FUTURE HI-STORIES: Film Industry in Los Angeles

The project at hand speculates on the future of abandoned sound stage typologies of movie studios in Los Angeles, which due to the emerging technologies for digital scene-making, will eventually render the currently required physical spaces obsolete. Instead of imagining a clean slate to exercise yet another version of tabula rasa towards a generic urban patterning, the project, very conscious of the resource scarcity of our moment, speculated on an alternative form of urbanism for the original Warners Brother Studio in Burbank, Los Angeles. Such challenges present norms and assumptions of zoning, historic preservation, adaptive reuse, landscape, public space, urbanism and architecture as they are broadly practiced. By flipping the figure-ground, in essence, removing the roof of the obsolete sound stages, and building program in between these containers – we imagined a new urban fabric. One in which the interiority of sound stages are turned into large open courtyards, with remnants of filmmaking techniques, equipment and set designs. Ultimately, the project is about what to do when an industry that culturally identifies LA, relocates. The outcome is a maze-like scenario that promotes densifying in place, alteration of the existing, diversity of public spaces and an alternative form of mix-use urban development.