UN-HOUSING

“Market Fringe and the Horizontal CO-OP in Santa Monica”

The project investigate prototypes to densify in a contemporary urban environment and discusses the possibilities of urban design that faces political, environmental and financial paradigm shits. The project re-programs a neighborhood in Santa Monica CA that has been redefined as a transit development area, ordering a station of the new Metro Line connecting downtown Los Angeles to the beach. As a new political base we assume a novel(Utopian but nevertheless interesting for our premises) financing model in which the entire neighborhood is to be transformed into a CO-OP, modeled after the traditional vertical CO-OPs in New York City. The horizontal CO-OP questions how one can re-conceptualize urban development in a new light. We designed new additions to the existing neighborhood that are able to house flexible programs, support dynamic itineraries, re-define public vs private entities, and create a vibrant sustainable new archipelago. The given site, a longitudinal swat of and that is approximately 68.5 acres, is made up by 14 blocks of generic house-in-the-middle-of-a-garden sites, a trailer park, a city park, headquarter of a biotechnology company and the recycling rash yards of the city of Santa Monica.

The market becomes the public space, which adopts an industrial language of the current site, and becomes a distribution infrastructure of regional magnitude, pulling people into the site, initiating an enrichment of social culture in the neighborhood. The market not only brings in more outside density of people, but also compliments those that reside there. Statistical studies reveal that an operating market will be able to offer suitable jobs for this area of Santa Monica, a neighborhood which rely on blue collar professions ranging from truck drivers and retail vendors. The CO-OP is introduced to protect current residents from potential gentrification with the introduction of the market. The shareholders of the homes will work and operate the market.

Pratt Institute 4th Year Advanced Studio with Dagmar Ricther.

collaboration with J. Park and S. Barysheva.