Conscious Cities Festival 2025 | Los Angeles, California, USA | March 22 – March 23, 2025
Event Description:
What does it mean to be an Angelino? As Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, this festival seeks to identify the distinctive qualities that define our city and the sense of place in which we are deeply rooted. We will examine how the built environment can broadcast that heritage and culture both at a local and global scale.
This two-day festival will investigate place attachment across several scales. A workshop centered on neighborhood and community dynamics will inaugurate the event. Participants will employ empathetic approaches and anthropological methods to assess the needs of locals in communities around the city of Los Angeles. The next session will shift its focus to the urban scale. A panel discussion featuring guests from local universities, LA City Planning, and planners of 2028 Games will engage in a discussion ranging from personal research to broader initiatives currently underway across the city. Lastly, a design charrette will encompass the global scale. At the culmination of festival, the direct application of the previous workshop insight into a tangible design outcome will be facilitated.
Itinerary:
Saturday, March 22, 2025: Workshop with local LA communities
Sunday, March 23, 2025: Panel Discussion on the urban planning initiatives in Los Angeles and the race to prepare the city for the Olympics 2028
Sunday, March 23, 2025: Design Charrette focusing on translating the workshop findings into a conceptual design
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will gain an understanding of the design research process and how to directly apply their findings to achieve tangible design outcomes.
- Participants will learn effective strategies for engaging with local communities and obtaining feedback on their designs.
- Participants will acquire knowledge about the urban initiatives and processes currently taking place in Los Angeles.
- Participants will explore various potential avenues of research-informed design.
