This book launch celebrates the publication of two books by the Urban Works Agency: Apocalypse Now! and Designing a Just City. Join María Arquero de Alarcón, Carrie Denning Jackson, Ming Thompson, John Bela, and Benjamin Grant; editors Chris Roach and Janette Kim; and student authors to explore what it takes to make the city open: open to interpretation, open for business, open for self-determination, and open as public space. These two books reveal inventive design techniques by which architects can collaborate with interdisciplinary partners to reshape the city as a commons, from the ground up. 

Apocalypse Now! Project for the Post Retail City: Rethinking the Ground Floor investigates the “Retail Apocalypse” as an opportunity to both rethink commercial environments, and to experiment with new forms—of property, governance, access, and space—that can reshape their relationship to the public sphere. The book collects a series of rigorous case studies and design proposals which rethink the ground floor as a site for the production and support of social infrastructure, generated by students in Christopher Roach and Christina Cho Yoo’s spring 2020 Apocalypse Now studio.

Designing a Just City: How Architecture Reshapes Property, Equity, Ecology and Economy asks how architecture can intervene into systemic sites of power—Property, Equity, Ecology and Economy—to open them to a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities. This book was created by students in Janette Kim’s spring 2020 Urban Imaginaries seminar at CCA, and presents interpretive drawings of twelve architectural case studies, from Charles Fourier’s Phalanstère to Alejandro Aravena’s Casa Quinta Monroy.

Apocalypse Now! Project for the Post Retail City: Rethinking the Ground Floor was edited by Christopher Roach and Christina Cho Yoo with Donna Mena, designed by Duy Nguyen, and created by students at the California College of Arts Architecture Division: James Ayling, Elliot Gorman, Donna Mena, Maria Ramirez Perez, Abby Rockwell, Sharan Saboji, Elmer Wang, Xiao Xiao, Wan Yan, and Elida Zavala. Research Assistance by Carlos Medellin.  

Designing a Just City was edited by Janette Kim and created by students at the California College of Arts Architecture Division: Alhakam Alaedh, James Ayling, Pietro Carini, Celdin Fajardo, Shih Ting Huang, Jennifer Jimenez, Thomas Krulevitch, Lori Martinez, Donna Mena, Kurt Pelzer, Sharan Saboji, Sayer Al Sayer, Jose Trujillo, and Elmer Wang.

Presented by CCA’s Urban Works Agency.