A New Settlement for Education: Pitzer College, Branch Campus
Southern California Institute of Architecture, Fall 2005
Critic: Michael Rotondi

Program Statement:
Students are asked to design an inner-city residential college for Pitzer, one of the Claremont colleges. The people living and working here will be: elders (seniors), students, teachers, staff, store owners, and scholars-in-residence. The proposed campus is situated in a gap between the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles, CA. Major cross-streets include Vermont (commercial district) and Melrose (the vicinity of L.A. City College).

The freeway is seen as a "shear force" within the community, and the interstitial site is treated as an urban "gray zone": it is presently occupied by a warehouse and a transit yard. My project is a "forest of tubes" that attempts to re-claim and re-vitalize the site by restoring infrastructure and turning the freeway into a "pedestrian experience".

Enclosed spaces are treated as a capsule (i.e. car) within a public landscape. The tubes/fingers are transformed by their context: above the ground, on the ground, and in the ground. Above-ground tubes contain residential / academic program, and mimic the construction of freeway bridges. On-the-ground tubes spill into the landscape, creating public spaces (auditoria, BBQ pits, grass). In-the-ground tubes carve and split into libraries and study carrels in a homage to the sewers and tunnels beneath Los Angeles.

Diagrams / Preliminary Studies:

Click here for a view of my light-blur freeway studies (PDF format, 714k).
Click here for a view of my initial models and formal diagrams (PDF format, 1.05MB)