Ghosts of Downtown Los Angeles
Provisional Occupation: Renegade Occupation
Description: Design Communication was a course focused on teaching students how to effectively communicate their ideas visual. In this assignment, We were asked to take photos in downtown Los Angeles. Each student's photos undoubtedly had a common thread (Provisional Occupation), We were then placed in a group where we found our common thread. A Series of Post Cards were created and were later a part of an interactive exhibit where people came to mail their favorite card.
Provisional Occupation: Transportation
Group Name: Renegade Occupation
Right: A collage of the images taken for my Provisional Occupation
Our Occupation explained:
Today, many of downtown Los Angeles’ neighborhoods are no longer occupied in the same way they were originally intended. In a city notorious for its lack of public space, transportation, people, and architecture alike occupy the overall city fabric in a temporary or provisional way, and this type of “occupation” is based on existing and additive systems found in surrounding neighborhoods.
The universal use of the car has caused congestion and inconvenience for many of the residents, employees, and commuters and leaves many looking for other means of transportation when entering the heart of Los Angeles. Recently people in the city are turning to alternative means of transportation, such as buses, bicycling or even walking in order to alleviate the stress of sitting on a bottle-- necked freeway, and to avoid expensive parking fees. Provisionally, buses and other public forms of transportation become our “legs” to get us around the city; crowded freeways become like parking lots, and ironically parking lots become obsolete due to high costs.
Upon closer inspection the existing architectural fabric in the Downtown area seems to form thresholds, and niches, which present opportunities for occupation on a personal scale. People have begun to transform and use these niches to fit their current and temporary needs. Overhangs, foyers, and abandoned store fronts are provisionally being occupied to meet the needs of an individual. Pershing Square, exemplifying this tendency has become like a large living room where occupants have essentially domesticated the existing public space.
In Downtown Los Angeles the boundaries of public and private space are continuously blurred. Seemingly private spaces are becoming temporarily public, and public spaces are temporarily becoming private. The indiscreet presence of surveillance cameras in public spaces promotes circumspect behavior and the perception of space as private. Conversely, private events being held in public spaces provisionally grant opportunities to create environments where the boundaries between inside and outside are ambiguous and less defined.
Here, at the core of the city of Angels, occupations occurs at multiple scales and takes on unfathomable nuances. Transportation, people and architecture are equal players in defining space occupation, this is a city where a car stuck on the freeway traffic becomes an extension of the driver’s office, a storefront sill turns into a bar stool, the ledge of a fountain becomes a theater rehearsal room. Here public and private exchange roles and conceals their boundaries contributing to the unique and sometimes unfamiliar history and culture of LA.
Initial Individual Occupation
Renegade Occupation:
My topic is generally concerned with Transportation in Los Angeles. The renegade occupation in the past could have been considered the car. However, the cars mass use has caused congestion and inconvenience for many of the residents, and leaves many looking for other
means of transportation when entering the heart of Los Angeles. The renegade occupation has now become the alternative means of transportation which also adds to the density of the city.