Project Title: LAX Airport Cultural Planning Study
Location: Los Angeles Airport, California
Built, Unbuilt or Under Construction: Built
Project Year: 2010
Firm: Osborn Architects
Website: www.osborn320.com  |  www.facebook.com/osborn.architects
Project Team: Michael Pinto, Principal-in-Charge; Kate Harvey, Project Manager; Janica Ley, Designer; Chelsea Cordero, Intern

Project Description: The airport is both autonomous and hyper-connected. Separated from the city it serves, the airport also provides connections to an array of destinations, near and far. Yet its remote and generic qualities result in an indistinct character lacking both temporal and geographic contexts. The LAX Cultural Planning Study proposes a counterpoint to this turbidity by introducing tangible connections, with renewed cultural engagement and a traveler’s lens for discovering art. It incorporates art and culture into the airport, while simultaneously situating the airport within the larger landscape of the city.

In 2010, Osborn was commissioned to embark on a cultural planning study for the LAX Art Program, a collaboration of the Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA). The proposal for the LAWA Art Program acts as a strategic plan, implementable over time, on a terminal-by-terminal basis. The plan was conceived as a series of layers superimposed on the existing airport facilities to create a network for art and cultural engagement.

The four layers, attractors, knots, strings, and art space typologies, each support the strategic plan. The attractors act as cultural living rooms, carving out places from the conventional terminal space for new programming. These places offer divergent experiences separate from the airport’s extensive waiting areas. The strings act as connective tissue. Taking the form of graphics or mobile exhibitions, they provide a cohesive narrative of art and culture. The knots are fixed and distributed nodes, in the form of maps, mobile applications, or interactive screens. These punctuate the travelers’ flow and provide a guide for navigating LAX’s cultural amenities. Art space typologies exploit the existing airport spaces to accommodate any of the aforementioned layers or simply provide a wall to hang art.

The superimposition of the layers reinforces a new grain for navigating LAX and perceiving the city beyond its walls. LAX holds rising cultural potency and offers a new urban network of cultural tourism.

Find out more:
Osborn Architects: www.osborn320.com
Culture LA: http://www.culturela.org/
Los Angeles World Airports http://www.lawa.org/

Image captions:
1-2: Art-Space-Typology. A matrix of art space typologies categorizes the spaces that the airport offers for the installation of art.  Various precedents from airports, streetscapes, to convention centers were investigated to evaluate the typologies’ attributes.    

3: Attractor.The attractors were conceived as a series of dense, thematic airport programs that function as content-driven lounge areas. 

4: Layers. Each layer exploits its own media but material, graphic, and interactive consistency lends a cohesiveness to the overall system.

5: Site Axonometric. The DCA-LAWA cultural master plan conceives of four new layers to be deployed throughout the airport’s 8 domestic terminals.  These lay the groundwork for the DCA/LAWA art program to have a more pervasive and significant presence in defining LAX. Opportunities for art were evaluated as a percentage for each level, of each terminal.   

6: Site Plan.

7: Terminal 1 Axonometric. Terminal 1 was used a as case study for early implementation.  Existing surfaces, skylights, and gardens were all appropriated to support the master plan’s layers.  Opportunities for new attractors and knots were identified.  

8:Terminal 1, Case Study, Level 01 – Arrivals.  

9: Terminal 1, Case Study, Level 02 – Departures & Ticketing.  

10: Terminal 1, Case Study, Level 03 – Concourse.