CultureNOW - Sixth Street Viaduct: City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering, Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc., A.C. Martin & Associates and Hargreaves Associates

Sixth Street Viaduct

Design Architect
Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc.

Landscape Architect
Hargreaves Associates

Urban Planner
A.C. Martin & Associates

Owner
City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering

Dates

In Design, 2014
Expected Completion, 2018

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Description

Michael Maltzan Architecture

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The new Los Angeles Sixth Street Viaduct is a transformative infrastructure project for the City of Los Angeles. It will replace the original 1932 bridge, and unite the Boyle Heights community to the east and the Arts District and Downtown to the west. The design team, led by HNTB (Engineer and Executive Architect), Michael Maltzan Architecture (Design Architect), Hargreaves Associates (Landscape Architect), and A.C. Martin (Urban Designer), began with the fundamental understanding that the Viaduct is more than a simple replacement thoroughfare crossing the Los Angeles River. With the leadership of the City’s Bureau of Engineering, the project brief foresees a multimodal future for the City. The design team has embraced a vision that accommodates cars, incorporates significant new bicycle connections, and also increases connectivity for pedestrians to access the Viaduct, not only at its endpoints, but along the entirety of the viaduct, linking the bridge, the Los Angeles River, and new urban landscapes in a more meaningful relationship. The iconic architectural and engineering design by HNTB | Michael Maltzan Architecture | Hargreaves Associates |A.C. Martin is the product of an international design competition led by the Bureau of Engineering. The decision to conduct a design competition, an unusual approach to an infrastructure project of this magnitude, emphasizes the City's collective commitment to making the new Sixth Street Viaduct an iconic and lasting landmark for Los Angeles.

The viaduct design is equal parts engineering and architecture and begins with the idea of ten pairs of arches, rising and falling along the north and south edges of the bridge as it extends from east to west. These pairs of repeated concrete arches and cable supported roadway deck are simultaneously elegant, efficient, and cost effective.The design approach unifies and optimizes the architecture of the viaduct through repetition, creating a unique configuration through the repeated use of arches, roadway and pier forms: an iconic structure. The arches incline outward from the deck and are constructed segmentally. The repetitive pier forms beneath angle outward in plan, resolving the geometries of the bridge’s inner and outer profiles. The bridge deck, suspended from the cable lattice at its perimeter, is a highly efficient, thin profile. Because the viaduct’s spans are similar, foundations at each pier are also nearly identical, further improving efficiency.

The Sixth Street Viaduct's two largest spans are located on either side of the Los Angeles River, curving over the rail yards beneath, which require the most significant spans between piers.These archways descend towardthe river in a gentle arc, passing between the existing power lines overhead and the rail cars below. A third, inverted span arcs over the river supporting a pathway below that allows pedestrians and cyclists to engage the Los Angeles River in a way never imagined before.The river span, and the loftier adjacent spaces over the railway, creates a united central composition and iconic profile unique to the viaduct and the environment that shape it.

As the arches descend below the bridge deck, they cross, creating a unique profile between each pier and the landscape below. The gentle curves of selected arches are lined with stairways that enable visitors to ascend and descend directly to and from the bridge deckalong the viaduct’s entire length, creating a more direct engagement between individual experience and the bridge’s structure. Visitors can ascend several of the arches further, above the roadway, creating an exceptional vista over the bridge, the landscape below, the surrounding community, and the downtown skyline beyond. A new elevated bike path connects the Viaduct Park with the span above.

The structure's generous spans create large areas of open space below that will become new recreational green spaces. This strategy enables a more significant degree of connectivity with the ground plane and a less prescriptive approach to landscape that will allow for expanded flexibility overtime. The design incorporates the new Viaduct Park, under the eastern portion of the viaduct in the industrial flats, which will incorporate a wide range of public activities and open space and a linear park will line the western shore of the waterway. A new sloping River Gateway path will link the River green spaces to a new Arts Plaza at the terminus of the viaduct in the heart of the Arts District.

Michael Maltzan Architecture

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Location

Los Angeles, CA
United States

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