Hello everyone and welcome to One to One, I'm Amelia Taylor-Hockberg, our Connects Managing Editor. The interviews you're about to hear are recorded live as part of our Connects podcasting event series, NextUp, held at Los Angeles's Architecture and Design Museum on October 29th. We've hosted NextUp's before at Giant Gallery in Los Angeles and at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. This time around, we're focusing on the LA River and the constellation of issues surrounding its redevelopment.
With so much controversy and history surrounding the river, we wanted to do justice to its complexity. So for this next up, we gathered a range of artists, architects, planners, and journalists to share their perspective. We hope you enjoy these interviews from the second half of NextUp, the LA River. Check out last week's One to One episode for the first half.
You can also subscribe to our other podcast, ArchiNex Sessions, to hear all the interviews as individual episodes. Our first interview is with Lou Pesci, a designer at Metabolic Studio. I'm now seated with Lou Pesci of Metabolic Studio, so welcome, Lou. Thank you.
This has been a lot of talk about the river from explicitly planning and architectural perspectives, and I think the work of Metabolic Studio does a nice job of bringing those two perhaps-wearing factions together and thinking about the river as perhaps having an opportunity to work on combining those things from artistic perspective. So I'd like you to begin perhaps by talking a little bit about the project that Metabolic Studio is currently doing, be bending the river back into the city project. Why don't you give a brief description of what that project is? Certainly, the Metabolic Studio is the art practice of Lauren Baum, and in 2005, Lauren, as an art action, planned to 36 acres of corn in what became the historic state park in downtown Los Angeles.
And in order to do so, she had to put in 90 miles of irrigation stripping, and at that point, she looked to the river and said, you know, I'm obligated to irrigate this corn with potable city water. And there's the LA River and what a shame that we can't use the water from the river. That was an artist action that was meant to remediate the brownfield conditions of that piece of land that would become a state park. Fast forward to today, where for the last four years we've been working on bending the river back into the city, that is a three-part sculpture of Lauren Baum's.
And it includes a 64-foot water wheel, an inflatable dam, and a distribution system. The inflatable dam is meant to hold back the water in the river to create enough pressure to divert water underneath the train tracks to the Metabolic Studio site, where a 64-foot water wheel will lift the water from the lowest part of the pit, which is at the bottom of the same level as the bottom of the river. To our site where the water will be then irrigated to standard suitable for spray irrigation, and then create a distribution system to use that water as irrigation water for three public parks, including the state park that she did the Nada Cornfield project in, and across the river to city parks, the existing Downey Recreation Center and Pool, and the future city park, the Albion Park that is slated to be developed and need irrigation water to remain green. So working with these types of heavily infrastructural projects, does Metabolic Studio have like an agenda of sorts in these kinds of projects, and how they want them to shift the perception of the areas that they're being active in?
Absolutely. Lauren's intention is to reconnect Los Angeles with the source of its water. We have three major aqueducts that serve this city in terms of the water that comes into our city, and it goes to treatment facilities, it gets treated to height levels, and then it gets put into the LA river. And that's the water, about 80% of the water that is in the LA river during dry periods is from these treatment facilities.
All of that water at this point is going out to Long Beach and to the ocean. And any portion of that water that we can capture and use locally to keep our public parks green is certainly something that holds a lot of merit. In order to do so, there was a complete and very complicated process, because it is taking 40-some odd permits from over 22 agencies, federal, state, county, city, to in order to do this and make this possible. It also included obtaining a water right, which we like to call a water responsibility, because we don't believe that water is a right, it is a responsibility of all of us.
It's a common. So in order to do this project, there was a tremendous amount of permitting. There was obtaining the land adjacent to the LA river to obtain the water responsibility of procuring 106 acre feet of water per year from the river. So when we're diverting the water into the site, we'll capture 106 acre feet of water, and the rest will be returned to the river so that the river will always have water in it.
106 acre feet is basically a football field. If you imagine that as a swimming pool, it would be a swimming pool that was 106 feet deep. And so it is very important to Lauren and the Metabolic Studio that people understand the source of their water. We're very disconnected.
Historically, Los Angeles used to receive all of its water from the LA river. And they were historically, during the late 1800s, many water wheels that lifted water from the river and brought it to the old Pueblos. And there's a distribution system that's historic to the Zonha Mandre, which actually from the water wheels brought in an open channel, the water to the old Pueblos. So what the Metabolic Studio is doing is a very modern version of what historical precedent in the river.
