The threat of climate change necessitates the development of forward-looking planning and design approaches that minimize man’s impact on the environment by redefining relationships between the urban residential fabric, and it’s cultural and natural surroundings.

The Hollywood Hills (HH) embody an idea we refer to as the “Los Angeles Trinity”: perfect weather conditions, a pervasive natural environment, and an overlay of world-wide desirability disseminated through the far-reaching impact of film industry images on all cultures. In LA, this coincidental set of circumstances has led to a loosely woven residential fabric that honors the value of expanse over efficiency - twith homes, gardens, and winding roads. From the ashes of catastrophe evolves the dream habitat of the future.he LA dream of single-family homes with spectacular views and year-round gardens. In our vision of the future, Los Angeles embraces climate change as an inspirational opportunity to reconfigure and redefine itself. The ongoing transformation of the planet provides a basis for re-evaluating the relationships between natural environment, local culture and Hollywood mythology. The city becomes a model that encourages new prototypes of urban living and nature conservation.

The near-future scenario we envision develops from recent climatology literature (see references) that suggests that LA, by 2100, will experience longer winters with twice the rainfall, and extremely hot summers where temperatures frequently climb above 32°C. Such conditions could easily provoke debilitating wildfires and mudslides requiring a radical transformation of the suburban hillside condition.

Our project, HH2100 – Inhabiting the Dream, envisions a re-scaled, liveable Hollywood Sign that sits lightly in the foothills, detached from the environment, yet allowing natural forces to dissolve and reshape landform contours and ecosystems as influenced by the changing climate. The high rise structures gather together the hillside populace displaced by storms and fires, establishing a new sustainable community complete

The relationship of human-to-nature is approached in a symbiotic way, where the limited physical attachment of structures to the land allows regeneration and supports all forms of life while permitting humankind to create a new, more compact, sustainable model of communal living, celebrated by the spectacle of the new Hollywood sign.

Credits: i.mazzoleni w/ m.frohn, renderings: pirate design
2008