L.A. CULTIVA
Project Type
YAC Competition
Location
South Los Angeles, United States
March 2025 – May 2026
Program
Cultivation area, processing area, multipurpose block
Concept
Located in South Los Angeles, a vibrant multicultural city, LA Cultiva is a product of its diverse urban fabric, defined by opportunity, creativity, and artistic expression. Rooted in a landscape shaped by its community, the project invites the locals into its design with murals made by and for them. The complex offers discovering and learning opportunities through its multipurpose block, the connection point between the public realm and the vertical farm. A rooftop park, accessible via an exterior staircase, also provides views into the vertical farm through its glass façade, arousing visitor’s curiosity while maintaining a layer of mystery. LA Cultiva is more than a vertical farm, it is an innovative urban space, a symbol of commmunity and sustainability.
The multipurpose block is strategically placed at the intersection between Broadway and 94th Street, highlighting its function as a connecting point between the facility and the public realm. The vertical farm, located near the residential buildings, maintains a constituency with the surrounding buildings’ typology, and provides better access to distribution and transportation networks. Together, the offices and labs form an atrium, allowing employees to overlook both the lab spaces and the processing area. At the heart of the facility, the processing area links all these spaces, ensuring seamless functionality and flow throughout the complex.
Visuals
LA Cultiva has a shell of etched glass, with customised patterns to play with the opacity of the façades, making the public-facing façades inviting to the public, to stir their curiosity. A series of curtain walls are featured throughout the multipurpose block, the point of connection between the vertical farm and the public, creating harmony between the functional mission and the experiential appeal of the vertical farm. On the north side, the concrete façades are intentionally left open to serve as canvases for local artists to express their creativity and reflect the area’s cultural identity, making the building more inviting and anchoring it within the local community.
The city of Los Angeles is a cultural crossroads, a thriving melting pot of merging cultures, with its vibrant and dynamic urban fabric defined by diversity, opportunity and artistic expression. This is exemplified in the density of multi-ethnic families living in the area around our plot, specifically from Latin America, setting a cultural background for the location. Los Angeles embodies the American Dream and plays a major role in the artistic world, bringing to light a wide range of artists of international renown. LA Cultiva embraces this spirit by including the local community in its design, featuring murals created by and for the local community. Vertical farms risk looking out of place, like a window to the future. Our intent is to make them feel like they were always there.
Team
Mihnea Mateescu, Paulina Orlinska, Anastasia Balan, Alexandru Ilie, Maria Gheorghiu, Radostina Mihailova, Maria Derbaix, Thalia Konstantopoulos, Kinga Vojkovics, Chloe Rasse
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