Renewing the Dream

UNPLUGGED

What do we do with all 550 gas stations in Los Angeles when not everyone needs gas anymore? That simple question formed the basis for a design research project, Pump to Plug, my colleague Matt Ducharme (MD) led with our LA studio in 2021. It informs a chapter in a forthcoming book, Renewing the Dream, which was edited by James Sanders and will be released next month. The book is a broader examination of the future of Los Angeles as a model for how other cities could densify and develop in response to a host of issues including housing scarcity, the need for density to support public transit, and environmental imperatives like electrification. What follows is a conversation I had with Matt this month, which has been edited and condensed.

RF: At its core, Pump to Plug is an analytical model that looks at Los Angeles as a series of data layers and points that can be used to inform the design of the city. When you run large analytical models, you can find results that challenge your expectations. Your work started here—in this case, the city limits of Los Angeles and a set of land use criteria—and I'm curious what you found once you started asking questions about that model that maybe led you in different architectural directions from where you thought the project would go?

MD: What I was surprised by the most was not necessarily what the data told us because it's pretty straightforward why the gas stations are what they are, but by what we were afforded by not having gas stations there. By having electric vehicles (EVs) there, you no longer had these incredibly volatile, explosive sites, but you could combine residential and mixed-use more effectively.

A vital aspect of this is that sustainability and infrastructure are really intrinsically tied to culture. So, when we're designing these spaces, it's essential that we're thinking about them, not just through the engineering of sustainability or the functional aspects of infrastructure, but that we are thinking about what these spaces or what these designs are contributing to the surrounding culture and local communities.

The proposition was what happens if you convert a gas station site into an EV charging station. And we said, well, if you take a city like Los Angeles, where the automobile's infrastructure shaped the city's character, and then you connect that to how various communities use the automobile to represent their cultures, extrapolating that to the fact that this narrative expands into Los Angeles-based films like Fast and the Furious, and how these movies became much more impactful because they extended from the idea of getting around the city to how Angelenos used automobiles for community and artistic expression, you're able to create innovative design.

RF: That alone is provocative in LA, this idea that a gas station or its site could be reconfigured to actually support and inhabit a neighborhood and its contemporary needs, rather than merely reflect an efficient transactional infrastructure. The way LA has centered culture and experience around the car, at least historically, has also been a way to exclude people, and that many, many Angelenos don't own cars. And I don't necessarily mean that as purely economically driven, but also by choice; it's a very different city today than in the 1950s. And you can choose not to own a car in LA and still experience the entire city. Can we flip gas stations from a car-centric space to one that is more inclusive? 

MD: Yeah.

RF: The greatest examples of gas stations in LA are still places where the pedestrian is very, very secondary to the experience of the place.

MD: When we were researching this project, we found this sense with gas stations and the Googie architecture – that rearview mirror architecture is almost like the billboard. And it was all about the democratization of public spaces. There's always this aspiration at the start of technologies that assumes, 'Oh, look, it's going to open up access to everything and look at all of the things it's going to provide to everyone.'

And then, as with everything in art and Avant Garde, it gets kind of taken and separated from everyone else. But I believe there's an opportunity there, specifically in this project, with the way that we were looking at opening up these communities to the conversation, not necessarily through the car, but through the spaces themselves.

RF: Just owing to the centrality of the gas station, or the accessibility of gas stations in the city, in terms of simple real estate, there seems to be an opportunity to really move the needle on our sustainability agenda in LA in every neighborhood through gas stations alone. We could rethink those spaces as a way to serve communities in a way that currently does not exist, not necessarily through public projects but perhaps through incentivizing the private sector through decarbonization. Looking back at 100 years of the city's development around cars, we wouldn't have anticipated our needs for more public space and dense housing. Or, more to the point, a purely market-based approach to urban planning did not recognize this need.

What will it take on the developer front or on the owner side to push these projects across the line? Because, you know, I've had this conversation with many developers, including companies that own vast portfolios of these kinds of sites in Australia and elsewhere, and they're all wondering what the sell-by date is on these sites.

MD: That was why we structured this around flexibility. One thing that can be monetized is that you can have a whole bunch of different use cases active throughout the day. It could be a restaurant or food trucks, an outdoor theater, a pickle ball court, whatever you can imagine. In most of LA, the best use for these sites would be housing—that is just pure supply and demand. 

 Today that is not something that the sites are doing. They are not unlocking the total economic value of what they can be because they are only used for a specific subset of the population for a certain part of the day, and even with that subset, they are only able to marginally provide more than their central role as a place to buy gas.  

When we talk about the cultural role of gas stations, I'm not suggesting that a station owner convert a profitable business into an art piece, but that if a site had a larger role to play or a broader community to represent, it expands the audience. The design of these stations is really the language of advertising, which is a cultural product of sorts in LA in the way we have adopted its signs and messages, so I wonder if there is an opportunity for design continuity where the sites maintain an immersive quality to them that blurs this line between culture and commerce. 

Otherwise, how are these developers going to flip these sites eventually?

The most successful project is the one that can creatively find a way to bring value to both a community and a developer. The key is understanding that value is defined differently for various groups, or as we look at it, designing with a sense of empathy. With Pump to Plug, we tried to understand how different groups would see opportunities in new technology and apply this to sites throughout Los Angeles. These sites are such critical parts of our urban infrastructure in LA and say a lot about how we value the land and represent ourselves to the world. How could an architect not want to tackle this?

Matt Ducharme is Woods Bagot’s USA West Coast Design Leader, heading a diverse group of collaborators that combine global expertise with a process of engagement, empathy, and creative problem-solving. 

With degrees in structural engineering and architecture, Matt bases his design thinking on a multi-disciplinary perspective.  He has led award-winning projects in the U.S. and Australia that include civic, mixed-use towers, next-generation performing arts facilities, stadiums, and master planning.  

WHAT AM I READING?

Renewing the Dream: The Mobility Revolution and the Future of Los Angeles, Rizzoli Electa From the book: California, once the epitome of car culture, is now leading the green movement, transitioning away from the internal combustion engine and to some extent the car—and having to rethink how we live, as this extraordinary urban planning manifesto explores. You can also fine more on the Pump to Plug project at www.woodsbagot.com

In preparing for a fall course I’m teaching, I return again and again for inspiration from the book, Atmosphere Anatomies: On Design, Weather, and Sensation, by Silvia Benedito. Published in 2021, the book explores a series of key architecture projects through the lens of thermal and atmospheric experiences related to the body. The chapter on Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompéia Community Center in Sao Paulo (from 1977-1986) is required reading for my students, demonstrating both insights into various thermodynamic states generated from the architect’s incorporation of water effects, stratification strategies with windows and shading, and vegetation and effective ways to illustrate such approaches in architecture. I think every architect should think through their project’s outdoor spaces and associated environmental experience this thoroughly.