LA+ Imagination

imagination |iˌmajəˈnāSHən|

noun (pl. imaginations)

the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses: she’d never been blessed with a vivid imagination.

• the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful: technology gives workers the chance to use their imagination.

• the part of the mind that imagines things: a girl who existed only in my imagination.

Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Ed.

6 jury q+a richard weller, marion weiss, MARK KINGWELL, JAVIER ARPA, MATTHEW GANDY, JAMES CORNER

56 the black swamp armada jake boswell + marty koelsch

58 cohesion eric wong

60 stheno island nadège lachassagne + iwan burgaud

62 puerto nuevo joseph henry kennedy jr.

28 pla-kappa: a cautionary tale of accumulation tei carpenter, arianna deane + ashley kuo

64 a fraudulent atoll justin parscher + jake boswell

68 alderney north east james trevers 34 coastal paradox bradley cantrell, fionn byrne + emma mendel

66 islands in the park ting liang + elizabeth savrann

40 the dredge islands neeraj bhatia, cesar lopez + jeremy jacinth

46 united plastic nation noël schardt + bjÖrn MÜNDNER

22 the island of lost objects jacky bowring 20 winning entries 52 honorable mentions

54 Ø copenhagen marshall blecher + magnus maarbjerg

70 solarberg alexandra zahn

72 niebla tepui thomas yuan

74 salon des refusÉS

96 island library prakul reddy pottapu, zhexuan liao + richard weller

Upcoming Issues

Previous: “Clearing Up — Coast of Sicily” by Andreas Achenbach (c. 1847) via Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Opposite: Ø Copenhagen by Marshall Blecher + Magnus Maarbjerg, used with permission.

imagination editorial

We know of course that nothing is an island and yet in an infinite, liminal universe they seem a necessary fixation. Why are we attracted to islands? Is it genetic memory or cultural construct? Both no doubt. Like ships to land, the mind comes to rest on islands. Clinging to this latitude and that longitude (or, as it is now, a solid 1 in an ocean of 0s) the mind can anchor itself to an island and offload its stories. From Atlantis to The Lord of the Flies, we have built up an archipelago of island dreams and island nightmares, all of them useful fictions set in dialogue with the mainland.

The landscape or architectural project is also a kind of island – a discrete world where the designer spins stories into stone. But what are these stories? Why are their plots so often so thin and their characters so obvious? Partly a critique of its relative absence in a world of overbearing realism and partly a wager that if given the opportunity the flood gates would open, this issue gives free rein to the imagination, and documents the results of the eponymous competition where entrants were asked, simply, to design an island.

There was really only one rule: the island could not be bigger than one square kilometer. We asked entrants to provide a plan and section and supporting imagery, and explain their idea under 300 words. We received 180 entries from 33 countries.

LA+ IMAGINATION’s eminent and interdisciplinary jury was comprised of James Corner (Founder, James Corner Field Operations), Marion Weiss (Co-founder, WEISS/MANFREDI), Javier Arpa (The Why Factory, Delft), Mathew Gandy (Professor of Geography, Cambridge University), Mark Kingwell (Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto), and Richard Weller (Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania). After several rounds of judging the jury awarded five equal winners and 10 honorable mentions, all of which are published in full in the following pages. In addition to these, we have compiled a Salon des Refusés of other notable entries, and at the back of the issue you will find a library of island classics to compare and contrast with those of the entrants. Through interviews, each juror offers their thoughts on the entries and reflects on contemporary design culture more broadly.

LA+ Journal thanks everyone who entered and contributed to LA+ IMAGINATION.

Tatum L. Hands Editor-in-Chief

United Plastic Nation

Wars, poverty, environmental destruction – sounds like a recipe for Armageddon. What if we could take greed, ignorance, and violence and create something positive? The United Plastic Nation is the antipode – an ever-growing structure, floating through the ocean currents, slowly turning circles around the globe, feeding off a seemingly endless resource: our drive for self-destruction. On its way, it collects and recycles plastic from the oceans. Building material is produced, which is then 3D-printed by a swarm of robotic drones. Layer by layer, they build a completely self-sufficient city. Food is grown in vertical aquaponic farms, water and waste cycle through closed systems, and energy is produced by the waves. The island grows both horizontally and vertically along a New York-like grid, forming an unsinkable iceberg structure. Eventually a landmass of one square kilometer emerges with residential, industrial, recreational, and commercial zones – the first district of the United Plastic Nation.

