oneshotexhibition.org blog

“Treat others with respect as much as you want others to treat you with respect.”

Los Angeles Riots of 1992 was the pivitol moment of race relations not only for the country but the whole world. It showed there was an underlying tensions between the LAPD and the minority community, especially in the black community in South LA.

The question is: “Have we as a society move forward in trying to bridge race relations in the private, political and social spectrum in this country?” In some ways yes and other ways no. Yes, we have the first black president, President Barrack Obama, but there is still hatred for him by a few Jesus Freaks who uses the name of God to spew venom and hatred towards the president because he’s black. Still minorities struggle to have their voices heard and mistreatment.

Do architects and designs have a role in producing works that bridge that gap? Will have to see.

Song of the Blog:  Living in the City by Stevie Wonder in the Album Innervision

One of things in moving away from car culture that lasted for more than 50 years is to develop areas that are pedestrian friendly near transportation stops, meaning transportation oriented development (TOD); Make places more inviting and pleasing of the senses by integrating mixed use, open space and connectivity to the neighborhood.

One sort of banal and mundane approach of the typical urban sprawl that hasn’t brought any revitalization nor a paradigm shift of urban renewal into a community is the proposed commercial development at the corner of Woodman Avenue and Oxnard Street in Van Nuys (it’s really called Valley Glen for real estate purposes and local governing councils). It’s right in the center of a transportation stop for the gold line and is a perfect opportunity to have a new type of development in that corner with some good design acumen. This type of development is the same approach that disenfranchises communities than to more forward into a sustainable society.

This development could exacerbate the mindless cost to extend the practice of more parking lots and boxy buildings for the area that doesn’t tell about the people, area and locale of its richness and diversity. When will there be some kind of civic approach towards urban design that has the capacity to embrace the neighborhood and capitalize urban growth.

It is time to rethink this type of development and design, to bring down the hideous mini-mall that’s going to be obsolete.

The site on the corner of  Woodman and Oxnard where the mini-mall is being develop.

  The proposed development of vacant lot. A typical approach to Urban Sprawl near the TOD site on the Orange Line.

Close up of the building. Check out one of the name of the businesses (Modern Design). Far away from the truth.

Song of the Blog: the pre-released song Georgia by Eagle and Talon on the up-coming CD THRACIAN

The biggest debate in the general shift of neighborhoods that has pitted neighbor against neighbor is older neighborhoods that are dominated by the middle class or lower middle class being inundated by development to increase value in its area, changing the look for the better and allowing young professionals to move in, causing a dissension on what it should be presented as. Some people call it white flight, others call it gentrification, but the truth is that it has created a bastion of the old guard neighbors fighting against the affluent who want to improve the neighborhood.

The word Gentrification is defined by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary : the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents.

Some may quote that it will eliminate crime in the area, which bodes well, but in the meantime it will displace and discourage the lower income people to afford living in the area close to work, unless they make enough capital to live there, which means working 2 jobs and allowing more tenants move in dilapidated units or houses that becomes a hazard for public safety. It would not only cause a class struggle but also race struggle, immigrants trying to resort their means of survival and live the American dream.

One example gentrification running amok is the article in the LA times regarding the Echo Park/ Elysian Park area. It is one hotly debated area besides Santa Monica and parts of the Westside and serves to notice that the community is still redefining itself, urbanistically. It is a more complex matter which geographically and creatively, how are new development, businesses and people could basically turn a page of a culture that is diverse in nature and is dealing with increase population and traffic with no center or point of interest.

Another one is the prospect of East LA and Boyle Heights is in verge of urban renewal. Boyle Heights has a different approach in which much of the new businesses and development are home-based, meaning there is no outside sources influencing the landscape of the neighborhood and the racial make-up is largely Hispanic, there is no such movement in white flight. If there was, hell would break loose.

Much of the shifting urban landscape is how to balance the area for affordable housing, urban renewal, culture identity and sustaining itself from shifting away from its historiography and spatial identity. More and more, designers, planners and architects are needed to know about the area’s certain nuances and characters in order to come up with theories, ideas and proposals that embraces the community rather than to facilitate the masses.

Muffler Shop in East LA

Song of the Blog: People as Places as People by Modest Mouse on the CD We Were Dead Before the Ship Ever Sank

One of the most intriguing aspects of social space recreated by crowds is Bubble Gum Alley in Downtown San Luis Obispo. Started in 1960 and has never once been clean from the massive wads of gum sticking into wall. It’s pretty much a institution which makes the town unique other than historical preservation of building and open space. You might say it is part grafitti which power of the people takes over a space or a wall.

Bubble Gum  Alley in Downtown San Luis Obispo

Bubble Gum Alley from the other end.

of social involvement and spatial engagement.