Of course, we are still in a drought, technically. But when public perception of this as a fact and people were tearing up their lawns and getting rebates and all that kind of stuff, when it was at the height of we need to restrict our water usage, how did that change maybe the approach of the about to do if at all towards these water rights and issues around water in particular regarding the river. I think the idea of water in a semi arid place like Los Angeles has always been important to the work that Lauren's done. I think that we've actually spent a tremendous amount of time working on our projects up in Owens Valley, which is the source of the Los Angeles aqueduct.
And that has a big influence on the work that we're doing. It is not a small task to bring water from the L.A. River to even adjacent parks, but there's certainly a tremendous need to keep those parks green during a drought time. The inflatable dam is inflatable specifically because the L.A.
River has to remain a flood control system so that when it rains, the dam deflates and the waters allowed to flush out to the ocean. But during the dry flows, there is always water in the L.A. River because of the water that's provided from the treatment facilities upstream. And it's so important that some of that be captured and used locally.
So I'm going to read a little bit from the description of the Benning the River back into the seas into the project because I think it depends a lot of what you're talking about of having water, not as a private resource, but something that kind of reconnects people with the idea that we can actually get our water from here, which is where the project is referred to having the ability to allow the currency of water to create social capital. And specifically along the L.A. River, we've already referred to issues of gentrification and just the idea of the river as somehow being now more than previously a privileged space in some ways. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect of wanting the project to have that social capital aspect?
Well, it certainly does. Any water that is used to help keep a public space green is going to help serve a very important social need. You know, there is definitely is very obvious that there is gentrification going on adjacent to the river. But there are some very important public spaces that need to remain public spaces and the development of the future.
Albion Park, the existing Downey Park, and certainly the State Historic Park are all very important public spaces for the people that live in those neighborhoods of Chinatown, of Lincoln Heights area. I think that this project allows so many things to happen. Right now, there is no access to the L.A. River in between the Spring Street Bridge and the Broadway Bridge, which is where our project is happening.
Not only is it divided by two bridges, there are train tracks that are on both sides of the river. Our project, bending the river back into the city, will allow us to, if we can't bring the people physically to the river, we'll be able to bring the river to the city. And so people will be able to see the water in the river and have a green space right on the river's edge. So that provides a lot of social and community opportunity.
There's a huge opportunity for development along the river to kind of bring in, I don't want to use the word icons, but some kind of node projects that can help attract other people who aren't familiar with the river to be using it in certain ways. And I can imagine something like this project being one of those things where it can attract people to the river that might not otherwise have been attracted to it. That being said, what do you think once this project is fully done would be the change in the feeling around the identity of that area for the river? What would people get out of it by going to the river and seeing that project there?
Right now, you know, Los Angeles doesn't have a large central park the way that many other cities do. It certainly has a lesion park and these smaller parks that I'm talking about, including the state park. There's a need to to preserve our green spaces and to be able to keep them green with water. And I think that there is an opportunity for this to become a true focal piece of the downtown area.
And in order for these public spaces to thrive, they will need to be irrigated during a drought, which is, you know, a very difficult thing and costly thing to do. So the metabolic studio provides, you know, a lot of opportunity by creating this icon. Lastly, the water wheel itself is meant as a prototype. It is the goal of the metabolic studio to show that another city is possible and that although this one water wheel will do this one specific task of carrying water into the city to these parks, it will show that it is possible.
This is the first major intervention in the LA River since it's been channelized in 1938. So piercing the jacket of the LA River and capturing some of that water is something that we hope to show is not only possible, but could be replicated in other places along the river. Lupeche, thank you so much. Thank you.
Next up, we have Julia Meltzer, founder and director of Clockshop, joined by Elizabeth Timmy, co-director of LA Moss. So we have Julia Meltzer, she's the director and founder of Clockshop, a nonprofit arts organization that partners with the California State Parks to do programming on a plot of land adjacent to LA River. And we have Elizabeth Timmy, who is the co-director of LA Moss and Urban Design and Architecture and Nonprofit. She sits on Recode LA, a city initiative to rewrite LA's zoning code and is also an adjunct faculty member of the Woodbury University School of Architecture.
To begin, I was hoping you guys could just tell us a bit about your organizations and the kind of projects you do in relation to the river. So Clockshop is an arts organization that I founded over 10 years ago. And one of the projects that we do is the Bowtie Project, but I'd say largely our mission is to commission and work with artists and writers on new projects. And many of those projects are public projects.
And more recently, I think, a big part of our mission and our goal is to work with larger institutions and to encourage them to work in different ways and to bring in new audiences. So for example, the Bowtie Project is something that came about in 2014 when we did a project called Frogtown Futuro, which was looking at LA River revitalization and how it was affecting the Legion Valley, the community where our space is based and where we've been there since 2016. It's on Clearwater Street. The end of our block is the LA River.
