What if whole neighborhoods had mass dampeners like buildings do, so they swayed in an earthquake? What if there were a giant art installation at the intersection of the 110 and 10 Freeways that aligned with the sun and the stars throughout the year? What if there were an enormous monument to the lost neighborhood of Chavez Ravine on its old footprint in Echo Park? These and other fantastic questions are answered in LATBD at USC Libraries, which closes this weekend. The exhibition was put together by BLDGBLOG proprietor Geoff Manaugh, working as a Discovery Fellow tasked with digging up cool stuff in the USC Libraries and then doing cool stuff with it.
Manaugh interviewed Los Angeles experts from seismologist Lucy Jones to astronomer EC Krupp to filmmaker John Carpenter, then spun those talks into big, speculative, crazy ideas for how the future of the city might play out. Working with London-based architects Mark Smout and Laura Allen, he created models of these massive and improbable public works, along with games, Tarot cards, and other memorabilia from a fictional past Los Angeles. The exhibition, in the Treasure Room at Doheny Memorial Library, is rounded out with a collection of the library's books that helped inspire the project.
The interviews will be published in a book from USC Libraries out this summer. LATBD closes Sunday.
· L.A.T.B.D. [USC Libraries]