UCLA's L.A. Now Project Wins Major Design Award

UCLAs LA Now Project Wins Major Design Award
The UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design has been awarded the 2005 Progressive Architecture Award (P/A) by Architecture magazine for "L.A. Now: Volume 3," an urban design research project encompassing 35,000 housing units in downtown Los Angeles.

The project was led by UCLA professor Thom Mayne, principal in the architecture firm Morphosis. The award was announced in the January issue of the magazine.

Now in their 52nd year, P/A awards recognize unbuilt projects that demonstrate overall design excellence and innovation. Over time, they have served as bellwethers of emerging architectural design trends and talents.

The award to UCLA is unprecedented as it was given to only one recipient and was the first ever given to a university.

The genesis of the L.A. Now project was the need to examine critically problems currently facing Los Angeles --- overpopulation, housing and infrastructure -- and address them through a combined series of research and speculative urban design proposals that might, in turn, generate a discussion within the community.

The UCLA department of architecture and urban design provided the foundation for the conceptual framework that began with a deep analysis of existing demographic, cultural and infrastructural issues.

Currently, there is no policy or plan in plac