My partner and I have lived there for nine years and now it's our workspace. So during that time, specifically in the last four to five years, we've seen a lot of change in the neighborhood and we wanted to look at how that change was affecting very specifically our neighborhood. And then we also wanted to do a project on the river. And that's when our partnership with California State Park started.
So we're a kind of cross-disciplinary group of a bunch of young policy thinkers, architects, designers, artists, engagement specialists, urban planners. I'm the co-founder along with Mia Lair. And Elle Moss was created in an environment in 2012 where there was a lot of discussion around this space between community need and development pressure. And it was really that conversation that Mia and I were having about how there wasn't a for-profit model in the architectural space that could speak to these issues or iterate through them with kind of temporary projects that were hands-on, community-based.
And so it's me and about seven other people my age that are really interested in helping communities shape their own growth. And we moved to a Legion Valley two and a half years ago and undertook a project in partnership with Clockshop in New Land to get community feedback on a kind of co-visioning process as to what the development, the kind of investment in the neighborhood and what the development equity would really bring about for the community. And so we partnered with that project, which was a project that was, you know, it started off with the idea that what we would do as a community checklist or a community manifesto. And so we quickly became clear that what if we could do anything it would be to shape policy.
And so we went to the city with kind of recommendations on how to shape the queue conditions where it is a very temporary overlay that's affecting the neighborhood in between the recoding process. And it was an attempt to get ahead of all of these development projects and say that there needed to be a mechanism for something that was more about affordability rather than density. We kind of had a lot of shocking surprises, which was that the community wanted everything to stay the same no matter what, which, you know, two and a half years ago was surprising. But now with the neighborhood integrity initiative and love and Santa Monica, I don't think any of us are surprised by that sentence.
However, in the climate, you know, two years ago that was surprising. So we've also done kind of pilot installations and we're kind of known as the hands-on doers that kind of use our expertise to do things physically to start a deeper conversation about what should be done in these neighborhoods. How do you balance that orientation towards social engagement and social equity with strong interests with other organizations and art and cultural production? Oftentimes, I think we're seeing like the Boyle Heights protests, there seems to be a tension between those two imperatives.
Have you found that? Do you guys try and counter that with your work and how? I mean, really it's a question about art and gentrification. Yeah, I mean, it's very complicated and I think there's a lot of shades of gray in these conversations that very quickly get sort of cast in black or white, which is a little bit about what Elizabeth was alluding to in terms of the community response to change in the Legion Valley and that people really just didn't want any change at all.
So there's this very strong resistance to anything different happening because I think there's this fear and lack of control. You know, in the work that we do at Clockshop, we try very, very hard to think in a complex and deep way about the programming that we do and to really engage in the community. To really engage with artists who are not only diverse and what I mean by that is there are people who are of different racial backgrounds and different class backgrounds, but also we want to do projects that are complex and are challenging in terms of form and content. And for example, some of the projects that we've done at the Bowtai project with Rosten Wu who did a series of signage projects that in a way mimic California State Park signage, but engage with content that California State Parks would never be able to do themselves.
So he's addressing the history of the Bowtai parcel, how it was purchased, looking at the real estate that has been swapped over the last year, and then also thinking about homelessness who gets to sleep outside and where and what type of sleeping outside and camping is allowed legally and what types aren't. So, you know, I like to think that the programming that we do, and I pride myself on this, that we are actually educating people and bringing in a really different group of artists and audience members. And it's not just sort of typically what you would see in more blue chip galleries. And so I don't know if that conversation about gentrification has really been focused on Boyle Heights, but it's not something that we've been charged with.
And so I would say that we, our work wouldn't exist if we weren't reacting to and fighting the conversation of gentrification. I think the conversation of gentrification is mostly driven by white guilt, and it doesn't really have any substantiation in metrics or outcomes. And so we did this for two or four together, and it became clear that, you know, not in my backyard was an opportunity to literally build in people's backyards. So in this very space we proposed a housing alternative which was granny flat, and, you know, to my co-director, she thought it was a bananas proposal, because what we did is said that every lot across the block would be kind of working together to create a shared development, and this alternate mid density.
And all the architects said, well, that's obviously LA Moss doing something very realistic. And I think it speaks kind of to the chasm between what people understand is possible for housing and these things that will affect and support the after effects of gentrification at displacement. I think there's a real difference between what we're actually trying to talk about doing to deal with gentrification to support renters versus what people in creative industries are talking about doing around the conversation. So, you know, we have small business programs where we support small businesses and we do facitment over, so our whole practice is really based on engaging in the conversation of gentrification rather than running away from it.
