As global citizens, we are quickly becoming aware of the invisible networks that constitute our complex lives. No longer can we complacently live in a manufactured vacuum where consumer goods magically appear before us. We must begin situating ourselves within a context of ecological production and consumption. We are slipping into an era of maximalism where multiple networks and their critical tipping points seem to be around every corner whether environmental, financial, educational, or agricultural. Food production and consumption has become a flashpoint in a discussion that seems to encompass the most essential and humbling aspects of who we are, how we survive, and what our relationship is to our planet.

With Gastro-polis, we have chosen to challenge the eco-politics of Los Angeles, and more specifically the site of Mac Arthur Park. We believe that this site is emblematic of many seemingly intractable problems both regional and international where politics of water, people migration, and food production all seem to intertwine. Mac Arthur Park is an urban fault line serving as a mass transit node and home to Salvadorean immigrants and historical Angelino architecture. Resting in the green spaces of the park and along the lake’s edge, the topography thickens to contain (3 stories) of retail and services programming, a plateau that allows the visitors to travel and meander along the coiled massing. Bridging across Wilshire Blvd., the Project erupts out of the ground becoming a vertical farm as it stands upright in voluptuous form converting solar energy into crop yields.

The viscous enclosure of the farm embodies an intensive integrated machine with many parts. In response to the water shortages in California in large part due to the watering of suburban lawns, a vertical network of aeroponic farming will serve to produce a large amount of quick yielding crops. The vertically stacked floor plates of the farm and the tiered armatures will allow maximum solar gain and oxygenation of the root systems. The Cow Palace is a series of cellular bubbles that metastasize up into the building connected by corkscrew ramps. The Cow Palace provides a translucent architectural chamber for the rotated pasturing of cows. Its methane capture will be directed to diversified farming practices distributed throughout the farming tower. At every threshold in the production cycle, opportunities for reuse of byproduct will be captured. Housing of supplemental program will be provided to farmers, workshops, educational symposia, restaurants, et al. This is a new typology of urbanism where the skyscraper serves as greenhouse armature, and the internalized garden/farm serves as a backdrop to urban activities and program.

This is a radical departure from the traditional images of the farm, those that have long ceased to become the norm. In fact it is the agro-industry that still perpetuates deceitful marketing, imaging the pastoral farm set against rolling hills and sunsets. The industrial farm has already become a solipsistic machine. Gastro-polis is a contemporary version that harnesses the ecological feedback systems where food production maximizes its benefits of inputs and outputs with each cycle of harvest or production. And as a matter of cultural and public policy, we must begin to integrate farming, artisanal traditions, commerce, and community outreach under one systematized ‘roof’, even if this roof has become a vertical permeable skin. Gastro-polis provides a deeply rooted urban network, building alliances between communities, local government, and private enterprise. With on-site farming as an anchor, this invaluable urban resource will serve as more than a food silo. By offering a highly symbiotic and integrated architecture, Gastro-polis is a flagship megaplex that self-consciously capitalizes on its manifold abilities to entertain, feed, serve, educate, and profit.


Project Assistant
justin Williams