The Massive Media

Architecture is a massive medium, it communicates what those who build it value most – their hopes, desires, aspirations. In the same way, infrastructure conveys what is important to a given society.

In Los Angeles we think of infrastructure as something that purely addresses our functional needs. But what we build, where we build, and how we build it speaks volumes about what we hold dear.

Most of our infrastructure is invisible to us. Our utilities are primarily underground; where they make their appearance – as telephone poles, electrical transmission lines, cell sites – we have become accustomed to them, their undeniable ugliness becoming the banal background to our lives. But when they require a more physical presence – as buildings, bridges, tunnels, water channels, freeways – we need to understand the message we are conveying.

In 1958 the California Division of Highways released “The California Freeway System” a 37-page document that Kevin Starr characterized as a “quasi-utopian” vision of the state’s future. It proposed a dense network of highways that would make travel through the state efficient, even pleasurable. One of the highways proposed was what would become State Route 710, a link between Long Beach and Pasadena. Most of the freeway was built, but its progress was halted when the citizens of South Pasadena rose up to protest the inevitable destruction of its city which lay in the road’s intended path. The threat of closing the resulting “gap” – which extended from the end of the 710 in Alhambra and the 210 in Pasadena – was very real until the EIR supporting the project was decertified in 2004.

Recently, a movement to “close the gap” has returned, this time with the option of taking the freeway underground, with a handful of alternate alignments. The motivations are murky: certainly the city of Alhambra would like to resolve the issue of traffic – the dispersal of commuters from the end of the 710 to their homes in the surrounding cities – but a less expensive low-build alternative could take care of this; in addition, the need to transport freight from the port of Long Beach to the northern half of the state – a closed gap would divert truck traffic away from the already congested Interstate 5 – begs the question: are trucks the best way to accomplish this, especially with rising fuel prices? Certainly a rail alternative should be explored.

A yet more sinister motivation is also possible – an opportunistic seizing of government funds, made available through Measure R as well as the Federal Stimulus Package. The website for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority shows a commitment of $780 million dollars for such a project, which would include partial funding by a public/private partnership that would no doubt demand a toll for travel through the proposed tunnel. This would be a boondoggle of epic proportions whenever it was introduced; but now, in this economy?

Whatever the reason for the sudden reemergence of the 710 gap issue, the response must be the same: absolute rejection. We are not the same city we were in 1958; the myth of flow – that more lanes will make our lives batter, is part of an outmoded way of thinking that we cannot seem to shake. Clearly more lanes means more cars, more trucks – and more pollution. If indeed we require an expansion of capacity to facilitate movement from our ports to the rest of the country, why can’t we look at all our options instead of resorting to the kneejerk response of more traffic lanes. Especially if we are to become the model of sustainability that Mayor Villaraigosa imagines for our future.

In psychology they call this repetition compulsion. We keep choosing the same things because they are familiar, even comfortable. Even if we know it is unhealthy. Even if we want to change. But the fact remains: we are what we build. We say we want to be green but our actions reveal our true character. We need behavior modification – if we are to become what we want, we have to change what we do.

Let’s begin by abandoning the now antiquated promise of a freeway paradise, what Reyner Banham called “Autopia,” and embrace the more complicated challenges that confront a maturing metropolis: housing, healthcare, and mass transit. Rather than passively allowing the city to build itself, which reflects negative values – laziness, complacency, alienation – why can’t we build the city that reflects values that we want to project – things like energy, connectivity, community – and use the massive media of architecture and infrastructure to lead us to a more sustainable future?

The Brown Room

Rumor has it that when, sometime on the late 70s, a certain publisher of a major Los Angeles newspaper was chairing a meeting in the company boardroom, a young intern entered the room quickly and whispered something in his ear. “Surf’s Up” was all the publisher needed to end the gathering abruptly, sprint downstairs, and head due west from Downtown L.A. to a private men’s club right on the beach in Santa Monica.

But the publisher soon learned the surf was not the only thing that was up that smoggy summer day in the late 70s. The waves had a distinctively brown hue, a fact that the publisher noted when he found himself, less than an hour after hearing those fateful words uttered, surfing within the curl of an unusually large wave. Commonly referred to as “The Green Room,” the publisher cringed at the thought of being swallowed by what was instead something quite a bit browner; he managed to propel himself out just before the wave came to its crashing conclusion. Word on the sand was that this discoloration of the sea was due either to the unusually rough surf or a robust colony of phytoplankton that visits the beaches of Southern California every year and turns the waves a reddish brown. However, later that evening, as he sipped a draft beer at a table overlooking the surf, the absence of phosphorescence that accompanies such “red tides” disquieted the publisher. And when  an ear infection established itself over the next few days, the conclusion was inescapable: there was shit in that thar sea.

