventh a little farther west off the river And now we have the six-week viaduct creating this kind of triangulation of space around of course an expanding skid row population But also just expanding nature of the arts district which is a really fascinating area I was wondering if you can kind of do you see that particular triangle of space in downtown and arts district area as inhabiting some kind of unique urban situation? How are you kind of thinking about that area or is it just a totally arbitrary line that I'm now drawing? I don't think it is although I would say that when we started working with well inner city arts and then with specifically the Skid Row Housing Trust where we did a number of projects, star apartments, carver apartments, rainbow apartments in downtown I became very interested in the way in which smaller more incremental iterative projects could begin if you drew lines between all of those projects It starts to create a type of map a type of web of relationships laid over the city That was interesting to me because it felt like the project wasn't any one of those projects in particular It was all of those projects together that it was an unfolding project about how you could you could make some Positive inroads into the city urbanistically that would eventually add up to a fairly significant influence in the city But do that in a more temporal more iterative way that changed and evolved with the changing of the city itself that somehow they were put into A real relationship real-time relationship of development The other projects like one Santa Fe and the bridge are a little bit different because mostly because of their scale They are not neither of them are small or iterative They're significant forms in the city But at the same time I've thought of both of those as types of armatures that you can look at them as singular forms in the city But really their goal is to be a little bit blurry between not so much fabric and object But maybe urban design and architecture in a more traditional sense and that's one model I think of change in the city That's one model of potential development in the city that tries to allow for the emergence of in development and change that surrounds it to take place in relationship to those buildings that those monse en Fe will continue to evolve as the neighborhood around it evolves the six-street bridge will continue to evolve as the neighborhoods around it continue to evolve and I think that does relate to those other projects the skivro projects and inner city arts and that network or web that I was talking about That change in the city doesn't necessarily have to happen with these large gravitationally scaled projects like LA live or the convention center That's one way of changing the city But another way of trying to meet the city at its pace and at its scale is to think about these other possible models This this map or this web as one model and the armature as another model So we're turning in particular to the design of the six-street viaduct I'm wondering because that design kind of came into being as a 2013 is that correct 2012 around that time? I'm wondering in particular how it relates or maybe if it's changed to the discussions going on around LA river development Because of course that's this conversation something going on for a while But have kind of only recently come to a particular head with real plans being started at least by Frankieri's office and other constituents in the city and how there's a lot of talk about kind of still respecting the industrial heritage and the Concrete bottom of the river and retaining that kind of tone and fabric and personality But at the same time wanting to make it into a appealing place to be with natural access and such So were those conversations around river redevelopment in any way influential for the viaducts design?
A little bit it was something that the river has been on I think many people's minds for a long time friends of the Los Angeles River Lewis Academy started thinking about that obviously for a long time The LA river corporation has been at work, meal air and a number of people have focused on the river It's been more recently I think in on people's minds and it's been much more visible Partially because of the work that those people have done Also the emphasis that the mayor's put on the river and Frank's work on the river has made that conversation that much more visible But when we began the viaduct our biggest concern was to try to Find ways of both making the river more visible by creating places along the viaduct on the viaduct where you could literally stop pause and see the river and see what was evolving there And to also create real substantial access to the river Especially it's harder on the east side because of the train tracks that exist there But there's an existing tunnel that connects the west side more or less by Santa Fe Avenue underneath the tracks to the river and we're going to amplify that and create a large public place that's connected to that Our goal was not so much to assume that the river Was going to be one version of the river or another version of the river But to understand that the river was going to evolve that it was going to be seen as a greater amenity With more value in the city it was going to be more connected to the city as a whole And that the viaduct could be important as one of the nodes of connection that allowed the city around it to quite literally physically Connect to the activity that will occur there no matter what that activity is in the future Also regarding your mentioned earlier kind of having that relationship to maintaining a certain sense of scale in these non-iterative projects Not at least explicitly iterative such as the one Santa Fe and the viaduct I want to