Discover Top Posts Tagged with #davechan

If you build it, they will come.

Keep Venice weird.

Step it up.

My project proposal combines documented physical remains observed in the field with time-based mobility, resulting in a mini-series of design fiction.

In my field research, I became interested in the layers of decommissioned relics of the built environment resulting from natural and human influence on the landscape. I was also inspired by my Critical Worldviews class to invite the element of time.

#davechan #documentation #proposal

The Lost Canals of Venice of America

excerpt from:

https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/the-lost-canals-of-venice-of-america

Secreted away from the hustle and bustle of the famous boardwalk, the picturesque canals of Venice, California, are one of the seaside community's hidden charms. But in Venice's early years, the canals that survive today were only a sideshow. The main attraction – the original canals of Abbot Kinney's Venice of America – are lost to history, long ago filled in and now disguised as residential streets.

In planning Venice of America, Kinney incorporated several references to the community's Mediterranean namesake, from the Italianate architecture to his fanciful notion of launching a cultural renaissance there. But Venice of America would not have lived up to its name were it not for its canals.

When it opened on July 4, 1905, Venice of America boasted seven distinct canals arranged in an irregular grid pattern, as seen below in Kinney's master plan for the community. Totaling nearly two miles and dredged out of former saltwater marshlands, the canals encircled four islands, including the tiny triangular United States Island. The widest of them, appropriately named Grand Canal, terminated at a large saltwater lagoon. Three of the smaller canals referred to celestial bodies: Aldebaran, Venus, and Altair.

Though their primary role was to evoke the old world charm of Venice, Italy, the canals also functioned as part of Kinney's transportation plan for the development. In 1905, the automobile had barely dawned on the Southland, and so Kinney laid out Venice of America at the pedestrian's scale. Visitors would arrive by interurban streetcar or steam railroad and once there could reach the entire community and its various amusements by footpath. The canals -- as well as a miniature railroad that circled the development -- provided an alternative to walking. Gondoliers rowed tourists through the canals for a fee, serenading their passengers in Italian. Homeowners, meanwhile, navigated the system of waterways by canoe or boat.

#davechan #3readings

Watts Towers: The Story of an L.A. Icon

excerpt from:

https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/blog/watts-towers-story-la-icon

On an unassuming plot of land, spitting distance from the train tracks that run through the center of Watts, you'll find one of the most stunning and improbable works of public art anywhere in the United States. Seventeen sculptures rise like giant, inverted ice cream cones toward the sky. The openwork spires are embedded with shells, tiles, soda bottles, mirrors, shards of pottery and two grinding wheels. It remains an island of whimsy in the middle of an urban landscape.

The Watts Towers are more remarkable when you know they were the vision of one man, a semi-literate Italian immigrant who worked, with no outside help and only the most elemental tools, nearly every day for 34 years to build a monument at once impenetrably personal and joyously communal.

#davechan #3readings

From dawn to dusk to dawn over Los Angeles

excerpt from:

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/23/health/angeles-crest-ultramarathon-fit-nation/index.html

For 30 years, the AC100 has blazed a trail through the Angeles National Forest, in the backyard of Los Angeles. The 180 or so runners who experience it every year can thank Ken Hamada, the race director and its founder. Hamada was running ultras in the 1980s when most were courses of multiple loops. He wanted a 100-miler that "starts somewhere" and "goes somewhere," and he enlisted friends and volunteers to develop the route and organize the first AC100 in 1986. Much of the trail winds through pine and Douglas fir forest. Some trees are more than 2,000 years old. Other trees are dead and ashen-colored from recent fires, including ones that forced the cancellation of the race in 2002 and 2009. The terrain of the trail -- rocks, tree roots, inclines -- threatens twisted ankles and falls along some steep ledges. Running up and down mountains means greater physical demand than simply a long race. Elevation affects breathing, weather can add impediments and even danger, and the terrain of the trail -- rocks, tree roots, inclines -- threatens twisted ankles and falls along some steep ledges. In addition, there is the challenge of running by the light of a headlamp, all night long. The highest peak on the course is more than 9,000 feet above sea level, nearly the top of Mount Baden-Powell. But it's not necessarily the most challenging stage. Many runners would agree that distinction goes to Mount Wilson, a 4½-mile climb that begins an exhausting three-quarters of the way through the race and is usually climbed under the stars. The foot (and hoof) race that pits humans against horses" That is where the race really begins," explained Hamada. After 75 miles and 20-plus hours of running, "your gas tank is empty, and your hubcaps are spinning off. Then you have to deal a real big challenge: Mount Wilson. And that is really the moment of truth for most runners in the race, because ... there is no easy way out except making it to the finish line.”

#davechan #3readings