The Arts District in Los Angeles is experiencing a rapid renaissance, drawing creatives to the city from the fine arts, to engineering. When hired to design Los Angeles Arts District (LAAD), or Mesquit &#; a mixed-use development incorporating housing, offices, and public spaces &#; BIG asked: how can the Arts District be renewed by embracing rather than replacing the qualities that have spawned this unique urban culture

The proposal includes upgrades to the planned light rail by extending it to form a regional ring around Oresund connecting similar development areas, and creating a new year development perspective for a cross border region between Sweden and Denmark. Where the Finger Plan from was about connectivity from suburb to center the Loop City is linking a string of highly differentiated urban nodes, universities and working spaces in a center-less metropolitan region around a blue void.

A new public promenade ties together the bay in east and leisure harbor in west. The meandering shape of the promenade defines a series of new public spaces on land and water weaving together the two and extending the new public realm into the water earlier reserved for industrial purposes. The promenade brings life to the area through a sports plaza, harbor bath, theater, restaurants, cafés, and beach huts which all together create a new vibrant waterfront in Aarhus.

Like the monsoons, the dust storms and the mountains, the BIG Pin is also an exceptional moment, a point of reference and a mechanism to set the still landscape in motion &#; only this time through the movement of the spectator. Instead of referencing other observation towers, the Pin takes as a point of reference Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated Guggenheim Museum of New York. The visitor experiences the museum as a spiral motion looking inward. At the BIG Pin, the focus is reversed. Instead of a void, there is the dramatic landscape of Phoenix, Arizona.

The -story mixed-use tower EPIQ is located on the southern tip of La Carolina Park in the center of the city. The shape of the site is a quarter of a circle and occupies the west corner intersection of Avenida de la Republica and Avenida Eloy Alfaro, across the street from the new Quito subway. The rounded corners of the building allow for panoramic views of the city while maximizing daylight exposure.