FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



LAHUB presents Civic Park Proposals

Gallery 727

727 Spring Street

L.A., CA 90014

May 20 – June 28 2003

Reception: Saturday, May 31, 2003 6–8p.m.

Noontime reception: Wednesday, June 4, 2003 12-1 p.m.

Whose Turf is This Anyway? Symposium: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 6:30-9:00 p.m.



Los Angeles H* Urban Bureau, (LAHUB) a Los Angeles-based collaborative of artists and architects, presents an exhibition based on their Civic Park Competition. The competition generates ideas for the proposed Civic Park in downtown Los Angeles. Fifty international artists and architects proposals are presented in the form of videos and small booklets.

Few people know that the city of Los Angeles has acquired a large downtown block just south of City Hall for use as a civic square and public park. The goal of the competition and the exhibition is to broaden public discussion about the Civic Park and create dialogue to explore the state of public space in downtown Los Angeles. Foregrounding the idea of multiple artistic, architectural, and urban design strategies, Civic Park Proposals displays a diverse and challenging group of proposals and creates a lively and unresolved dialogue about the potential for this site.

The site is currently occupied by the Caltrans regional headquarters and a strip of small businesses on 1st Street. Once complete, the site will be bounded to the east by the New Caltrans building designed by Morphosis, to the west by the LA Times, to the north by City Hall and to the south by the loft district and the former St. Vibianna's Cathedral. The location of the site places the park in the midst of an urban geography that negotiates city politics and shopping, ‘revitalization’ development strategies and homelessness, dreams and despair. The proposals all wrestle with this unstable and yet undeniably charged collision of forces.

Civic Park Proposals investigates the relationship between art, technology, and public space and points to the importance of taking experimental approaches to thinking about the city. The significant international response to the project suggests the relevance of thinking critically about contemporary urban planning and demonstrates the importance Los Angeles holds in terms of generating experimentally driven art and architecture projects.

For More Information, contact Adrian Rivas, Executive Director, Gallery 727 at 213.627.9563

visit www.lahub.net or e-mail info@lahub.net