But I don't think we're really interested in having a conversation about it anecdotally as if it was kind of a way to round out a superficial conversation. So, call me off guard there. No, it's totally, I think you're actually spot on. So what are the kind of other policy measures that you guys are implementing to try and make the LA River realization safeguarded against being just a development boom?
So the ramifications of the Q condition are that you cannot build, I think it's now 30 feet and it was 45 feet. And so what that means is the developers, if they do go higher, they have to do affordable housing. There's also no pure residential, you have to do commercial on the ground floor. So that is fantastic and that it speaks to the history of making and doing an industry that's in that belt long river.
However, we're really not going to be able to see for a few years if that's going to be able to maintain the actual large scale industrial making that I think everyone really wants to see. What are the biggest kind of obstacles you run against? Is it bureaucracy or is it development or is it in your work with trying to kind of maintain the integrity of these neighborhoods? There's not enough money going towards smaller scale projects like what we're talking about.
So it's kind of heartbreaking to hear that the Frank Gary master plan, they're trying to lobby for $2 million to $5 million to be able to give to Frank Gary to work somewhere in Raina Del Rey on something. And all of us are working with our hands with the community and I'm thrilled when we get $5,000 or $2,000 to build. So in working with students, we're working with kids, we're kind of breeding an alternative model of how creative people should be involved in this process and it's really toxic to see the Frank Gary plan being put out because it's teaching a bunch of architects that's an acceptable way to engage with the community. So I think that the challenge is the kind of prevalent architectural culture or artistic culture versus I think what the rest of us are trying to do, which is something more granular and effective.
I want to add that just let's see at the end of August on curb delay, there was an article that was about a development that is proposed right now and is kind of in the pathways to happening that's right outside the bow tie. And it's 35 units of affordable housing, but I think it's 419 total apartments in a space that's right now in industrial building. And, you know, the first that Sean Woods, who is my counterpart at California State Parks, right, we learned about this through curb delay. And so what we're doing is basically utilizing the community and the audience that we've built around the bow tie and connections that we've made in the community to basically hold to account these about these developers and how this project goes forward.
You know, if people here, I don't know if you've been to the bow tie, but it's a very narrow road that you use to get to what is 18 acres of land and then possibly an additional 40, which is the G2 parcel that's immediately south. So that's the main having 419 units in this space where people would have to drive through this very small residential community go under the to access their housing and you know what, how would that affect the community that's immediately adjacent and then who would that park, which will eventually be there really before. So these are the type of things that happen in the city that kind of slip through and then it's our job to make sure that that those developers give something back, you know, or think about, OK, what, what, how is this going to affect this community and what were the traffic patterns be and, and you know, how were those little houses that are there right now, which are already jam packed in, what, what will that be like for them and how will they access this park. So that's one of the big challenges that we face and something that I experienced and I know Steve experiences because we've both been in Legion Valley for the same period of time in the community that we live and work in as it develops.
Many people who have been there for many years are very adversely affected by new developments. Well, I'm out of time. So thank you guys very much. Next up we have Renee Digg Wilson, VP of the LAC planning commission and Alexander Robinson, Director of USC's Landscape Morphologies Lab and Principal of Office of Outdoor Research.
So here I have Alexander Robinson, Assistant Professor of Architecture at USC and Head of the Office of Outdoor Research and Renee Digg Wilson, Principal of Digg Wilson Architects as well as the Vice President of the LAC planning commission. So this panel is less about the fact that Renee and Alex are somehow involved in the same project and more about the kind of vibe of next up having this ability to bring together a bunch of different people and try to get their perhaps varying perspectives on the given subjects such as the river. So Alex, I'd like to start with you. You recently returned from Rome.
You won the Rome Prize last year and we're doing research on the Tiger River and its river systems in Rome and bringing back that information to your studies on the early river. I know that was relatively recently. You're probably still digesting a lot of stuff, but can you give us some basic ceiling points for the time you spent there and what you might have found to be most important to bring back to your research for the river? It's something I'm still processing, but certainly it was really interesting to go to Rome and look at another river, another very engineered river and to sort of consider what you can learn from that kind of situation.
It's surprising the extent to which it has a lot of similarities. I mean, river there is a very engineered river. It's completely channelized and they have huge flood issues. So it's very much a river that's been, you know, they've taken out all the vegetation and made it entirely concrete, but stone river.
But I think that what's really interesting about the Tiger River and its an interesting lesson and sort of something to think about as we go forward is that it was a river that was entirely about making a civic revitalization for the city. The city at that time it just become the capital of the newly formed country of Italy. So it was a radical sort of moment in their history where they were trying to clean up the city and sort of modernize it. So they built this river to create this, to deal with the flooding which no one had been able to deal with for centuries and then also create this conduit of movement through the city that allowed people to move through this medieval city and sort of represent their sort of new coming out as a major city in Europe.
