The Shifting Ground

Instructed by Narineh Mirzaeian

This project is sited at Tom LaBonge Headworks on the eastside of Los Angeles. The site contains two major reservoirs serving the city. The aim of this project is to program the surrounding landscape for both private operational activities relating to the reservoirs and public, educational and experiential activities.

The crux of programming this site was time; the site itself is at the mercy of increasingly unpredictable flooding, droughts, and high winds. Current and future infrastructure needs to withstand this change while still acknowledging it. While the lifetime of architecture is relatively short compared to that of landscape, landscape is susceptible to transformational change on a constant basis. Thus, the site is dissolved beginning at the riverbed, imitating a coastline. The architecture itself is sunken into the site with small projections breaking the ground, diminutive compared to the landscape.