Flammable City

This slideshow is part of: Master of Architecture II Fall 2013

        Flammable City: Koreatown Riots 
        Los Angeles, USA
 

Hancheng Chen

“…Indeed, had alien voyeurs really been watching the earth from a secret observatory on the moon or suburbs on Mars, they would have been mesmerized by Los Angeles’s extraordinary combustibility. No other urban area on the planet so frequently produces large thermal anomalies…”

- Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear, 1999

This project focuses on the flammable level of the Los Angeles. Koreatown, the scene of 1992 riots, had the most complicated social, racial, economic issue, and had the highest density of alcohol among the Los Angeles City at the time. The streets functioned as fuses; liquor stores, grocery stores, bars, gas stations, and any building that housed a large amount of alcohol was equivalent to fire kindling. The Riots played the role of fire which was soon out of control spreading out over the whole city along the streets, igniting every flammable building and displacing frenzied citizens.

 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.