An Artsy Shantytown

Down an alleyway framed by chain-link fences and sagging brick industrial buildings, inside a dimly lit, musty warehouse and up a flight of worn wooden stairs, the future of cities and suburbs, homes and offices, airports and train stations, was literally hanging from the rafters last weekend.

It was in this unlikely venue that students from the Southern California Institute of Architecture--better known as SCI-Arc--presented their thesis projects, their version of finals and the culmination of five months of work. Themes reflected individual lives, as well as global issues: nomadic lifestyles, cyber culture, diversity, urban sprawl. From designing a cultural center for Tibetan refugees to building a prototype of a movable illuminated partition, graduate and undergraduate students shared their vision of the present and the future with teachers, visiting professors, fellow students, alumni, friends and family, and anyone else interested in architecture who happened by.

Though this yearly ritual has been part of SCI-Arc’s curriculum for years, there was a distinct difference this time: The cutting-edge, 29-year-old private school moved last fall from its Marina del Rey campus, where it was for eight years, to temporary digs in downtown L.A.--a huge white tent and trailers set up on a vacant lot at the intersection of Merrick and 4th streets, to be exact. The temporary quarters should last until fall of this year, by which time the school’s new headquarters, an abandoned railroad freight terminal at Santa Fe Avenue and 3rd Street, is supposed to be renovated.

The planned move from the Westside was hastened when a financial bonus was offered to vacate early so an advertising agency could move in. With no permanent building ready for the school’s new home, a full-service, semi-permanent tent was pitched.

Bringing SCI-Arc downtown is also part of a grander plan by the city and developers to bring new life to the area south of Union Station and east of Little Tokyo, which already includes a mix of toy manufacturers and wholesalers, fashion and flower districts, artists’ galleries and lofts, and a smattering of retail businesses and restaurants.

Although other locations around the city were considered for the new campus, downtown offered the possibility of spacious studio and classroom space--as well as plenty of room for parking, potential student housing, and the chance to be on the leading edge of an urban renaissance. Indeed, in the near future, students will be able to walk to a new cathedral and concert hall designed by two of the world’s leading architects--Spaniard Jose Rafael Moneo and Angeleno Frank O. Gehry.

The transition proved bumpy at first--some of the 385 students, who come from all over the world, grumbled about the precipitous move to unfinished studios and glitchy computers--but they now seem to be adapting well to their new environment.

Thesis projects are set up on the upper floor of a warehouse a block from campus, complete with exposed beams, pipes and cobwebs. The downstairs is used for machine and wood shops. Students are not given specific assignments but are encouraged to develop their own interests. The 45-minute presentations and critiques are a curious mix of formality and informality. Friendly observers sit in a semicircle on folding metal chairs. The front row is reserved for the handful of visiting and resident critics who question and challenge each of the students. Several presentations run simultaneously, with some guests wandering from group to group. The chill inside this cobweb-riddled warehouse found many huddled in jackets and sweaters, gripping cups of coffee.

Tenzin Thokme focuses on the migration of his Tibetan countrymen in his project, “Emerging Sanctuary Within Dispersion (a Tibetan Cultural Center), Cheviot Hills.” An increase in Tibetan migration to the United States prompted the 36-year-old graduate student to conceive a cultural center that would help preserve his people’s traditions and customs.

“There are first-generation Tibetan-Americans now,” says Thokme, who has lived in the U.S. for 10 years. “The parents and elders are thinking about how they can continue the past to the next generation. There are a number of kids who go to school and come home changed. Change is not a bad thing, but some are unwanted changes. The parents and grandparents want to pass ideas and traditions to them, so they can make better decisions about making changes.”

Thokme’s cardboard model includes a chapel, courtyard, meeting rooms and living quarters that encourage old and young to mingle. Although he decided against using symbolic shapes in his structures, he designed the chapel roof in the shape of the leaf of the bodhi tree, considered the “Tree of Enlightenment” in Buddhist culture.

Critics fire off questions, from the feasibility of a certain material to the bigger questions of why: Why build it this way? What are the social, philosophical and economic ramifications of the project? Students are pushed to dig for deeper answers. Debates often turn lively, with critics questioning critics and students mining their brains for responses, sometimes looking like deer caught in headlights.

Thokme’s project is praised for its themes of bringing generations together, but he is asked: How do you give meaning to this particular place? How are landscaped spaces around the center to be used?

“We are trying to teach them to have a self-confidence about their proposal,” says Frederic Levrat, an architecture professor from Columbia University and a visiting critic. “It’s nothing to present something to a board of architects, but when you have to present it to a community board, that’s something else. It’s other people’s money and interests and usability, and very often we [architects] have to negotiate. The most important thing is to explain your idea, your vision, your conviction. The most interesting project is the one that generates discussion within the panel.”

Levrat says seeing the projects teaches him a few things, as well, including “the understanding of the culture from a 25-year-old student. Each one has his own vision, his own understanding of the culture.”

