The work marks a reaction to a personal and scary experience with the highrises in central Los Angeles. When I was living and studying in LA in 2010, I imagined a dystopian degenerating city characterised by overwhelming monofunctionality pushing out the weak, increasingly higher and denser office buildings and the street space sinking into darkness.
My answer to that is the vertical megastructure built in the utopian LA in 2110. I fought against the monofunctionality by planting various sprouts and shoots. Cultural functions with a flexible spatial programme in the form of galleries and studios provide an alternative to the office spaces, creating a vertical street space extending once again to the sun. The constructional outgrowths stretch out on the sides of the existing buildings and attach to the technical floors.
Looking at the vision ten years later and seeing the densification and determined uniformity in Maakri district in Tallinn, the cultural hypertrophy could actually be needed somewhat earlier than planned.
It was originally created at a course taken at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in 2011 on the basis of Benjamin Bratton’s texts on megatopia and inspired by Hernan Alonso’s discussion of form.
HEADER: section of the building.
PUBLISHED: Maja 107 (winter 2022) with main topic Evolution or Revolution?
SEE ALSO:
Speculative Project. The Vision of Heliorg in Harjuoru – Villem Tomiste
Speculative Project. Digital Park – Lauri Eltermaa
Speculative Project. Dark Matter – Ahti Sepsivart
Speculative Project. A Symbiotic Garden-Library – Kadri Kerge
Speculative Project. The Arctic Nature Defence Forces – Mari Hunt
