L. A. Now, Volume Two: Shaping a New Vision for Downtown Los Angeles: Seven Proposals

Shaping a New Vision for Downtown Los Angeles, a companion volume to L.A. Now, features the results of the design initiative--seven architectural proposals to meet the future needs of downtown Los Angeles--as well as a record of the critical process. Shaping a New Vision presents the full set of computer renderings and project descriptions for each of the proposals, with excerpts and photographs from the UCLA design juries, including provocative commentary by Dana Cuff, John Kaliski, Sylvia Lavin, Greg Lynn, Eric Owen Moss, Wolf Prix, Robert Somol, and Richard Weinstein, among many others.ABOUT THE TWO-VOLUME SETLos Angeles faces rapid, continuous growth in the new century. Even though today’s vital infrastructure and systems are pushed beyond capacity, the greater metropolis will receive an additional two million people by 2005. To prepare for this tremendous growth, the city must reconsider its planning strategies as well as the revitalization of the downtown core—the geographical and symbolic heart of Los Angeles and, potentially, the connective tissue for all of the city’s cultures. By applying original thought and creativity to the challenges of the downtown area, we can begin to plan now for the real consequences of Los Angeles’s future growth.Conceived by Richard Koshalek, L.A. Now is a collaborative design initiative to focus creativity on downtown Los Angeles and provide the foundation for its future development. L.A. Now brings together the work of UCLA architecture students under the direction of studio leader Thom Mayne (Morphosis), CalArts Graphic Design students, and Art Center film and photography students and others in two distinctive, lavishly illustrated books.Cover Photo Mark Lipson