Did you know a 51-mile river through the city of Los Angeles? It might not be immediately recognizable as a river, but it's there. In a radical attempt to prevent flooding in the 100s, the Army Corps of Engineers basically turned the whole river in a giant drainage channel by locking in concrete. This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine, investigating the vision of landscape architect Mia Lehrer to remedy the situation by transforming the empty space in a public greenway, and a famous feature of Los Angeles.
Since the office of landscape architect based in Los Angeles Mia Lehrer, located near the western edge of Koreatown, you might not know that Los Angeles river. It is not visible from here - instead we can see other things L.A. is known for: the Hollywood sign, traffic, billboards, a dense urban network that always works. In fact, unless you have reason against it, you can not see the river at all. In its current form, it is the abandoned, the brutalist evidence of past battles in the city with seasonal flooding, a quick way to quickly move the water to the sea. For many, it is more like a scene from urban design-crime opportunities and missteps missed, begging to correct. If Lehrer has his way, it will be corrected for Los Angeles, the city with the huge drainage canal, is Los Angeles, city of the river.
Although largely invisible to the street level, the river - 51 miles US Army Corps of Engineers flood control channel - a giant slices and final cut by the mega Los Angeles area. Definition of large parts of the city, is perhaps the best lens through which to understand how Lehrer, concentrated in the city she called home since 1979, but well beyond the boundaries of the discipline. His version of landscape architecture is more like alchemy, addressing the landscape in a deeper sense, social.
The 61-year-old Lehrer stands proudly in a dress earth-tone and fluid talismanic jewelry, drawings, overlooks spread over a large conference table. Draw a wavy line and dotting his finger at key points on each side, Lehrer said, "The river is huge, but it is composed of many different projects, large and small. Each of them is testing the limits of how people can work together. "
for almost 20 years, supported by his eponymous firm Mia Lehrer + Associates, she worked with the city, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and community groups such as friends the Los Angeles river (Folar) to re-imagine how this infrastructure gap graffitied and largely inaccessible, dividing up and down parts of its route, can become a unifying, living element. Due largely to his efforts, the river became, of which we speak, and urban initiative discussed more visible in the city. Once derisively known as a "concrete coffin," the river has more recently become a symbol of urban regeneration, which triggered the next wave of seizures of speculative land.
Lehrer was a key author of the blueprint Los Angeles River revitalization 07, a document designed to help the city plans a framework for future revitalization. Identify over 240 potential projects, the plan helped to crystallize and coordinate all the moving parts that had once made it difficult to communicate and move forward initiatives. From 06 to 2013, she also worked with the Army Corps on the area with the benefits of restoration and opportunities for the revitalization (ARBOR) study, which identified and visualize the possibilities of improving the character river and access while enhancing the hydrological performance. Both studies were triggered by changes in (EPA) Clean Water Act by the Environmental Protection Agency dating back to 1987, which tasked significant reductions in pollutant discharges to the sea.
For Lehrer, it was an opportunity for the city to do more than just clean up the river to comply the EPA; he had a chance to fundamentally change the nature and function of the river. Lehrer's passion for rescripting scale city's infrastructure dates back to his childhood in El Salvador. "Nature was always present and palpable," she said. "I am always aware and he was always in my mind."
She remembers how, when she was a young girl, DDT had damaged coastal ecosystems. "I remember the Israeli experts who came to help reverse the damage and the image always stuck with me, you can arrange things like that, make things better. My father was a builder so it was also influenced early. He knew how to get things done. "
When she came to the United States first to attend Tufts University in Boston, she thought she was going to study international relations and regional planning. His senior thesis examined the impact that dams in El Salvador had on communities and habitats. While attending a conference at Harvard, she met one of the single most important numbers of his career - and landscape architect Peter Walker 9/11 Memorial designer, who encouraged him to pursue a master's degree in landscape architecture at the school of Design school (GSD), where he was on the faculty. "I knew I did not want to become an architect," she said. "But I also knew that I loved understand and make the place."
To date, she considers him a mentor. Lehrer points out the window of a garden in the street. "It is normal," she said, "I move my office here and just before the window is one of its projects." Carl Steinitz, another GSD professor, also a formative influence. "He gave us a way to think of the environment as regards the big picture, and our ability to influence the world through responsible design," she said.
The real turning point, however, was to see expansive, meticulously detailed drawings of Frederick Law Olmsted when she was a graduate student. "It was a visceral reaction to his work," says Lehrer. "After I started reading about it. You would have thought he was flying into the country and the use of email," she laughs. "They are incredibly beautiful, ambitious and just had this intuitive sense for large and effective taking of the city, providing alternatives. It is also a source of inspiration for the way he approached politics and politicians and how he communicated a vision. he did not wait for people to give him proposals that could work. it was proactive. "
After moving to Los Angeles with her husband, architect Michael Lehrer, she started designing gardens for private clients. But his thinking big-picture always drew to larger and more complex projects. His breakthrough public works on a large scale was the blueprint for the Silver Lake Reservoir. "He was incredibly controversial," says Lehrer. He was on Silver Lake that she realized she had an acute sense to communicate complex concepts to stakeholders and working with the community, a gift she has developed a fine art in recent years.