Even before the founding of the city in 1781, wastewater from the small Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles was conveyed from the center of town to the Los Angeles River to the ocean. In 1892, the city purchased 200 acres of oceanfront property near the mouth of the L.A. River, which at that point was just north of Playa del Rey, what is now Ballona Creek. From 1894 until 1925, raw sewage was discharged directly into ocean waters just a few hundred yards from the breaking surf.

In the 1920s, after public outcry from residents and visitors to the beaches of Santa Monica Bay, the city of Los Angeles built the first facility at the Hyperion site a mile south of the LA River which was a simple screening plant separating liquids from solids. During World War II, several miles of beach in front of the plant were quarantined because of near-shore discharge of what was still essentially raw sewage.

After the war, plans for a full secondary treatment plant at the Hyperion site were developed, eventually funded, and built. When the new Hyperion Treatment Plant opened in 1950, it included full secondary treatment that processed biosolids into heat-dried fertilizer, using anaerobic digesters to produce methane. And although it was one of the most modern facilities in the world, it could not keep up with the pace of growth throughout the region. By 1957, the new plant stopped its biosolids-to-fertilizer program and began discharging digested sludge into the Bay through a separate seven-mile ocean outfall. In time this discharge grew to 25 million pounds of wastewater solids per month and it this constant river of under-treated sewage began to take its toll on the marine life in Santa Monica Bay. Samples of the ocean floor where sludge had been discharged for 30 years demonstrated that the only living creatures were worms and certain hardy species of clam.

But it wasn’t until surfers like our newspaper publisher started complaining of sinusitis, eye and ear infections, and a variety gastrointestinal illnesses that the general population began to take serious notice. In 1985, the group Heal-The-Bay was formed by activist Dorothy Green to address the declining state of water quality in the bay. She marshaled enough support to file a lawsuit which resulted in a consent decree in which the city of Los Angeles agreed to comply with the Clean Water Act of 1972.

To meet the requirements of that landmark act, the city of Los Angeles launched a construction program costing almost 1.5 billion dollars to totally upgrade the facilities at the Hyperion Treatment Plant. The goal was to stop the flow of sewage into the Santa Monica Bay. The mechanics of the treatment process are as follows: Coming from residential, commercial and industrial sources throughout the Los Angeles Basin, raw sewage enters the Hyperion Treatment Plant where it first encounters the Headworks which act as a primary filter, removing larger debris such as bottles, cans, sticks, etc. Rocks and sand are then filtered next in Sedimentation Tanks. This collateral material is then cleaned and trucked to landfills on a daily basis. The wastewater continues onto Primary Treatment, which are underground tanks the size of football fields where chemicals are added to help the settle solid matter.

After oil and grease are skimmed off the top the solid waste is separated from the liquid waste and sent to Digesters. The liquid waste then goes onto Secondary Treatment where virtually pure oxygen and tons of microorganisms are pumped in to consume whatever organic material is left after Primary Treatment. When the feeding frenzy is finished, the wastewater is directed to Clarifying Tanks where it is allowed to sit for the several hours it takes for the microorganisms to settle to the bottom. Once this happens 90-95% of solid material has been extracted from the wastewater, which makes it clean enough to be discharged into the Santa Monica Bay at a point 5 miles out to sea, at close to 200 feet below the surface. A portion of the micro-organic solids gathered at the bottom of the Clarifying Tanks are then sent to the Digesters where they rejoin those solids extracted in Primary Treatment, while the rest are reintroduced into Secondary Treatment to begin work on the next batch of wastewater.

It’s in the Digesters that the most interesting action takes place. The solids extracted during Primary and Secondary Treatments are pumped into giant egg-shaped tanks where they sit, without oxygen, for fifteen days. This is where certain bacteria and other microorganisms thrive, consuming up to half of the biosolids, killing disease-causing pathogens such as giardia and hepatitus, and releasing methane, which is then itself harvested to power the system.

The remaining biosolids are then run through a centerfuge to remove as much water content as possible. With the treatment process now complete, the biosolids now have the consistency of toothpaste and are ready for their final destination, whatever that may be.