While growing, the island passes by all continents, connecting regions of poverty and despair with regions of wealth and prosperity. It collects its inhabitants from the army of forgotten and dispossessed who are stuck in between. Buried deep below the surface in the belly of the island lie the servers which contain the squirreled-away fortunes of the world’s richest and greediest. Positioned in international waters, the United Plastic Nation is bound by no national laws, thus enabling it to function as a tax haven and generate revenue. The United Plastic Nation questions the concept of the nation state, which defines itself by exclusion of the outside via borders and citizenship. This island is instead, by default, inclusive; it has no borders, is part of all continents, and anyone can be become citizen. A society of true urban nomads is born, not moving from city to city but moving their city themselves.

Originally an oyster bed nourishing the Lenni-Lenape of Mannahatta, Liberty Island in Upper New York Bay had incarnations as a quarantine station, an asylum, and a fort before becoming the site of the “Statue of Liberty” – an icon of freedom from political and economic oppression. The monument was to be a gift from France on the occasion of America’s 1876 centennial celebrations; however, it did not arrive in America until 1885, the project having been beset by funding difficulties on both sides of the Atlantic.

Designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, with structural engineering by Gustave Eiffel, the statue sits on a pedestal formed by the walls of the original star-shaped fort. At the time of its unveiling in 1886, suffragettes circled the island in a boat protesting the fact that the statue, formally titled “Liberty Enlightening the World,” was female and yet women did not yet have the right to vote.

Islands have always appealed as prisons and Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town in South Africa, is one of the most infamous of them all. Small and flat, Robben Island has been used as a prison since the 17th century, most recently and notoriously by the apartheid regime. The island’s best-known prisoner was Nelson Mandela, who was incarcerated there for the first 18 years of a life sentence for sabotage against the state. Mandela broke rocks during the day and spent nights studying law in a cramped cell. As a political prisoner, he was permitted only one visit and one letter every six months. In 1990, after having served 27 years of his sentence, he was unconditionally released and immediately set about securing the right to vote for the nation’s black majority. Four years later South Africa held its first democratic elections and inaugurated Mandela as its first black president.

PLEASURE

Advertised as sun-drenched destinations in azure waters, islands are often synonymous with escapism and pleasure. As many stories attest, however, islands are equally the setting for misery and depredation. The appropriation of all that is desirable in the trope of the remote island, yet replete with all mod-cons, gives rise to the late-20th century invention of the cruise ship. Not to be confused with ocean liners which, prior to the phenomenon of cheap air travel, primarily facilitated the efficient transportation of people and goods, the cruise ship is a floating hotel, a moveable island utterly devoted to the hedonism of its guests. The cruise ship’s genius is that it seamlessly combines three otherwise incompatible idylls: the island, the city, and the endless journey – each cancelling out the others possible negativity. And yet, by combining these three impossible desires the cruise ship is also a dream from which one cannot, for as long as the journey takes, awake.

S;On April 1, 1977, The Guardian newspaper published a seven-page supplement commemorating the 10th anniversary of independence from Britain of the small island nation of San Serriffe. The supplement featured economic and political reports, tourist itineraries, and advertisements. It described the indigenous tribes of “Flong” people who practiced a ritual called the “Dance of the Pied Slugs”; referred to minority groups, the “colons” and “semi-colons”; and advertised a white Guinness beer with black froth, reportedly the result of the island’s farmers planting barley seeds upside down. Despite such telltale signs, many readers were fooled by the April Fool’s Day hoax and for some time thereafter, travel agents were forced to deal with irate tourists who refused to believe that the island nation of San Serriffe did not in fact exist.