New Urban Typologies

Essential City is the amalgam of six Coachella Valley and High Desert Cities, each with its typical Southern-Californian-city characteristics, which together create a realistic yet theoretical "existing" backdrop upon which to intervene with urban design and architecture, designed for resilience in the age of the anthropocene.

We have randomly selected a number of potential sites which highlight problematic issues to do with zoning, public-open space, transportation, streetscape and access to housing.

Each location and the knitting together of them through a new masterplan yields a potential solution in terms of a number of hybrid typologies that bridge the concerns of; city scale, neighborhood scale, and home ~ for desert cities of the future.