talk specifically about just how big one Santa Fe is Which i'm sure you're maybe a little bit sick about but it's as for those who are not familiar with the project or who are not familiar with the Area of LA that it's and it extends along the LA river kind of in between the river and the arts district running parallel to sire So i'm going to do architecture and it's as long as you'd say on this on its side as or it's longer on its side as it is as the empire State building is so it's quite a big building you can say and for anyone who's also not familiar with the arts district It's an area that has been increasingly becoming more residential more people are living in the actual arts district and being more having a street presence You can see not just sire students walking around you see people walking their dogs people smoking people hanging out people getting drinks Whatever and you see that more and more also because of one set of having this mixed use access to restaurants and stuff like that while sitting residential but in that sheer length of a building how do you create an interesting relationship to the street with such a long connected Stretch of a building well first and it goes back a little bit to what we were just talking about with the six-street bridge that I think An important piece of or an important responsibility that you have as an architect whenever you're working in the city is to anticipate or try to anticipate How the city is evolving in the case of the six-street bridge that anticipation has been that the neighborhoods will continue to evolve that the river will continue to evolve And we're trying in the case of the bridge to turn a piece of infrastructure Which generally only does one thing taking people from one side of the city to another a kind of monoculture of use to try to turn that into a structure that creates many connections that Allows for many different types of mobility and anticipates that all of those neighborhoods and districts will continue to evolve in a way that those connections become very real And valuable in the city one Santa Fe in a sense is no different than I was looking for ways in which you could Anticipate or imagine how the urbanism of that area would continue to evolve. You're right I've heard from many people that the building is too big There's been a lot of support for that building but the criticism has generally been that the building is out of scale and that was in many ways very conscious I ran a studio not long ago whose title was the possibility of the wrong scale and Was that at Harvard? The idea in one Santa Fe is that it has a kind of anticipatory scale that you can meet the city where it is now in terms of its scale You can try to refer to its past in its history But in a city like Los Angeles which is as dynamic which is changing as rapidly as this city is that scale and density is clearly going to be one of the things that does in fact change And once Santa Fe tries to suggest that at least a version of what that scale might be not today not tomorrow But in 15 or 20 or 25 years and if you're building something architecture always takes a long time first of all So you're already starting to project into the future as opposed to imagining where the city is right now And cities you take a while to evolve I think that there's an argument about trying to make buildings and especially when they're at the scale of urban design that does Forecast or look forward or imagine what the future density and scale of the city might be like now Once you once you begin at that point then much of the work is also to imagine how that scale starts to relate to the existing structures and lines of movement and Possible connections around it how those might start to develop what I was looking at once in a phase Was not only the north-south connections for instance how the building connects to the first street bridge where the gold line as you mentioned before crosses over But also the transverse connections. There's a very large portal right across from sirek that connects into the middle public space of the building And then also opens up to the train tracks on the other side I wasn't trying to create a window to the train tracks necessarily I believe that this is a part of the city that will likely see additional transit The red line is likely going to come directly into this this neighborhood has already been talked about a possible station But the river is going to continue to develop just on the other side of the tracks And we worked with folar in the early design of the building to develop some conceptual drawings of what it would look like to have a series of bridges And gardens that sprung from one Santa Fe across the tracks and connected to the river That's a vision that is probably far into the future But the building has the the possibility of that written into its form and its space That occurs in a number of locations in the building And that's what I mean by the idea that the building is a kind of armature that it won't be complete really I don't know exactly what it will be like when that building is complete But we've tried to set up the possibilities for others to come in and start to make it not so much the edge of the city But very much an active threshold between the east side and the west side So going to the farther west side But apply this you've done a couple of projects apply this to the central park project Which was completed years ago and now you're just the brickyards of a office complex It's currently under construction as I understand apply this is one of these relatively newly developed Neighborhoods that was kind of brought a lot of attention in the 90s and the early odds to get a lot of funding to create these kind of focus Of tech opportunities in that area.