In 1987 when this treatment process was up and running, biosludge from Hyperion stopped flowing into the ocean. As a result, life returned to the Santa Monica Bay – fish populations restored themselves, kelp beds regrew; and surfers returned, this time without biohazard wetsuits. And except for the occasional equipment breakdown or the periodic flushing of storm drains that comes with the more substantial rains, the Santa Monica Bay remains essentially bacteria free. With the Santa Monica Bay now clean, the city of Los Angeles faced a new dilemma: what to do with an ever-increasing backlog of biosolids. Before 1987, biosolids were dispersed directly into in the ocean. Compliance with the consent decree mandated that the city cease this operation. With options running out, the city fell back on an old solution: stuffing landfills with biosludge. But in 1989, after even this provoked public outcry, the Bureau of Sanitation launched a “beneficial reuse program” that offered the ”humanure” to any and all who were interested. The hope was that the agricultural interests in the counties surrounding Los Angeles would leap at the chance to have virtually free fertilizer. But oddly enough, it has proven to be a hard sell. So the city of Los Angeles turned to the 4200-acre Green Acres Bio-Farm it owns in Kern County where approximately 97% of biosolids are now land applied.

Unsurprisingly, Kern County has found the prospect of spreading human waste over its fields distasteful and has attempted to enact a ban on it, citing presumed health concerns. At first upheld by a Kern County Court, the ban is currently on hold, pending further studies. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stands behind the program, calling biosolids the ultimate Renewable Resource. Undaunted by the criticism of this program he has gone on to embrace another plan that proposes to pump biosolids into depleted oil fields a mile below the city’s Terminal Island Treatment Plant. He calls the process, which will produce enough methane to power energy to 3000 homes, an example of how he plans to make Los Angeles the greenest city in America.

Long after he recovered from his ear infection, our newspaper publisher decided to end his quarter-century reign over the paper and move up north. Part of this was due to his pending divorce, part due to endless acrimony within the family-owned business; but - rumor has it - a large reason for the move was the fact that, despite his best efforts to transform Los Angeles into something resembling a metropolis, he saw the city decomposing, degrading, falling apart: its skies a thick yellowing haze; its people depressed, malaisestricken; its seas ripe with sewage, ebbing and flowing, dying.

Fortunately, our mayor seems to be more optimistic, seeing beyond our brown past to a green future.

The House Whisperer

When called in to renovate a house, you as the architect are interviewing the potential clients as much as they are assessing you. There are several items to note: if interviewing a couple, who is asking the questions? Who seems to have the vision for the project? Who would rather be undergoing a colonoscopy without anesthesia than sitting here with you? You will learn there are many reasons why people hire an architect, but two really stand out above all others.

1. An architectural modification is necessary.
This occurs when there is a dramatic change in the family structure, such as the initial purchase of the house or when children make their imminent arrival known. In the latter case you will always be asked if the house can be ready before the baby arrives. This is always a dicey situation. You want to say yes, but there is so much that is beyond your control that, if you are being honest with yourself, you have to say no. But you need the job, so you rationalize saying yes by assuming the best of all possible scenarios will happen simultaneously, that for instance, you will be able to finalize all decision-making in one month, that it will take another month to do the drawings, a month to get the permit and the contractor on board, and that all the construction will take less than six months. Which would mean you would have to start work the moment the baby is conceived, which could be awkward for all parties involved. In any case this is an example of when a true lack of space must be addressed.

2. A relationship needs healing.
This occurs when a couple can no longer tolerate a particular spatial relationship with one another. For whatever reason, something has soured between them and they imagine the easy fix to be an alteration of their physical environment. Unless you are a scholar of the human psyche, you are in a lose-lose situation. If you listen to one half of the couple the other half feels left out and can never quite get behind the project. If you try to appease both of them, they gang up on you. If you need the money and can handle the abuse, obviously take the job; however if you have the means to avoid the project, do so.

Often both sorts of House Whispering need to take place. The wisest course of action during design meetings is to deflect the conversation away from the personal needs to the physical. When issues of snoring or foot odor come up, turn the conversation to the office/den off the master that could double as a guest room if necessary. Truth is, who’d want a guest that close? But you should always strive to address the problem without embarrassing the offending partner.

3. Your career comes first.
There is another option when all else fails. This is the opposite of House Whispering. This is when you ignore everything that the space and the clients are telling you and listen only to the voice in your head. This is when you force your will upon the couple. They hired you for a reason, right? Clearly they want you to design a space in your style. So you exploit this. You design whatever you want and make them pay for it. Oh sure, you may have to divert them with grand theories and intimidating concepts and suggest that if they don’t quite comprehend to just trust you to deliver what they need. At first they will be relieved -- they will be happy the burden of decision-making has been removed. They won’t really have a sense of what you did until far after they’ve moved in and paid all their invoices; and when they wake up several months down the line and realize they hate what you’ve done, you’re long gone, having settled into a new project or two with new sets of clients to snow.

However, in this New Economy, I’d try House Whispering first.