Song of the Blog: John Cage Bubblegum by  Stereolab on the CD Refried Ectoplasm: Switch On, vol. 2

Hearst Castle by Julia Morgan in San Simeon, CA

View of the main castle.

macroscopic view of one of the marble sculptures of Hearst Castle’s collections.

One of the Halls leading up to the upper floors at the main building.

View of the indoor pool

Song of the Blog: Searching For My Good Eye Close by Soundgarden on the Album Badmotorfinger

One of most advantages living in Los Angeles is that you will be living in the center of the city and you could go for ride for 30 minutes and be at the mountains or the ocean in no time. One place is the San Vicente mountain peak along a dirt road on Mulholland Drive, west of the 405 freeway, where it was a former site of a missile control center during the cold war, LA96C.

It is one of the most advantageous views of LA where you could see the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles Basin, and the Ocean. On a good day you will be able to see Santa Catalina Island and Santa Barbara Island. The tower itself is a deck where you are able take those views. It kinda reminds the work of John Lautner’s Chemosphere House (Malin’s Residence) in the Hollywood Hills with its single column supporting the deck.

After the site was close in 1974, it became the biggest party site for everybody in the Valley, mostly teenagers and it happen mostly at night where bomb fires and beer bottles litter the area. In 1996, the site became a nationally recognize park where they refurbished the old tower and added easy access to the tower of concrete paths and metal staircase to the observation deck. It’s one of LA’s treasured history.

Nike Observation Tower on San Vicente Peak along dirt Mulholland Drive.

Nike tower similarities to John Lautner’s Chemosphere Residence (photo by Jules Shulman)

View from the observation tower looking at the San Fernando Valley.

Song the Blog: Last Year’s Leaves by Blanche on the CD Little Amber Bottles

The Historic Filipinotown in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles is an important part of Filipino-Americans gaining an identity where they are known for their ability to adapt and do it well but in the other time seems to be lost on creating a center of presence for the community that they could proudly call their own.

There is no recognizable landmarks or any business like restaurants, markets and commercials entities that are Filipino own, let alone there are more Hispanics and Latinos living in the neighborhood than Filipinos. The only Filipino restaurant noticeable along the major streets is Bahay Kudo on 2330 W Temple St. Unlike Koreatown down at the Vermont Blvd. to Thaitown along East Hollywood Blvd., the historic Filipinotown has fail to create an essence of Filipino pride and identity. No buildings of significance that really define urbanistically and culturally in the area, especially along major streets like Beverly Blvd., Temple Street, Alvarado Blvd. and Glendale Blvd. There are some mini malls and multi-housing units that named their buildings synonymous to the Philippines locales (Luzon Plaza, Mindanao and Manila Terrace), which looks banal and mundane like any other place in Los Angeles.

The only monument significant to Filipino-Americans is the Filipino World War II Veterans Memorial Monument by Cheri Gaulke on Lake Street Park in 227 N. Lake Street, Los Angeles, CA 90057. It is the only Filipino monument in the United States, which recognized the struggles of Filipinos Veterans in receiving benefits for their service and their role in World War II, especially surviving the Bataan Death March. The problem is the locale of the monument, which is situated in the middle of a residential neighborhood, not along the majors streets where it could be accessible and be seen in part of the urban fabric.

Today, most Filipinos live in dispersed areas around Los Angeles, far from Historic Filipinotown. Most of them created patches of entrepreneurial business in Panorama City, Cerritos, Carson and Eagle Rock which becomes a lively part of Filipino-culture but the truth is there has not been solidarity amongst Filipinos to create an identity urbanistically that they could feel proud of.

The signifying that you enter into Historic Filipinotown on Temple Street.

Luzon Plaza @ the corner of Temple Street and Bonnie Brae.

Filipino-American Community of Los Angeles Hall on 1740 W. Temple Street.

The sign for Filipino-American Community of Los Angeles which is barely seen from the both the fast moving cars and walking pedestrians.

Filipino World War II Veterans Memorial Monument @ 227 N. Lake Street, Los Angeles, CA 90057

Filipino World War II Veterans Memorial Monument looking east.

Song of the Blog: Bebot by Black Eye Peas on the CD Monkey Business

East of Downtown Los Angeles, across the LA River, Boyle Heights is probably the most understood communities and the most culturally vibrant areas in LA where the next couple of years there is going to be a resurgence of redevelopment.

With the extended Gold Line going through the neighborhood, the Wyvernwood Garden Apartments will be redevelop at a tune of 2 billion dollars, which will quadruple the size of the current site. Even though some people will say gentrification will transform itself into a another Venice in the eastside, where prices will increase and will start to remove small business in the area, but the possibility of it won’t occur until LA become more dense and corporate business start plotting their shops and headquarters next to local gangs territory.