And so you look at the river now and it is a very beautiful river that used beautiful materials and it has a very kind of active life to it. But there's also a lot of issues that people have kind of crannily come to criticize the river for. And it very much, and I think it has something to do with the form of the river that was created. The river is very deep and has vertical walls, so it's very, it's a box channel.
So it's very difficult to get inside the river and it's very limited in the access. And the grand promenade that they try to create on both sides of the river is very small and sort of kind of it's bracketed by these roads. So it's not a very like, it doesn't achieve its purpose. And so there's, you kind of are limited to the experience of the river just walking across these beautiful ridges.
So you look down, you glance at it, you have this moment, but it doesn't really like infiltrate I think into the kind of social consciousness of the city. I think it has very much to do with the form of the river. In the early stages of designing the river they had thought about making it, having banked slopes. And that would have created an entirely different way of accessing the river that actually our river has which I think has had this sort of amazing effect and the kind of social consciousness and quality of the revitalization because it's made the river very usable even though it's very engineered.
So I think there's a lot of kind of details in that final thought about how we kind of connect the river and design the river in terms of form and overcome the engineering issues to create something that really embeds itself into the civic life of the city. And there's a lot that we can learn from these other rivers in terms of kind of the mistakes that we're not really thinking about right now. We're sort of so far to go before we get to this final form making. But I think there's a lot of lessons out there and the type of river has a number of lessons for us because it's not really considered a success right now.
Would you compare it to what's happening in Chicago currently with the production of the river walk and that kind of development to kind of bring out the river is more of an identity piece in the city? I mean what's happening in Chicago is a lot more ambitious. It's a very different kind of river in terms of its form. It's not nearly as far down.
And I think it's different. I mean I think right now they're actually kind of looking to a place like LA which has this incredibly vibrant kind of social, you know, like a tradition of social disobedience and exciting kind of actions on the river. And they're looking at that as like incredible model for bringing people down and changing the consciousness of the river because right now it's sort of forgotten river. And if you went there 10 years ago it's actually kind of a dangerous place to go.
But it's a, you know, I think that the they're not looking at that kind of radical change there. So it's not really, I'm not sure that's relevant to them. Speaking of potential radical change. Renee, so I'd like to talk as a terrible transition between I'd like to ask you about your role in the planning commission and reviewing projects that in any way are related to the river we had a little bit semi referred to the conditions and found out earlier and that was one of the projects that you were involved with.
What are some of the biggest concerns that get passed around among the planning commission when considering projects like this around the river. Well, thank you for having us. The planning commission is nine individuals from diverse backgrounds and experiences representing a broad section of city of Los Angeles. They're community activists.
They're our attorneys. I'm the only architect design professional. We're from all different parts of the city. So I am, we're appointed by the mayor mayor Garcetti appointed all of us, but it's fairly hands off because he's trusting in the public process of having nine voters to come up with a decision and really weigh the inputs of the community.
The conditions has been our biggest impact. The Alicia Valley conditions has been the item where we've had our biggest impact on a specific river neighborhood. And that was basically looking at the what the community was asking for and looking at the general pressures on the city and also looking at the physical plant. So access in Alicia Valley is very poor as one of the other speakers mentioned and having such a small entrenched low income community near in the center part of the city with access to great potential open space of the river really led us to want to retain that character.
And Los Angeles, you know, has a huge problem with housing right now. We are woefully short of, you know, I think the county of Los Angeles, the number I heard recently is the county of Los Angeles is short 250,000 households for a population of 10 million people and growing and that lends people to live further and further outside of the city. So by looking to increase housing opportunities near the city inside the city, not only improves the environment and causes less traffic, but the best thing improves is improves communities and time people have their families are doing activities they would rather do. So when we look at many projects, we look at we would like to provide more housing, but looking at the illusion of values, it was obvious that community would be completely wiped out.
So as an architect, I was able to understand what the community had worked on with the Department of City planning to specifically create constraints in the heights of those projects, and I was able to explain it to the commission. And that was very gratifying to say that if you're going to build more in a lesion value, you have to do it with affordable housing so that those residents, people who can live there don't get displaced or that the children of the people who live there who aren't going to remain living at home have a place to go. Because I think our city in general is going to get built up and we're going to have more development and our communities are going to change, but I hope that as a voice for progressive planning and architecture that we're able to see a future that allows the existing to live alongside the proposed. And that things are going to change, you know, Los Angeles is not the same city with the same size, same population, the infiltration of Metro improvements along the LA River are all huge assets that we can only, you know, hope to happen to improve our city.
