20 ⎯⎯⎯ 20.2030 Hyperion Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Loren Adams, Architect
Regulatory Nonsense
Our neighborhoods are a direct product of the regulatory documents which shape them: Codes, standards, regulations, policies, legislation. These documents exist to guide decision-making towards “good” built outcomes and protect us – the public – from nefarious actors.
But they seem to be failing.
The specific things we choose to regulate – and the method by which we choose to measure compliance – tells a story about what we, as a society, collectively value.
What could our cities be if regulations were written by poets, choreographers, philosophers, an A.I.? If we embrace linguistic ambiguity, would the language of our built environment begin to reflect the novel, poetic language of its regulations? Would it facilitate architecture that better serves our communities?
In “Regulatory Nonsense”, the Los Angeles Zoning Code is re-written by a bespoke deep-learning text generator ‘bot, trained on poetry, creative prose, and personal accounts of place. The language of regulation becomes an instrument for reorienting value away from capital and towards public good.
Bio
Loren Adams is an interdisciplinary designer and educator with a background in architecture, digital fabrication, robotics, and public policy. She is broadly interested in the way things are made, what they are made from, and how advanced technologies might offer us new opportunities for sustainable form- and place-making.
Formerly based in Los Angeles, Loren now resides in Melbourne, Australia.
She has taught extensively at RMIT, Monash University, and The University of Melbourne, where she was the inaugural coordinator of the Melbourne School of Design Robotics Lab. In 2019, Loren led a travelling studio to Los Angeles, during which her architecture students were required to plan a heist. She currently leads the Computational Design team at Grimshaw Architects in Melbourne.