FUTURE OF LOS ANGELES CHALLENGE TO DESIGN CITY OF THE 22ND CENTURY ERIC OWEN MOSS ARCHITECTS WINS WITH INFRASTRUCTURE-INSPIRED VISION.

Byline: TONY CASTRO Staff Writer

When Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa got his first glimpse at a design for a future Los Angeles Tuesday, he turned anxiously to philanthropist and political benefactor Eli Broad.

``I want to live another hundred years!'' Villaraigosa exclaimed as architects and onlookers crowded into the pavilion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

A smiling Broad patted the mayor on his back, leaned over and whispered to him.

``I can only look 20 years ahead,'' the 73-year-old Broad had joked minutes earlier. ``But I'm thrilled at what I see for the future.''

Various glimpses of the city's future were on display all day as eight architectural teams submitted designs of 22nd century Los Angeles for a $10,000 first prize in the History Channel's ``City of the Future'' competition.

Culver City-based Eric Owen Moss Architects won the event -- and a chance to double that prize money in a national competition next month. The team presented not only a futuristic rendition, but perhaps the most practical vision as well.

``We recognize that the defining elements of the city are not buildings,'' Moss told a jury of judges during his team's formal presentation, ``but the large pieces of infrastructure -- the rivers, the power grids, the freeways.''

During the day, several visiting architects had privately commented that the Moss design was the only one among the submissions that took a realistic view of building a future city on an existing metropolis.

Invariably this was a question asked of most of the other teams by judges, and the others did not offer any indication that they had even thought about it.

Moss' solution:

``Reconceive the city by multiplying the purposes of its infrastructure,'' the Moss team said in an explanation of its vision.

``We intend to build over, under, around and through the freeways, rivers, power grids and tracks, to use the existing rights of way as the foundations for a series of new infrastructure-scaled conceptions of building form, habitation, and public and private purpose that will redefine Los Angeles by strategically reassociating the sociologies, the uses, and the sense of the civic whole the civil engineers have long precluded.''

The only other team whose design came close, in the eyes of several architects, was the group of EDAW/DMJM Design/DMJM H&N-AECOM which offered an almost decade-by-decade breakdown of the changes it foresees for Los Angeles.

Using the L.A. River

The team saw a future city that would use the Los Angeles River as a new grand corridor for transportation and development pouring out into a grandiose harbor with five new waterfront cities.

That design, along with another that also made extensive use of the Los Angeles River, scored favorably with Villaraigosa. During his recent Asian trade mission, the mayor signed a Sister River Restoration agreement with the Chinese, designed to restore the Los Angeles River.

In addition to naming the Moss group the winner, judges also presented honorable mention awards to the teams of Office of Mobile Design and Xefirotarch+Imaginary Forces, both from Los Angeles.

Star power

Villaraigosa's presence late in the afternoon created the usual stir among the crowd. But among the architects, the mayor may have been upstaged by Broad, the billionaire developer who chairs the Grand Avenue Committee and is widely credited with shaping the present Los Angeles.

``We have an incredible collection of architects here with a lot of fascinating ideas,'' Broad said. ``There's no one vision. We have a great metropolitan center but also with a number of regional centers whether they be in the Valley, Eastside, Southside, Downey, Wilmington.

``They all tie together hopefully with better transportation.''

A cultural capital

Later, Broad, one of the driving forces behind the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, told the crowd at the awards ceremony that ``it is significant that this competition is being held'' at the museum and that the History Channel had included Los Angeles in its competition along with New York and Chicago.

``I believe Los Angeles is one of the four major cultural capitals of the world along with Paris, London and New York,'' Broad said, listing off the contributions of the symphony, opera and the city's numerous museums, as well as some of its architectural achievements.

In his remarks, Villaraigosa said the architectural visions of the teams in the competition lived up to the challenge he issued in his ``dream with me'' inaugural address a year and a half ago.

``How we design and construct our environment matters,'' Villaraigosa said. ``Now is the time for us to truly embrace the opportunity to re-envision the way we live and how we interact with one another.''

tony.castro(at)dailynews.com

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Designer Thaddeus Zarse paints a model under construction at ``The City of the Future: A Design and Engineering Challenge.'' Architects and engineers created models illustrating their vision of a Los Angeles in the 22nd century and displayed them at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

(2 -- color) Intern Benjamin Smith places pieces that represent buildings on a model under construction at ``The City of the Future: A Design and Engineering Challenge,'' sponsored by the History Channel. The first-place winner received $10,000.

(3 -- color) Jennifer Siegal, of the Office of Mobile Design, sets up her display of a futuristic Los Angeles at ``The City of the Future: A Design and Engineering Challenge'' on Tuesday.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer