LARC Awards

Inaugural Event by the Urban Land Institute Includes Presenter Frank Gehry

Urban Landscape, December 2009
Feature Article
By: Jack Skelley

The best party of the year also celebrated what’s best about Los Angeles. ULI Los Angeles’ inaugural LARC (Los Angeles Real Creativity) Awards dazzled a full house at 5900 Wilshire Blvd on December 5, 2009 with a high-concept awards experience that stimulated the mind and the senses. Even the pre-event wine-and-martini hour (with hors d’oeuvres by Wolfgang Puck) was artful and interactive, held across the street at Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Urban Light” courtyard.

The ULI LARC Awards will be presented annually to four recipients who, through their extraordinary vision and creative action, are helping to change our world (and our lives) as Angelenos, Americans and global citizens.

LARC presenters included a dynamic foursome of Los Angeles design and development luminaries: Frank O. Gehry, Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy, Stuart M. Ketchum, and Stan Ross. And the event was stylishly MC’d by Frances Anderton of KCRW’s “Design and Architecture” program.

The categories, finalists and winners are:

DESIGN
In recognition of an innovative design - product, building, urban land plan, public art - still in its conceptual stage.
Finalists: Flower Street Bioreactor; East Cahuenga Corridor Alley; Hollywood Cap Park.
Winner: Hollywood Cap Park.

The 44-acre Hollywood Freeway Cap Park over the 101 Freeway would span from Bronson Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard. Hollywood resident and engineer Ed Hunt came up with this idea some 25 years ago and it was recently revived by ULI member and banker Don Scott. Local politicians, neighborhood councils, local and state agencies have all coalesced around this idea to create a park in an area of the city which is in serious need of green space. This Hollywood neighborhood is also one of the most dense and diverse in the city and is a working class area.

PLACE
In recognition of a completed building, public space, neighborhood or art installation which may have world-changing potential.
Finalists: Bert Green Fine Art / Downtown LA Art Walk; Maltman Bungalows; New Carver Apartments – Skid Row Housing Trust; Academy of Entertainment Technology.
Winner: Academy of Entertainment Technology.

Building on its existing Academy of Entertainment Technology institution, the Media Technology Campus of Santa Monica College was conceived as a bringing together of synergistic media programs to form a creative community. Digital animation, journalism, graphic and interior design, communications, radio and film would be gathered together to form a rich cluster of convergent specialties that would feed off each other's creativity, and provoke new directions in future media development.

ENTERPRISE
In recognition of an especially effective and innovative company, group, program, grass-roots initiative, community organization or social movement.
Finalists: Wilson Meany Sullivan, LLP; The Community of Mar Vista; YOLA – Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel.
Winner: YOLA – Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel.

YOLA is LA Phil Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel's signature program to transform young lives. Can you imagine a Los Angeles where every neighborhood's pride is its youth orchestra? The LA Phil's vision is to build youth orchestras in “underserved” communities so that children can come together for music making that's both rigorous and fun. The aspiration that every child has access to the experience of playing in an orchestra is shared by a community of music education providers. The LA Phil brings these diverse organizations together to think big in service of children, recognizing that we can accomplish more together than we can on our own.

IDEA
In recognition of a singular “big idea” with profound and far-reaching consequences – a “game changer.”
Finalists: Thinking Out of the Big Box; Imagine Mars Project – JPL/NASA.
Winner: Imagine Mars Project – JPL/NASA.

In New Orleans, after Katrina, while the adults began to rebuild, JPL/NASA worked with the children and asked them, if you could build a community on Mars, what would it be like? Students come up with their own vision of what they want their community to be like. Once empowered with this vision, they were asked to design it and make it withstand the harsh environment of Mars (not an easy task). In New Orleans, as in other sites, JPL/NASA partners students with NASA scientists, architects, and civic leaders to think critically about potential design solutions.

JUDGES
A LARC panel determined the finalists and winners in each category to best represents the mission of the LARC Awards – to reward brave, innovative and potentially world-changing thought – and also the mission of the Urban Land Institute – to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and/or lead to the building of more sustainable and thriving communities

Jack Skelley, Communications Chair of ULI Los Angeles, is Senior Vice President of Roddan Paolucci Roddan Advertising, Public Relations and New Media.