It's like a particular technological zone So to speak and it's also part of the silicon beach This is just somewhat frustrating term that includes venison areas of Santa Monica that have like offices for Facebook And other tech companies that have been there I was wondering if you see a kind of emerging urbanism in that respect for these areas that are somewhat newly urbanized But also devoted to tech often is there something that you are trying to cater to or you understand being unique to those kinds of areas? Well play is a whole is I think unusual because it's one of the last areas in los angeles where you had such a large Amount of land and it is being developed from for the most part landscape to open land to buildings as quickly As rapidly as it has been a long time in los angeles. I think when you had development at that kind of scale Play is also very different depending on where you are there's the area more to the west Which is primarily residential a little bit of commercial, but it's it's basically a residential area And that's a part of that development that was developed in a kind of new urbanist way I think loosely defined but using some of those ideas the area that we're working is further to the easter is very much the tip of the East side of of playa and it is it's designated specifically as an office is on a commercial zone for these these companies mostly tech companies The work that we're doing is well when we got started on playa We got started with the buildings that were actually just building now. This was pre-recession This was in the late 2000s and we started to do a conceptual design for those buildings that thought about their role as Trying to make more out of this idea of campus the ground floor being very permeable very connected to some kind of landscape at the center of Of all of these office buildings when the recession hit the buildings stopped and got put on hold and in the meantime We were asked to do the park at the center of what would eventually be this office campus and in that park my goal was to try to create a new kind of Connective campus landscape not a park so much that you stood outside of and looked at but a park that you really participated in a park that was a kind of Not a more traditional landscape or park landscape But a kind of bento box of activities that could support very much a 24-hour life with many different forms of activity in the park There's a horticultural garden where you could learn about horticulture There's small sports bridge where there were small activities like bocce and horseshoes.
There's a Wi-Fi bridge There was the amphitheater bridge. There is the lawn sports bridge where there's the soccer field and then there's what we call the courts bridge Which has children's playground basketball court and beach volleyball The idea was that with these kinds of companies many of the people who work there work long out not unlike architecture work long and intense hours much of their life both from a work life as well as their social life revolves around those companies and those buildings and Not unlike a college campus the place where many ideas are born many relationships are developed or not in the buildings themselves But in the spaces in between those buildings and that park was really meant to be a kind of equivalent to that That had a really influence then when the buildings that were now building out there restarted and we started redesigning or developing the design the concept design on those buildings And they are meant to very much connect to that park both through a series of land bridges As well as the way that the forms take advantage of the views of that bridge They're very much meant to be buildings that are inextricable from from that landscape I don't know if that's necessarily a overarching idea about Playa It's being built by many different architects many different developers with many different ideas But I think it's one way I hopefully when the buildings are done It'll point to one way in which this idea of a more full and connected life for the people who work there can be manifest that The value is in the buildings themselves, especially for the developers They're tenants who and the people who work there but that you can create a version of a or kind of microcosm of a real social and communal life And that there's there's there's great value in that as well And that to me just sounds I wouldn't say opposed to but certainly different than what might be understood as like a classic idea of LA work urbanism where you can work, you know, most likely not in downtown you work somewhere But you certainly drive to get there and you live in a house in somewhat isolation and some maybe beautiful hillsides For safe comparison and so to create instead a model in a city like Playa Vista where it's kind of full service Which I guess does cater to that new urbanism model of having all of your needs accounted for in the course of the life that you live Being so close to the work that you do is an interesting model And I also think about what's happening in areas of Silicon Valley that are kind of going in the opposite direction of taking areas that were just office parks Just like strip malls of art of offices and trying to make them into more of a home Or at least a full service kind of sometimes a derogatory way to refer to a big theme park for the people who work there to try to Take care of them in the most holistic way. So just interesting to see how these models are emerging in California and might be used elsewhere If you can even call them models Well, I think I think you have to think about them as models or at least I think you have to approach them as having the potential to be a model You have to be careful about that but not necessarily a role model Not necessarily overreach but I think it's I think it's important as an architect to think about the potential for these to have that broader effect that they can be Real representations of a different way of of constructing helping to support more full life