LA Riverside Country Club
The individuals associated with the project have two avenues of connection and work together:
1. Community activism in Elysian Valley. In this respect the core resident participants have worked together on several environmental issues. These include organize a large public response to environmental justice issues with air quality, doing work to identify and cause watershed violators to be permitted and improve their practices in the local area.
2. Professional work on design concepts for appropriate landscape and built environments in the LA River region. The architects and artists on various conceptual plans for LA River centric projects.
This project would synthesize relationships developed over several years between the members of the team by giving focus to an on-the ground experimental project.
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1 Submitted Idea
- 2013 Grants Challenge
PLUNGE into the waters of the LA River
LA Riverside Country Club and the PLUNGE promotes the pleasures and benefits of recreation and privilege for everyone; It is an "inclusive" club. The club and its swimming pool/industrial cistern will be a located next to the LA River sited between industrial uses on vacant land. Instead of a country club with bermuda grass and membership dues, the club promotes the idea that environmental well-being, physical and social, is a right.
The center piece of the Club is the PLUNGE that is both cistern, swimming pool and art work. The name PLUNGE harkens back to the great democratic municipal pools. It is a highly engineered ISO shipping container pool with surrounding sit-able decks and a built-in digital projection system that will put participants into an image scene with the LA River. Not incidentally, the pool is also a massive cistern for industrial building roof waters. Already, arrangements have been made for procuring up to 50,000 sq. foot of roof waters. During the first summer of operation, the waters for swimming will most likely be gathered from municipal water supply, though the slight possibility exists that a filtration system may be used to prepare pumped LA River water.
The subsequent year or years, all waters will come from industrial building roof nearby. The cistern/pool is completely self-contained system within the container, including pumps, valves, filtration and heating with solar supplement. During winter months waters will be released to landscape as necessary with an automated system. The technologies of the system will be developed experimentally during the term of the project. The project is for a two year term with the possibility of a third year. When the project is finished the PLUNGE is being designed in such a way as to be transportable to another site or situation and set up with 2 days.
The LA Riverside Country Club is not a club with dues. Instead, it is a situation where a series of popup events will be held. There is already an extensive list of ideas that have been generated by the core team members. Some of the ideas include: Urban camping for local youth to be held on the site, old time games like horseshoes, badminton, and bocci ball, educational seminars and design exercises onsite brought by team members or academics with interest in the LA River, events or meetings of LA River entities who lack a direct meeting place at the river, such as the Friends of the Los Angeles River and the LA Revitalization Corporation. Music is planned as well as outdoor project. A series of planned community swim events will be held.
Ultimately, this project is to demonstrate and test a large scale cistern as an excuse to cool off on the Eastside in summer.