"which puts Mia in a different league is that it has not only the gift of listening, but she knows how monitor, "said Irma Muñoz, founder, president and CEO of the environmental non-profit in Los Angeles Mujeres de la Tierra. "She understands the art of finesse. I saw her do some pretty spectacular things at meetings of the city. Whether one-to-one or one-to-five percent, it is able to speak several languages. She speaks the language of the heart, intelligence, bureaucracy, and all the people. No matter what your status is; you have a place at the table. "
With a number of important projects completed and come to being, Lehrer has had more impact the look and feel of the city than just about anybody. Notable projects include the Annenberg Community Beach House, Vista Hermosa Natural Park in the LA area, the revitalization of the waterfront of San Pedro, and 3.5 acres of outdoor exhibits and gardens to the Natural History Museum of Los County Angeles. She is currently working on concepts for Hollywood Park and Dodger Stadium. While significantly redefine the experience of the city by creating new public spaces. "They accused me of being a" regionalist "because I do not work like many of my peers who have running projects in twenty cities at once," she said. "Los Angeles has always was the place where I could drill down and indulge. "
One of the largest continuous pieces of infrastructure in the world, the river begins at the confluence of narrow concrete Bell Creek Calabasas Creek in the San Fernando valley and lets out his point in the long port Beach widest. on the way, it passes through 13 cities and 25 neighboring districts of the board, receives 12 tributaries and . is crossed no less than 117 points in bridges and viaducts motorway This is the area Lehrer: a complex, overlapping patchwork of territories, governments and ecosystems that spreads far beyond its banks the river is. a physical object, but it is also a series of ideas, policy proposals, a battery of studies and projects that are at the heart of the practice of Lehrer. "I'm not a social worker; I am a designer, "she said." I think the design is able to solve problems and help to open mental impasse. "
Along the river and beyond, Lehrer and his firm have worked patiently to improve the public domain, using design to attack underused industrial and commercial spaces. In addition to the master plan, Lehrer has worked on a number of proposals related to the river, reenvisioning large territories and make strategic surgical strikes with projects at the community level. It is also engaged in (NELA) Riverfront District Plan Placemaking Northeast Los Angeles, which identifies projects that will increase access to - and awareness of - the river, as well as other opportunities in the five Placemaking neighborhoods along the soft bottom of the river.
One of the biggest projects adjacent river, Piggyback Yard, originally designed by Folar would transform a transfer River container adjacent 125 acre facility just east of downtown in a mixed-use community with extensive leisure uses and restored habitat. The project would bring a genuine washing the river to life to capture the winter surge in volume of water. green and hydrological connections connect near Los Angeles State Historic Park, also known as "the cornfields." "Projects like this are on the way to reinvent the infrastructure of the twentieth century," says Benjamin Feldmann, project manager for the feasibility study Piggyback court. "It is about the largest contextual relationships, new ways to include infrastructure in the city."
On a smaller scale, but no less important in the impact, is Atwater Multimodal Bridge, a first of its kind cable-stayed bridge for pedestrians, cyclists and riders. The bridge will span the river, connecting an expanded North Atwater Park, with its revitalized Creek, 56 miles of horse trails in Griffith Park, the largest park in L.A. and the second largest in the state. It will also link with a network throughout the city of bicycle paths. Atwater is roughly halfway marker for ten miles of river that run through the municipal district of Los Angeles consultant Mitch O'Farrell ago 13. Ten years Lehrer invited to meetings of the River Task Force ad hoc committee to present his ideas and then worked with her on the master plan. "Mia has this way of conceptualizing that lends itself to the community and brings the best of voters," he said.
Lehrer works with political skills sharpened by years working on complex problems at the intersection of public and private domains. "What attracted me to the river was its potential for integration of neighborhoods with parks," she said. "All these projects are on the demystification of the river and reconfiguring the edges, allowing a greater capacity of water, but also a human commitment. I think there are some impressive aspects of the river the way it is today. None of us ever thought it was going to be on him back to what it was before the corps. it is to understand what we have to aim with a new urban ecology "
" Mia so many lines in it that add to this incredibly ambitious. - in a good way - and hardworking person, "says poet and Folar founder Lewis MacAdams, who worked closely with Lehrer for over 20 years on several water projects and was one of the first to express the desire for an accessible river. "She has the qualities of both a visionary and a hardcore worker bee."
A few days after our meeting, Lehrer called to let me know the Corps has recommended approval of the proposal of 20 Alternative $ 1 billion, the most ambitious plan that came out of the study ARBOR. "This is a great victory for the city and a testament to the power of design to catalyze change," she said. Just a month before, there were indications of the body intended to go to the least extent and significantly cheaper alternative 13, the defense version of the river and city were lobbying against because he will not far enough to change the character of the river. "This is the biggest decision of the LA River from the decision to channel in the 1930s," says O'Farrell.
If passed by Congress, the plan will set in motion the extensive overhaul of a section of 11-mile river, just north of downtown price tag $ 1 billion. - to be constituted by a combination of federal, state, and local sources - go to the enlargement of the river, creating wetlands, habitat restoration, and the addition of bike trails and public facilities. significantly, this includes the area that could eventually become seminal project Lehrer, piggyback Yard. "He does not know yet how these projects will occur, but when they do, Los Angeles will be changed forever," says Lehrer. "Things are really starting to happen now."
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