What can an architect bring to the design of a bridge? In 2012, the City of Los Angeles held a design competition to redesign its 6th Street Viaduct. The original, iconic bridge, which served as the backdrop for dozens of TV shows and films, had deteriorated beyond repair. The winning team included Michael Maltzan Architecture, who helped conceive and design a bridge that does way more than just connect traffic across the LA River. It’s an icon, a place to observe the city, and a neighborhood amenity that provides shade and multiple connection points for bikes and pedestrians. It does all this in addition to being an elegant solution to the complex structural forces at play with a large infrastructural project in an earthquake-prone area. This video explores the design and construction of the bridge, just a couple months prior to its completion.
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Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
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Wow, I did not expect such an impassioned discussion to result from this video! Thank you for that. I wanted to throw in my take and see what you think. There have been quite a few comments and questions regarding systemic problems of unhoused populations as well as the need for proper biking infrastructure and public transportation. These are incredibly important and complex discussions. This video doesn’t really go into that and it’s a bit outside my expertise in architectural design.
It takes SO MANY teams of people to make a project like this happen. The stance presented in this video is that the work of a good architect made this urban infrastructure better than it would have been otherwise. I think that is true.
I don’t think the situation in LA is ideal urbanism and policy. This channel is about architecture though, and there is no question that this bridge is well designed from that point of view. An architect has a limited scope in a project like this, things like traffic patterns and such are the domain of civil engineers. Whether the bridge should serve cars at all — that’s a planning issue. I don’t want to diminish the role of architects here, as I think they’re expertise does make projects like this better. But, not everything is the domain of architects. The end of the video even hints at how bad things can get when architects do control everything.
It seems like many don’t like the idea of this bridge, which I get. My goal was to show how architecture can make a piece of urban infrastructure better than it would have been otherwise. I think this bridge is an example of that. But, maybe there’s no room for half-measures? Thoughts?
Thanks, for building something nice, so the stupid fucking vatos, and their crowd of assholes, can cheer the car chases, crashing, and donuts….All these ungrateful morons. don't deserve anything!
This video did not age well.
Rename your title… THIS BRIDGE WILL SHOW HOW GHETTO THE LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY IS
You need to learn to use B-roll rather than jump cuts. The video looks too amateurish.
Already closed
It’s already been vandalized and closed off 😂
They made it sound like they were connecting Brentwood with Beverly Hills! ((LoL))
I can't wait for homeless people to build makeshift shelters on the bridge
Yes it's reshaping LA but not in a good way!
Atleast graffiti 'artists' dont have to bring ladders or climbing gear
The homeless have some roofs now too! thats nice.
Its all so awful there.
Wow since the bridge has opened LAPD has had to close it down because of pedestrians climbing up the arches and cars doing doughnuts in the middle of the bridge. Great looking but not designed to be a safe bridge. Total waste of money no center divider?
Fast forward to present day. LOL.
let's be honest people!!! down town la is a piece of garbage!!!! last time I went there I had to be careful not to step on human feces!!!!!!
At least they can hide all the homeless under the bridge now. Problem solved!
Should be renamed the… Hood Bridge 🌉… didn't need to spend $588+ Million; can't respect new things
"How This Bridge Is About to Reshape Los Angeles" Became "Latinos gone Wild"
Fast forward three months – you have a bridge that is slowly being destroyed and trashed by the local thugs who are using the bridge for street takeovers where drivers do donuts in the street, and you have people climbing up on the concrete arches to get a better view of the illegal activity. Plus, the bridge is constantly being defaced by graffiti on a daily basis. This was poor planning from the start. The bridge is continuously being shut down by law enforcement when these thugs hold street racing on the bridge. There was even two instances where a barber was giving a haircut in the middle of the roadway on the bridge all for social media.
This didn't age well, especially with the title and thumbnail of this video lol.
How did that work out? These elitists builders didn't even have the foresight to understand that a bridge connected to Boyle Heights would attract so many undesirable elements. Now the bridge is almost unusable after being taken over by delinquents using the bridge for reckless street racing and spreading graffiti. They were so occupied with the engineering aspects they didn't even consider the social.aspects of the area.
Just came to see how well this aged 🤣🤣
Thanks to our idiot leaders for wasting 588 million dollars when they could have built a regular modest bridge. Now there’s nothing but problems with gangbangers doing doughnuts and spraying graffiti on it and the cops have had to shut it down more than once.
Project has been a huge failure since opening! Major disappointment but also major face-palm by everyone involved.
If they had thought of making it a suspended park like the old subway line in NYC that is now the HighLine park (absolutely beautiful one of my favorite places you actually walk among and through the buildings with trees, benches and grass) in downtown Manhattan) that wouldve provided pride, good PR for public health and environmental debates, and possibly a reason to improve the area.
Lets be honest, LA the city wastes its good weather because public spaces for outdoor activity are few
and not well maintained. Theres not a lot to enjoy in LA in ‘22 in terms of public spaces, u really have to drive away from the city to enjoy nice beaches, clean hiking trails, better dog parks, safer/cleaner public parks. The city has a reputation for outdoor lifestyle but only the affluent areas back that up.
There's no way this is gonna work. It's supposed to be inclusive and 'bridge' communities together yet you have to climb 6000 steps to get up there as a pedestrian or cyclist. It's a massive eyesore, giant concrete monolith. Not human scale at all. It's cast everything below and around it into shadow. It's just more car based shite. Moved the pollution to the sky. Well done. Architect is naïve. When will we design cities around human beings rather than metal wheel boxes?
concrete junk. no wonder his models are white
Things that aged poorly
Why not Make a video, on how black people ruined the bridge with in weeks of it being open.
It has a bike lane next to cars going very fast. Would you feel safe?
It has a massive, overbuilt, structure for bikes to ride in a circle. How many cyclists have the stamina to ride up that? Personally, I'd like an elevator. Aside from the uphill, it also adds a lot to your travel distance, right?
It has a pedestrian lane. Pretty long walk, with again a sizable climb uphill.
Let me make a bet: Once built, there will be very few bikes and pedestrians. Way less than in the models.
Still looks like a structure designed only for cars and without the lived experience of pedestrians or cyclists really thought through. The ped and cycle lanes were more or less a marketing tool to sell the structure to politicians who likely also don't cycle or walk regularly.