Parkman Triangle Park is one year old!

Obviously, some time has passed since we updated the last post, so with the Parkman Triangle Park hitting its one year anniversary this month, we thought we’d show off some photos of how the park turned out. Overall, the entire construction process went smoothly and we were able to complete things on time and on budget. The project attracted volunteers from all over the city and in ten weeks we were able to collectively transform a slab of asphalt in the city, one associated with blight and short-sighted urban planning, into another green space that everyone could enjoy.
This project could not have been possible without the generous support of the City of Los Angeles, Councilman Eric Garcetti’s CDC13 Office, the LA Bureau of Engineering, the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council, and all of the volunteers who made the construction a breeze. Vendors who donated their labor or provided materials at a discounted rate are: Bob’s Rooter and Plumbing, Sepulveda Building Materials, C&S Nursery, and Café Tropical. For more background on the park, please visit the main Urban Operations Website: www.urban-ops.net

08_03_PAR: Parkman Triangle Park

2009 brings us a lot of change, both politically and economically as well. The architecture scene here in Los Angeles has been especially bleak with many firms laying off staff and some even being brought to the edge of bankruptcy. Architects will have a lot to think about over the next few years and a reassessment of the profession is certainly in order.

Despite all of the gloom and doom there are some events that still warrant optimism.

We at Urban Operations are proud to announce that the City of Los Angeles has accepted our proposal for a small "pocket park" to be built at the intersection of Parkman and Silver Lake Blvd. We have been working on this project with the local community for the past six months and were not expecting the project to be approved due to city budget cuts. When we learned from the City of Los Angeles on Friday that our project was one of forty to be funded (not that many for a city of 3.5 million), we were elated.

Now for the hard part- Getting the park built. So far we've avoided the normal pitfalls that normally grip this kind of project and hope that the journey continues to be a smooth one.

It is the nature for public projects such as this one to get bogged down by the kind of democratic populism that generally leans towards mediocrity rather than a lasting and useful public space. This project has been anything but that up to this point. The Parkman Triangle committee is a small one, and the voices in the group have been united by a shared desire to get the park built. The design process was simple. I went to a meeting with the committee, listened to what people wanted, and then produced a scheme in the office that not only sought to contemporize the notion of what a park could be, but attempted to create something that was not about style, but instead a spatial reading of the neighborhood and the city as a whole.

It is our hope that the park, once built, will give the community a place to rest, a place to meet new neighbors, a place to fall in love, a place to share ideas, and a place that instills in the community a sense of pride and trust in the City of Los Angeles.

Stay tuned for updates as we begin the permitting phase of the project and enter the realm of civic architecture. We hope that this blog will continue it's mission to educate people about the processes taking a project from concept to execution. For this project in particular it's going to be quite a journey.

2636 Corralitas Wrap Up

I felt that I’d left people hanging with the project so I thought I’d provide a wrap-up with some accompanying images which I’ll be posting over the next few days on our company site. You can visit this project for a closer look at 2636 Corralitas Drive, Los Angeles CA 90026. It is currently being leased and we request that you not disturb the occupants. The project is still for sale, though it is currently “off the market”. We will entertain any reasonable offer at or within the margin of the original sale price.

Urban Operations is currently in the pre-development phase of a duplex for a client in Silver Lake and in the site selection process of R-2 lots in the Silver Lake/Echo Park area. We are interested in design collaborations with larger firms and are currently taking on commissions from private clients. As you can see from our site on Corralitas Drive we are willing to look at just about any site proposal. For more information you can contact our office by emailing us at:

info (at sign) urban-ops (dot) net

Happy 2009!

Post-Project: Marketing

Now that the project is complete. A whole new bevy of work begins. This Friday I spent my day with Eric Staudenmaier, an architectural photographer, staging and documenting the project. He managed to get some amazing shots and the next meeting is with my Realtors on the project to discuss the actual sale. I should have some time to post some images of the project over the next few weeks so stay tuned.

Final Inspection Passed!

So I understand that this may seem a bit disjunctive considering that on the last post I was talking about stucco, but we passed our final inspection yesterday. After about one year of construction with almost no work stoppages (save for the month I was in Berlin and at Christmas), the project is complete and ready for the market. I will be leaving for China next week to teach design studio on behalf of Woodbury University for the next month and when I return the posts will be all about getting a new project ready for the market. There is still a lot to be done though and I'm trying to keep this in mind as I relax after what was arguably the toughest final push I've ever experienced. I have documented the progress of the project and should be posting pictures over the next few days.

WK ?: Catching up continued

A quickie for you. This is why it’s important to "flag" (hanging a strip of red tape from your exterior vent penetrations) your vents prior to stucco installation. The guys got it right on the scratch coat of stucco, but managed to cover up the vent to the lower bathroom, which is conveniently hidden under a cantilevered soffit. The nick you see is from me spending a morning “tappa-tap-tapping” on the brown coat to locate the vent. Luckily, I had photos to narrow it down, and with a couple of knocks with a hammer the vent was exposed for the stucco crew to come back and re-finish.

Week: ? Catching Up

Catching Up:

I kind of dropped the ball over the holidays and took a break from updating the blog. This doesn’t of course mean that we stopped work. In fact, we worked right through the holiday. I took a week off to visit family in Florida, but as Lemmy from Motorhead says “the train kept a rollin all night long” on site.

Over the past six weeks we’ve finished our drywall, put on two coats of stucco, and started to line up our finishes. Floors go in this Wednesday (ahead of schedule), and tile goes in next week.

After we passed rough I had an insulation crew from Broken Drum come in to insulate the building. Shortly after this we had the insulation inspected and were given the “O.K.” to cover it up. Next, our dry-waller came in and spent the week installing drywall. Then, just before the holiday we shot our first coat of stucco, which is called the scratch coat. Since the footage was so high the sub chose to spray the stucco, and for two days it was raining cement all around the site. Our sub had installed a spray net and installed protection coursing all around the windows, doors, vents, and other protrusions in order to keep them from being covered. The house sat over the holiday and got it’s brown-coat the day after Christmas. It promptly rained for the next four days and that gave this second coat of stucco plenty of moisture, which aids in the curing process. Normally, if rain is not expected, then one would have to spray the entire building with water to keep the plaster moisturized.

I also installed the Polygal window in the garage. Polygal is somewhat of a cliché material these days due to it’s ubiquity, but I love the stuff since it allows you to illuminate a room with indirect light for a fraction of the cost that a frosted glass window of the same size would run you. Everyone has their particular method of detailing Polygal, and I take a pretty simple approach. Since we don’t get too much rain here in Southern California, it’s easy to field glaze the seams with clear caulking and mastic screws keep any water from penetrating the holes left by the fasteners. Also, I put a piece of L-metal at the base to serve as a drip-edge. This then gets caulked where it meets the stucco. It’s a simple, yet elegant way to waterproof the window.

WK33: Rough Inspection Passed

A milestone. This week we made it through rough inspection. There are still some outstanding issues to resolve before we drywall, but as far a the City of LA is concerned, things are ready to be covered.

Before our inspection we did have to do a bit of prep work. The site had become overrun with trash and after watching some guys almost kill themselves trying to get to the toilet, I called in the trash hauler. The site looked like this:

And now it looks like this: