CINEMATIC
LANDSCAPE
EXCHANGE
Title: Faraway So Close
Institute: Architectural Association
Studio: Intermediate 7
The opacity of the city of Los Angeles finds its expression in the most illusory element: the thick opaque air that looms over the city. But each year in late October, after months of stagnation the Santa Ana winds arrive to clear it all out in a unique environmental condition that transforms the region. Dry desert air descends rapidly from the San Bernardino Mountains, tearing through valleys before spilling out toward the Pacific Ocean. As a result, looking west on Interstate 15, somewhere north of Fontana, the murky atmospheric ceiling over the city gives way to an eerie alternative: skies so clear across enormous distances that it can be hard to maintain an accurate sense of perspective.
In this context, it is difficult not to recall the disorientating approach of Space Shuttle Columbia in the spring of 1981. Having just encountered the infinite distances of outer space the astronauts on board were met with an uncanny analogue in the airspace above their landing site at Rogers Dry Lake. The vast focal range offered by Southern California’s winter light is deeply embedded in the collective imaginary of the region. As such, it constitutes a way of acting in the world as much as a way of seeing. Satellite imaging technologies are calibrated in the enormous, semi-militarised landscapes west of the Mojave Desert, and, deep in the Inland Empire, logistics warehouses are constructed with floors large enough that they must account for the curvature of the Earth.
This year, we will read the greater Los Angeles region as a landscape organised by distance: a territory where perception itself becomes an infrastructure; a site where ecological ruin, the entertainment industry, aerospace engineering, and speculative futures occupy the same ground. Beneath its apparent openness lies a landscape shaped by extraction, Indigenous histories, settler colonialism, and technological ambition. Our journey will take us from the wilderness of Death Valley to the streets of Wilshire Boulevard, where the illusion of downtown Los Angeles dissolves in the heavy crude oil that continues to seep upwards through cracks in the pristine pavements.
Institute: Architectural Association
Studio: Intermediate 7
The opacity of the city of Los Angeles finds its expression in the most illusory element: the thick opaque air that looms over the city. But each year in late October, after months of stagnation the Santa Ana winds arrive to clear it all out in a unique environmental condition that transforms the region. Dry desert air descends rapidly from the San Bernardino Mountains, tearing through valleys before spilling out toward the Pacific Ocean. As a result, looking west on Interstate 15, somewhere north of Fontana, the murky atmospheric ceiling over the city gives way to an eerie alternative: skies so clear across enormous distances that it can be hard to maintain an accurate sense of perspective.
In this context, it is difficult not to recall the disorientating approach of Space Shuttle Columbia in the spring of 1981. Having just encountered the infinite distances of outer space the astronauts on board were met with an uncanny analogue in the airspace above their landing site at Rogers Dry Lake. The vast focal range offered by Southern California’s winter light is deeply embedded in the collective imaginary of the region. As such, it constitutes a way of acting in the world as much as a way of seeing. Satellite imaging technologies are calibrated in the enormous, semi-militarised landscapes west of the Mojave Desert, and, deep in the Inland Empire, logistics warehouses are constructed with floors large enough that they must account for the curvature of the Earth.
This year, we will read the greater Los Angeles region as a landscape organised by distance: a territory where perception itself becomes an infrastructure; a site where ecological ruin, the entertainment industry, aerospace engineering, and speculative futures occupy the same ground. Beneath its apparent openness lies a landscape shaped by extraction, Indigenous histories, settler colonialism, and technological ambition. Our journey will take us from the wilderness of Death Valley to the streets of Wilshire Boulevard, where the illusion of downtown Los Angeles dissolves in the heavy crude oil that continues to seep upwards through cracks in the pristine pavements.