SCI-Arc professor Karl Chu explains that his task as critic is to “make the students aware of the larger implications of their work on many different levels: the material, the methodology, philosophical, financial, technological, and ultimately whether this is going to be marketable.”

Graduate student Jasmine Wu addresses the uncertainty of our planet’s future with her project--clothing that becomes shelter. In “Soft Architecture(s): Shape- and Program-Shifting,” she describes a world where “geopolitical, economic and ecological shifts are occurring with ever-increasing frequency.”

For people to better survive, she created a compact backpack that unfolds into a jacket and inflates to become a small tent--architecture for the body. She explains the materials she used (lightweight, man-made, water-repellent textiles) and the various stages of transformation.

A question: Did she consider gender? The jacket looks distinctly feminine. Wu agrees that the prototype does look more feminine than masculine but explains she didn’t want any superfluous pieces, such as pant legs; everything had to be integrated into the whole.

Across the room, graduate student Anne Barakat puts the finishing touches on her project, simply titled “Motel.” It includes a suspended red box embedded with peepholes, which reveal stark, eerie fisheye views of rooms, nooks, crannies, hallways. “The spaces I design are microscapes,” she explains, “and the peepholes bring you into those spaces.”

Her parents, Doug and Mary Barakat, flew from Des Moines for the event and burned the midnight oil with their 27-year-old daughter, helping her set up.

“It’s very special,” Barakat says of her parents’ support. “Especially when they were here last night, and they really understood the stress involved and saw how much work and money goes into this.”

Adds her father: “It’s been fun to see the summation of her 3 1/2 years of hard work.”

Some of this hard work has been completed under challenging circumstances--a makeshift campus on a vacant lot. Architect Michael Rotondi, a faculty member, former director and an alumnus of the school, suggests that despite the students’ trepidation, “people are living the ultimate thesis project right now, rebuilding the school. It’s going to be their school.”

The tent, seen from the exterior, might appear to be a new home for Cirque du Soleil. Inside, it’s another story. Studios, where students work on projects, are set up along each wall, with a hallway down the middle and a small library at one end. Within the studios, students sit at unfinished plywood desks, topped with everything from iMacs to models in progress. Old, sagging sofas of the brown plaid variety are plunked here and there. Walls are instant bulletin boards, decorated with Al’s Bar fliers, photos and school notices. “Pinups”--or a professor’s quick critique of students’ projects--are held impromptu in the hallway. It’s an artsy shantytown.

Surrounding the tent are trailers converted into classrooms, computer labs, a student store and administrative offices. More signs of impermanence in a strange new world--guards patrol the area and a catering truck is parked outside the tent.

“At first everyone was shocked,” says 24-year-old undergraduate student Kevin Wronske. “But this semester is better than last. I think it’s fun to be part of this transition period.”

“I thought this was a really exciting place for students to be,” says Robb Walker, a 41-year-old graduate student currently at work on a model of an office building that will also house a grocery store. “There’s a lot going on. We’re on the beginning of the wave, and this will be a tremendous catalyst for positive changes down here.”

Faculty member Robert Mangurian concurs: “This area is going to become something that we can’t quite predict. At the other campus, in a sense we were isolated, but here we’re not. Talk about diversity, multiculturalism, global economy--here it is.”

It is life imitating art, or architecture. The students have become part of a process of reinvigorating a decayed urban center, dealing with real fears about crime, putting down roots, and the question mark about how downtown will evolve. Students were able to have some input on their future home, expressing desires for dust-free, quiet work space.

The SCI-Arc move is only part of an attempt to boost business and housing downtown. Besides the proposed 89,000-square-foot campus for an expanded student body of 420, the school also has hopes that developers might create nearby student residences, as well as shops and a grocery store. Other abandoned buildings are being turned into offices for high-tech businesses, residential lofts and movie studio sound stages. Although previous attempts at revitalizing the neighborhood didn’t stick, this could be the right synergy: an unprecedented cultural focus on design combined with SCI-Arc’s reputation for focusing on innovative ideas.

Neil Denari, SCI-Arc’s current director, is certain that the school, which has long been part of network of high-level design institutions that extends throughout the region, will play a major role in the transformation of the city’s center, and he hopes that by combining historic preservation with new building, L.A. will become a model for other cities.

“This is not just an institution coming down here,” he says. “We are internationally known. We have nerve, but we also have good intentions to make the culture better. We’re not down here to sort of tear it up and be anarchists. That’s not what design and transforming things is about.”

Likewise, Rotondi isn’t worried at all about the school’s future here. Its origins, he says, are steeped in forging ahead through the unknown.

“SCI-Arc has always in my mind been ‘Lord of the Flies’ with a good ending,” he says. “It emerged from this primordial sludge. One faculty member got kicked out of his classroom because something wasn’t right structurally, so he took his students on a walking tour of downtown. You could show the city and talk about it, instead of showing slides. We are going to be seen as pioneers in this area of town. With all the students here, it’s just going to invigorate it.”