for people and that I think the idea underlies a lot of the work that we're doing in the city right now One of the things that concerns me is as the city gets denser and denser and as the city and its post-war suburban character It starts to be more and more challenged, which I think is a positive thing How do you migrate many of the qualities that make up life here? Which is has to do with the ability to access individual space as as well as being connected to outside mobility being something that is a common Characteristic of this place even if that's really being challenged but access certainly and migrate that to forms that create a new type of density But don't merely import models of density from other more traditional cities I don't know that everything that's going on apply that is an example of that But I do know that in our project the relationship between the buildings and their connection to this idea of Landscape and social and community space as well as the idea around what a park might be an active park is a kind of microcosm of the city itself Those are all attempts to look at evolving models that do speak to this changing dynamic in the city as we invent some kind of form of Hopefully our brand of urbanism as opposed to importing some other version of a more traditional but not necessarily germane or Urbanism from someplace else well convenient transition of speaking in terms of importing or creating forms of urbanism I'm sure you're familiar with the news that out of China recently this announcement that there will be no more weird architecture So called this directive issued by china's cabinet from the communist party central committee And I'm quoting from your times' coverage of this to say that no architecture that is quote from the report oversized is you know centric weird and quote and devoid of cultural tradition Instead building should be quote suitable economic green and pleasing to the eye and of course We spent the interview talking about LA and I think that the your work in LA is probably the most well developed And I'm glad we got to talk about that But I also want to have your opinion about if you feel there's this is going to change anything for other architects in Los Angeles This kind of directive from China and whether or not that will change Not only just the practice for the economy of the architects living in Los Angeles, but also whatever work they might actually have in China Well, it's interesting.
I've said for a while that one of for better words One of Los Angeles is true export economies has been its version of contemporary urbanism or suburbanism because you see it in many emerging cities It's not not so different the idea that that might rebound and have an effect here I think is is interesting but probably less likely but I don't know that much about this new directive in China I mean I know about it. I've read about it It seems like Something that happens in many cultures at many different moments It's a kind of reaction to this intense development and almost out of control Scale of development in that country and we've participated in a little bit of that in Chengdu and observed that a little bit in uh, city jin wa south of Shanghai the challenge I think in in that kind of reaction Is that it speaks to a more formal vocabulary often in language around the architecture There's no more weird architecture though. The architecture that needs to be more culturally appropriate Tends to talk about very often the aesthetics of the building maybe about scale But very much about the aesthetics of the building But what's really at stake I think when you're building in these dynamic cultures is the way that form and space start to create a real urbanism And a substantial urbanism and that's that's very hard when things are changing So rapidly to be able to step back as an architect probably as a developer probably as a as a government official Take stock of enough and make a considered response to that I think the the danger in that kind of an edict is that it stops the possibility of looking for those new models that we were just talking about of developing different typologies and orthologies and urban forms that can be both Referential or connected to the character and context and qualities of a particular place But evolve enough to keep up with the way in which that culture is changing and any real dynamic sustainable living culture continues to evolve in its forms architecturally landscape forms those need to continue to evolve as well I think it's it is a responsibility of architects landscape designers urban designers in a city like Los Angeles to Understand those criticisms but to find ways to continue to open the conversation to keep real possibilities in the city open and to not let the reactionary tendencies or forces more conservative forces close that conversation down not for us in particular as architects But for the younger generations who are continuing to grow up and live and move to the city They need the possibility of representing their time They need the possibility of representing what means something to them They need the possibility of continuing to evolve the city in their image and that is that's a form of a healthy city that can continue to sustain itself I think in very real ways into the future. Well, Michael's been great talking with you about la and beyond.
So thank you so much for coming on the podcast I'm sure thank you very much. Got to have you Thanks for listening to our connections one-to-one with Michael maltson Donnie Lovoino that it's the podcast and Matt Scaling's composed our music myself and pop attorney are the producers of one-to-one New episodes come out every Monday. Make sure to not miss an episode by subscribing to us on iTunes And if you like the podcast, please consider leaving us a review You can keep up with podcasting news from arcannekon twitter through at arcannekonnek sessions or hashtag arcannekestessions Or you can email us through connect at arcannektonnekton Thanks again for listening to one-to-one