So I'm going to be a voice for that on the planning commission always. And do you think being the architect on the planning commission makes you inherently a little more sympathetic to the nuances of these discussions and kind of gives you that responsibility to communicate those nuances to the rest of the board? Very much so. And that happens at every hearing where there will be a blank facade of a project or turning its back or improper yard size or an ugly building and other commissioners will turn to me and say, say on the microphone, I'll let Renee tackle this one.
And that's very gratifying, but I don't speak for all architects. And I hope I'm getting it back to the LA River. I don't speak for all communities and none of us do. And I think that the river, like all of the projects, there are many voices that are there's enough mileage on the river enough places for all the voices that want to speak about the LA River, whether it's LA Moss, whether it's the residents who live next door, whether it's the people that bike down it and just go the whole length, whether it's the animals that floor and fauna that have actually some water access, even though it's not next to Griffith Park, you know, they have to go through the freeway to get to it.
And that river has a wide variety of users and people that are entitled to it. It's a public space in Los Angeles. And, you know, I heard recently a statistic that 26% of Metro stations are within a mile of the LA River. And that the LA River is within a quarter mile of a million residents of the city of Los Angeles.
So if we're talking about a park poor city, that's to me a huge asset that we should look to improve while maintaining the safety for the 1%. So if we're talking about the city of Los Angeles, we're going to be able to get a lot of information from the city of Los Angeles. And we're going to be able to get a lot of information from the city of Los Angeles, which is a huge asset for all the others that will come in behind this initial plan funded and organized by River LA. All of that information is going to be shared and be used by all of the community groups and cities, the variety of cities that want to develop and provide access to the LA River as a more habitable, more environmental space for diversity of groups.
So referring to that access and creating and preserving the river as a public space, Alex, I want to ask you about, excuse me if I may be richer this, but the Projective Picture S. And the Reconsignaling of Pictorial with, could you tell me the rest of that? Like, can you talk about the rest of that project? Basically, as what we've talked about so, what is coming up so recent so often in these conversations is reconciling what might be the picturesque quality of a public park of green spaces and such with the realities of these infrastructural icons being the blood channel.
The fact that this is this concrete channel and that in creating these public spaces, there's an attempt to reconcile those two to create a usable and accessible and overall enjoyable public space. So I'm just wondering if you could speak to that effort in a minute way. Yeah, and I think I'll speak less to the picturesque part, but one thing that I'm kind of working at the other endpoint of planning in a speculative way and a research way in terms of understanding how you make the form of these infrastructures. And I study the form of these infrastructures from a number of different perspectives.
I look at the history of them. I sort of understand how they're made the way that they're, you know, what's the forensics of the design, what made the LA River look like this engineer's drawing. And through that, I learned about the process of design, both historically and in the present, to understand that kind of culture of design. And then I also look, you know, these infrastructural forms are fascinating forms.
They're these products of these incredible kinds of accumulated, I mean, not always very inclusive planning, but they're these very technical processes of creating form that have a very specific purpose and function that relates to their form. So learning about how you kind of create a place within these very specific performative forms, I think is something that I'm interested in studying. And so I look at all of the suppressants across the world to understand what makes a place within these forms, how does form matter in these situations. And then on the other hand, what does matter, like how do you design them?
What are the factors that really contribute to the design of the form? So one thing that's really interesting about the LA River is that the fact that the channel is sloped is because of a WPA calculation for a ratio of labor to materials. So when they did that calculation, they decided that if they made it slanted, you could have more workers work on it. So to add this kind of incredible human dimension to the river that we've all benefited from, you know, continuously from there on out.
So those sorts of factors are really interesting. So it's very, from my work, I'm sort of, and I'm just kind of talking about my work a little bit now, but like, it's trying to map out that kind of world of design, how you work within these engineering constraints, and kind of get ahead of the ball in terms of working with big institutions like the Army Corps and who do a lot of their modeling in Vicksburg for things like this, try to get ahead of the ball in terms of some of these technical issues so that we can bring a little bit of the kind of exuberance that we see at the kind of bottom-up design world of the LA River to this very top-down process that has to be very technical. So a lot of the work I do recently is trying to understand how do you make infrastructure design even playful, you know, or have sort of reduced the levity of it to allow for some sort of transformative thinking or excited moments of design within these extremely constrained conditions. Because we all know how difficult it is to change the river, the Metablock Studio is sort of our icebreaker to get through there, but it's still obviously a very challenging environment to design.
So, you know, how do you make place in these places? How close are they to be in a place already? Because the LA River is very much a place already. So maybe we don't need to like make it into a river, you know, or some, you know, preconceived of the river.
We need to let it develop. So we have to have an awareness of what place is already, what place could be, and then what we can change and how we do it, and how we change that design culture. Thank you so much. So we talk with you.
