Introduction: Zooming Between Myths

Downtown Los Angeles is a city of unseen myths. Above, beneath, within, and between the densely populated buildings, there are unspoken gems hidden in plain sight everywhere. In this speculative re-reading of DTLA, we zoom between the myths and present a series of visions to highlight and reveal architectural and urbanistic undercurrents of DTLA through the format of diagrams and drawings.

As a love letter to Downtown Los Angeles, this project exhibits a collection of seemingly impossible ideas that already exist amongst us. From a fleet of flying social zones hovering above DTLA to an archipelago of buildings inside of buildings or a 2.5-D terrain that intersects infrastructural layers of structures, these unlikely myths are all present in our Downtown. With this project, we provide a lens to relook at our city’s special urban conditions.

This project is by no means a definitive endpoint of a story. Instead, we propose it as a start to open many new ways of understanding our city differently. In time, further studies into each category would allow us to become more knowledgeable of just how marvelous DTLA already is and of the myriad paths of untapped potential still burgeoning within.