UCLA's Chinmayi Suri, Xinran Ge, and Xue Zhao Reshape LA's Mountaintops
"The iconic hills of Los Angeles not only play a role in the city's eccentric history, but also shape its land use trends over the decades. Chinmayi Suri, Xinran Ge ,and Xue Zhao are students in UCLA Architecture and Urban Design's Master of Architecture II (M.Arch.II program). Archinect connected with the trio to discuss their final project, Third Mountain. Studying within the school's IDEAS - Urban Strategy program led by Associate Adjunct Professor Jeffrey Inaba, Gillian Shaffer, and David Jimenez Iniesta, the students explore a the addition of new urban fabric for the city of Los Angeles. According to the group, "These new sites [Third Mountain project] create a different identity for Los Angeles’s urban fabric, inspiring new glamour and ideas of building with earth and landscapes."
Image courtesy of Chinmayi Suri, Xinran Ge and Xue Zhao The research-based projects at UCLA's IDEA's campus, according to the educators, push students to not only conceptualize possible outcomes through data and prototyping but also to foster solutions for possible futures in landuse.
Please briefly describe your thesis/final project and your inspiration.
LA’s history has long been associated with beautiful hillscapes and the iconic case study houses on the hills. With the increase of dangerous fires, monetary loss, and a decrease in insurance for these hills, the Third Mountain project regrades the existing slopes to reduce the spread of fire. It brings these areas of earth down to the flatlands as a new, sustainable building material. These new sites create a different identity for Los Angeles’s urban fabric, inspiring new glamour and ideas of building with earth and landscapes.
If the first mountains of Los Angeles were formed naturally and the second mountains by postwar clearance and demolition of mountain tops, then the third mountain synthesizes nature and artifice into an architecture made up of the materiality of land. The first mountain has found itself transported and transformed for life in 2050 LA, rising to the challenge of a new age of climate change threats. "— Katherine Guimapang, Jul. 17, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Archinect website.
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