*Drawings and models I
“The studio centers on the Veteran Administration campus in Los Angeles, the largest such campus devoted to veterans in the United States. On this site, numerous and often competing functions intertwine, including hospitals and housing, parks and parking lots, recreation and rehabilitation. The VA campus in West LA seems both extremely full and incredibly empty at the same time. It is the vital center for thousands of vets and their families who require mental and physical therapy, housing, social services and public re-engagement. But it is also a campus filled with vacated buildings, outdated facilities and empty lots. Currently, the added stress of COVID-19 has turned the once picturesque district into a series of temporary functions: tents fill the parks, housing homeless veterans in a socially distanced manner; cones fill the parking lots, directing cars toward makeshift testing facilities. Puncturing these informal settlements and temporary landscapes are privately leased lands—UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium, Brentwood School buildings and sports fields, and Breitburn’s oil well—all of which have participated in recent lawsuits to compensate the veterans for their exploitation of federal lands. From the funds collected and redistributed, a master plan has been proposed to finally build housing and a sequence of public spaces that would bring modern functionality and civic pride to the community.”
Course description from Maxi Spina
02. Model photograph showing mass submerged in landscape
03. Sectional model photograph showing mass and ground relationship
Instructed by Maxi Spina