Lastly, we have Mieleira of Mieleira and Associates. Okay, so next up, I want her to be sitting here with Mieleira. Mieleira is a prominent local landscape architect here in Los Angeles, who's been spending a big proportion of her career studying and analyzing and working on the LA River, trying to fit a conversation into 15 minutes with you is probably going to be as challenging as resolving the master plan. So I'd like to just get started with asking about where your relationship with the river started from both a professional and personal level.
So I moved to Los Angeles. I'm from Central America, and my father was very involved in the environmental movement there, founded the TPL of El Salvador and was very involved in water and water issues. Of course, there's too much water. It's the topics.
Moved to LA in 1980 and started working for people in Hollywood. So I used to have five, six, seven of those projects at a time. And at some point, I started working on my children's public schools and eventually met up with the poet. Nobody's mentioned today that he was he is a poet, and that's how he actually looked at the LA River and started helping in the cleanups that happened in the 80s, actually early 90s with my son, who's several wine crops daughters age, so early 90s.
And at that time also met up with several of the people within the Urban Land Institute and the AA and the SLA who are working on the river and the potential of the river. So with you and your firm, Mieleira and Associates, you worked as the landscape architect, recreation and open space designer for the 2007 LA River revitalization master plan. And within that scope of that work, you developed almost 300 projects along the 39 mile stretch of river in the city. I was wondering if maybe you could tell us a little bit about one or a few of these projects that mean something special to you.
So I just want to, because I just came from the American Society of Landscape Architects Conference in New Orleans, and we just as the Landscape Architecture Foundation issued our new declaration of concern that was issued at University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s. Landscape architects, I run a firm of Landscape Architects and urban designers. And we are trained to think about systems. And I just want to sort of set the record straight, that hydrology was part, a very deep part of the original master plan.
And it was part of the brief, so it came from the Bureau of Engineering, and because there's been a misconception about what the original plan was, and that ecology and hydrology actually have a very strong relationship. So this conversation of this sort of binary about soft and cute and lovely and birdy versus hard and elegant and architectural is kind of, if you're going to work in the river, you're going to be dealing with what I call urban ecology, and that's our reality in our big cities. So I just want to set the record straight. And what was the question again?
Well, I was hoping with your expansive work with the river developing almost 300 projects, I was hoping that maybe you could take us through one or a couple or a few other projects. Sure, with pleasure. So first of all, the amazing, the team that I worked with, aside from being led by the Bureau of Engineering, we worked under an engineering firm Tetra Tech, and there were three Landscape Architecture teams, members of the team, Cervitas, Wank, and Mieler and Associates. And actually, at the time, Alex Robinson had just graduated from our alamater and was working with us, and we sort of developed this master plan, and at the end of the document, we developed 280 to be precise projects, of which at least 40 are either underway, like Albion or on the process of being built.
But there are probably three significant projects that really would bring to life the objectives of the master plan and their reality in Los Angeles today, and has to do with the drought and managing water in an intelligent way. And so, the idea is that G2 parcel associated with bow tie that was just mentioned, which is 40 acres, the other would be the piggyback yards, which is a railroad facility, which is 125 acres, which is only a mile away and right below, actually, not too far from metabolic studio water wheel. And then, surprisingly, but not originally the plans, the Silver Lake Reservoir, which was a drinking water reservoir is empty now, but could be a place where water could be basically retained in such a way that it could be used in the micro watershed and could deploy some of the strategies associated to making sure that our reclamation water doesn't go swiftly down into the Pacific Ocean. And instead, along its way, it really works for the communities along the way.
So, you have there about 100 acres, and I can't tell you how many gallons of water we could have stored there and be able to use not only for the Silver Lake residents, but also to just help make sure that we manage water and infiltrate water in a much more respectful way. And unfortunately, even though we are in a drought, it sort of was declared a sort of not big emergency some last week, which is a shame, since we're all just learning how to deal with water in an intelligent way, the message is a little confusing. So, with a project like the Silver Lake Reservoir, what does it take to make that happen? What are the hurdles that we're facing?
Well, I would say a few things. I think that we obviously all care about design, and we all care, we think the collaboration matters and the advocacy matters, and many of us live in the general community, so but leadership matters. We have to have the decision-making ability in the leadership to make some of these projects happen. And we're already operating outside of silos.
I think that many of the water agencies, whether sanitation or Department of Water and Power, if you're a engineering general, everybody's working together, but there needs to be this nudge to make sure that we're working together. And so, we have to have this nudge to make things happen faster. And for that, sometimes funding, Elizabeth mentioned funding is an issue. Private public partnerships are proving to be a way to solve many of these problems.