We’ll see what happens when good urban planning and design will prevail in a otherwise historical suburban neighborhood.

Mariachi Plaza @ Boyle Heights (by Scheer Images)

Breed Street Shul Synagogue on 247 North Breed Street. One of the oldest Synagogues in Los Angeles. (Scheer Images)

Front doors of Breed Street Shul Synagogue (Scheer Images)

Torres Closeout @ 2005 E. 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90033 (sells CAB Streetwear)

Song of the Blog: Estoy Sentado Aqui (“I am seated here”) by Los Lobos on the Album La Pistola y El Corazon

The Disney Hall alongside with the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

One of the things that make cities successful is the dispersement of public programs or venues serving the community throughout the city. It seems to be Los Angeles is still lacking a good urban design format in which make sense in creating a multiple centers of interest surrounding Los Angeles, especially downtown.

Back in the eighties and early nineties, like most cites, Downtown Los Angeles was a big sewer rat hole with all its pimps, prostitutes, homelessness, drug addicts and derelicts. No one in their right mind would enter downtown at night unless you were adventurous or be able to bring their own clean needles and do that stuff.

Now, there is a resurgence of new development of residence, institutional headquarters, performance and entertainment centers that is catapulting Los Angeles into a world-class city. Downtown Los Angeles has seen this much attention in reshaping civic

But one problem is the imperceptive placement of the Disney Hall next to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Why is it that the case when they serve the same purpose? Is there a rhyme or reason? Where they’re any consideration in other areas besides to build it right next to the Music Center?

This calamity could only be force by capitalizing on saving the Music Center viability or government/Disney Company insistence in having it on that site. The streetscape surrounding Disney Hall is not compelling as compare to the Paris Opera House by Charles Garnier or the situation the Music Center has with the Civic Corridor, which integrates with the direct axis from City Hall to the Department of Water and Power Building.

Paris Opera House by Charles Garnier

It would have been well served if Disney Hall were place in a decentralize zone of downtown, somewhere within the boundaries of downtown where it could be strategically place of urban conditions and connectedness. Sometimes history plays a role for newer cities (ie. Los Angeles) but not necessarily model from well established cites in Europe, but to gain knowledge and to implement a thoughtful and resourceful urban design. Buildings need to be in a macroscopic level, rather than microscopic level in regards of urban design and territory, and the program of the building itself plays part of it.

Song of the Blog: All a Dem a Do by Noiseshaper and Juggla from the CD The Signal

The eastern part of the Los Angeles region, the City of Downey, home of the Carpenters, the Blasters, Weird Al Yankovic and James Hetfield of Metallica, is a blue-collar suburban neighborhood where the major industry was the Rockwell Rocketdyne division (aerospace industry) and Coca-Cola distribution factory. Mostly a flatland territory, dominated by your usual suspects of strip malls, ginger bread ranch homes and car-dealership lots.

A great deal of the area has not transform itself a situation what is happening in the Westside of Los Angeles with gentrification, high property values, old mom and pop establishment disappearing and at times snobbery of its residences, usually they are transplants. You could still find Chris’ and Pitts Restaurant on 9243 Lakewood Blvd. and one of the original MacDonald’s hamburger stands (3rd oldest), which also has a mini museum on location. These are landmarks that define our culture and the city of Downey.

Like most suburban territories, McMansions has become more prevalent in the neighborhoods, and even the destruction of cultural and historical landmarks like Johnies Broiler on Firestone Boulevard and Old River School Road.

Johnies Broiler has been embroiled in a discussion whether it is salvageable since part of the structure has been torn down. There has been a grass-roots initiative to save Johnies and a article in the LA Times showing the importance preserving what is left in a ever changing landscape that loses a bit of history.

What are the possibilities in reforming and reconstituting Johnies Broiler into a different use where elements of a bygone era can be integrated into a new form of development and revitalization? Can that marriage last under the cloud of progress where history, redevelopment and rezoning plays a part in suburban neighborhoods becoming more urban?

These are the challenges in which urban designers and architects must tackle in the ever-changing suburban landscape.

The oldest Mcdonalds w/ Speedee on top of the sign @ the corner of Lakewood Blvd. and Florence Ave. in Downey.

The original golden arches.

The old town center in the City of Downey @ Downey Ave.

One of the oldest homes in Downey @ the corner of Paramount Blvd. and 3rd Street.

The oldest house in Downey with its water tower.

Johnies Broiler on Firestone Blvd. near the corner of Old Rivers School Road in Downey.
Signage view of Johnies Broiler looking west on Firestone Blvd.

Destructive view of the car canopy @ Johnies Broiler

A closer look of Johnies Broiler

Song of the Blog: We Only Just Begun by the Carpenters on the album Close to You