CITY OF LOS ANGELES CULTURAL AFFAIRS COMMISSION
PUBLIC ART, ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE & URBAN DESIGN REVIEW GUIDELINES

Thank you for your interest in the City of Los Angeles’ efforts to try to improve the standards of excellence for the city’s public architecture and public art!

Background and Process
The Los Angeles City Cultural Affairs Commission has the power to review and approve all public architectural designs and public art projects in the City of Los Angeles. In Fall 2007, the Cultural Affairs Commission convened a series of open-ended meetings with key stakeholders and members of the Commission Design Advisory Panel (CDAP), a group of appointed experts in architecture, urban planning, and public art. In these meetings, we began a discussion on how to create the necessary conditions for consistent and long-term excellence in public architecture, public art, urban design that best reflects Los Angeles’ international stature as a vibrant and creative cultural center. As a result of these meetings, a Steering Committee was appointed to develop and formally propose design principles, guidelines and policy recommendations on how to achieve this objective. Building on the feedback received from the initial series of discussion forums, the Steering Committee has worked together consistently and thoughtfully over the last six months to develop these proposals, and we now seek to distribute these proposals to the rest of the City family, to the broader art, architecture and design community, and interested members of the public, in an effort to solicit input and to create a productive discussion around shared goals.

Brief Thematic Overview of Proposed Guidelines
Please find posted here a set of Project Design and Review Guidelines which proposes new standards and seeks to reinvent the way that the Cultural Affairs Commission is involved in design review, and city planning and development. A key theme in these documents is an emphasis on each City Departments’ role as developer, custodian and champion of the public realm. We believe that each Department’s design review process can be implemented in a manner that ensures that each public building and public art project not only facilitates that Department’s unique and important program, but that they also are thoughtfully designed in a way which facilitates interaction of users, residents and pedestrians alike, with sensitivity to local and regional context.

The Commission hopes to use these documents to encourage all City Departments to view their projects as a building block in the development of a public infrastructure of streets, plazas, parks and civic buildings which showcase the culture of our City.

120 Day Public Comment Period
You can help by providing constructive comments on the posted draft of the Project Design and Review Guidelines. Please limit your comments to 150 words or less on each section of the Guidelines. All comments will be reviewed by a subcommittee of the Commission, weighed carefully, and incorporated into the final document. Public comment will be open for 120 days, commencing on July 28, 2008.

We hope that you join us in raising the bar, and moving forward together to develop this vision for Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission
July 25, 2008

Click here to download the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission
Public Art, Architecture, Landscape & Urban Design Review Guidelines