L.A. Recalculated


L.A Recalculated © Smout Allen + Geoff Manaugh


Project by Laura Allen, Geoff Manaugh, and Mark Smout




L.A. Recalculated is a distributed cartographic drawing—part map, part plan, part deep section—that takes conceptual inspiration from the book OneFiveFour by Lebbeus Woods. There, Woods describes a hypothetical city shaped by the existential threat of mysterious seismic events surging through the ground below. In order to understand how this unstable ground might undermine the metropolis, the city has augmented itself on nearly every surface, with “oscilloscopes, refractors, seismometers, interferometers, and other, as yet unknown instruments,” Woods writes, “measuring light, movement, force, change.”






The surface of Los Angeles is both active and porous. A constant upwelling of liquid hydrocarbons and methane gas is everywhere met with technologies of capture, mitigation, and control. In our proposal, wheeled seismic creepmeters measure the movement of the Earth as part of an experimental lab monitors potentially hazardous leaks of oil and tar underground.



The speed of light was accurately measured for the first time in this city of sunshine and cinema. Using complex scientific instrumentation assembled from rotating hexagonal prisms, mirrors, and pulses of light, housed inside small, architecturally insignificant shacks in the mountains behind Los Angeles, one of the fundamental constants of the universe was cracked.



In the heart of the city, atop the old neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine, erased to make way for Dodger Stadium, we propose a series of 360º planetariums to be built. These not only reconnect Los Angeles with the stars it can no longer see; they also allow simulated glimpses into the Earth’s deep interior, where the planet’s constantly rearranging tectonic plates promise a new landscape to come.






Seismic counterweights have long been used to help stabilize skyscrapers in an earthquake zone; usually found at the tops of towers, these dead weights sway back and forth during temblors like vast and silent bells. Here, a field of subterranean pendulums has been affixed beneath the city to sway—and counter-sway—with every quake, a kind of seismic anti-doomsday clock protecting the city from destruction.









Through sites such as Griffith Observatory and the telescopes of Mt. Wilson, the history of Los Angeles is intimately connected to the rise of modern astronomy. The city’s widely maligned landscape of freeways and parking lots has been narratively reinvigorated through the installation of gates, frames, and other architectural horizon lines, aligning the city with solstices, stars, and future constellations.








www.smoutallen.com | @SmoutAllen

Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Delicious Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Digg Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Facebook Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Google+ Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on LinkedIn Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Pinterest Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on reddit Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on StumbleUpon Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Twitter Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Add to Bookmarks Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Email Share 'L.A. Recalculated' on Print Friendly