St. Vibiana Cathedral: Collisons of Past and Present Culture

Los Angeles is a place where everyday encounters of cultures, values, traditions and technology, are witnessed in the streets of the multi-ethnic city. In these urban collisions we find a present grappling with its traditions through preservation and desecration. Everyday in this hybrid urbanity our generation is challenged with the reality of extinction at every level of human existence, including that of the natural world, and of tradition and culture. Histories of these accounts are told through buildings’ everyday production and erasure. In cities like Los Angeles, where the social make up, urban histories, and experimental avant-garde are of extreme diversity, architectural education faces a composite challenge to deepen the understanding of aesthetic achievement, programmatic resolution and structural soundness. In this context, the study of the historical artifact’s past and present context becomes crucial to the architectural profession as we develop structured methods that inform our value judgment in designing the future use and physical treatment of the past. In the design studio, the case of St. Vibiana, its past, present and future role in the city, can provide an opportunity for the advanced architecture student to explore the many aspects of design that make for a vivid built environment; one shaped by tradition, of present relevance, and of future innovation.

Volume Editors
David Covo & Gabriel Mérigo Basurto

ISBN
0-935502-57-2