And so, whether it's through new methods of tax increments financing, which means that you could tax everybody within the neighborhoods that are being impacted and as property titles change, and then you could pay for those projects. Of course, I also am now located right across the street from here between First and Fourth on Mission. So, I'm in the district and have yet to find, I've found it to be actually a very exciting moment in time to really be part of the neighborhood, part of this growing community, which of course the Indian Museum represents. How have you seen the public's awareness and reaction to the river for over the last couple decades that you've been investing yourself in this project?
You know, I see the younger generation sort of, you know, of course, I resent the ageism because some of us are young at heart, but just, you know, in Los Angeles and one of my really wonderful young staffers is moved here from Michigan because she felt such an energy in Los Angeles. And, you know, people use space in a really interesting way. It's a rich experience. I've been in the river for 25 years.
My son had to clean up a dead cat when he was five when we were cleaning the river. And so his memories are very vivid about what the Ella River fails like. And I think when we were teaching a course at one point with Alex, there was a woman who wouldn't let you buy the river if you didn't listen to her playing opera and changing her basically hat and shoes multiple times. So, you know, I think, yes, I feel that not enough was done to really sort of celebrate the amazing work of many of the people in this room.
And I actually feel incredibly privileged to have worked with so many people that have been working along the river for the last couple decades, including of course Lewis and his whole team and Steve and many others who are not here. And so we think that at a grassroots level, because remember, it's not just the press, right? We do have social media. And I will say that the groups like the Project 51 and Leyla and Cat and others, they will cast out a message on a Thursday that it's Earth Day and we're going to do X and 500 people show up.
So I would put the sort of put the challenge out there to the journalists in the room to find out. I mean, those people don't read the LA Times. They just don't. And if they do, they're sort of somewhat suspect of what it, you know, what the information is that they're getting.
So the question is, you'd be interesting to do to canvas, like the people that are down there and the people that are really appreciating, enjoying and participating and that feel, for example, they come to some of us to say, why aren't you defending us in certain situations? So hence LA Moss and hence grown in LA, which is a series of nurseries that are getting built along the LA River and the I'm going to create enough plants for everybody who wants to create parks along the LA River, because right now we don't have enough plants to actually have these projects come to life. So before we finish, I'm hoping that you can share with us maybe a personal or maybe selfish favorite spot along the LA River for yourself. I have to be really honest.
I really love the wider part of the channel between the First and Fourth Street Bridge. And I'm just always, even though there isn't one plant, I'm just always amazed at the, basically, the smaller channel in the center and how that changes in color, depending on the time of day and the amount of water that goes in and out of it, but also the fauna that actually inhabits that space. One of my mentors, when it comes to urban ecology and fauna, is Gary George from the Audemars Society, who taught me that basically, you know, there is a tremendous amount of resiliency on the part of nature. And that's not to say that I don't think that water quality and access aren't important, but to some of the points that was made earlier, the whole channel is not going to change.
So we got to figure out a way to really, from a visual perspective and a sense of awe of what man and nature can sort of bring together, that piece, and it's because I've also spent more time there in the last year. As of last Friday, a year ago, that piece of river, that stretch is really meaningful to me. Do you feel good about the future of the LA River? I feel good about the future of the LA River.
You know, master plans are the 2007 master plan and then eventually the ecosystem restoration plan and then, you know, all of us traipsing, by the way, to Washington, D.C., about 40 of us to sort of convince Congress that it may sense master plans, and so it may sense master plans, ebb and flow, depending on environmental, social, economic conditions. And the plan has an opportunity to grow. And there is probably in the 52 miles, because remember, we only studied 32 ourselves. There's two sites.
That's 110 miles. And then if you really go out of a way, so you're talking about 10,000 acres, there's enough opportunities for hundreds of amazing architects. And yes, we're pleased that Frank Gehry, an amazing icon in architecture, is leading the charge for some of the projects. Now, we also think that the way we've worked so far, it was at level, and I think it's in American culture, is to be able to think about transparency as we work together.
And the fact is that we don't know what the plan is, we don't understand the plan right now, we're excited to see what the plan is going to look like, and we're very curious. So, you know, for those of us who have to go to including Alex, to about, you know, about, I don't know, it seemed like 180 community meetings in 16 months to get the master plan through the process, you know, the notion, you know, we're just immensely curious what's being cooked up. And we look forward to seeing what it is. So we're all just waiting for Frank Gehry to open up those windows and let us in.
Yes. Well, thank you so much for joining us here. Thanks for listening to our Connect Sessions one-to-one featuring interviews from Next Up The Elling River. Down in the Loveline Now that it's the podcast, I'm Matt Skilling's Composer Music.
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