Inclusive Infrastructure Design Lab

The summer lab crew celebrated and mourned summer’s end with a classic taco night 🌮🌮🌮🍹 Thank you everyone for the great and continuing work!@usclandarchurbanism @uscarchitecture @uscviterbi @usc_earth @aquercus @uscpublicexchange @cmonder

Join us for the final event in the ‘Play is a Wild Thing’ workshop series, hosted by Ako Castuera. @akocastuera Step into a world of imagination and experience the Los Angeles River at an entirely new scale. The Inclusive Infrastructure Design Lab (IIDL) @iidlab will share their interactive model of the LA River, inviting you to explore, play, and reimagine the landscape from a fresh perspective. Come prepared to unleash your inner alter ego and transform your hand into a finger puppet ready to skate the riverbanks. In our second workshop, Ako teamed up with Carlos Hinojosa, @gnarlycharly88 local activist, cyclist, rocker, and gymnast, who led a fingerboarding session, guiding participants through the basics. Soon, the model was alive with finger puppets cruising the river’s edges, some as frogs, others sporting tiny shoes—all bringing a joyful, playful lens to how we see and relate to the river. ‘Play is a Wild Thing’ invites you to challenge the way you engage with public space, giving you the permission to play that’s always been yours. We can’t wait to see where your imagination takes you. 🛹 This family friendly event is free and open to the public. RSVP at clockshop.org/events Saturday, May 12, 2025 2:00-3:00 PM Clockshop Photographs by @ginaclyne #ClockshopLA #PlayIsAWildThing #LARiver #AkoCastuera

'Play is a Wild Thing,' led by artist and ceramist Ako Castuera @akocastuera was a two part workshop series that sought to reimagine and bring  Inclusive Infrastructure Design Lab’s (IIDL) @iidlab model of the LA River to life, awakening our senses and imaginations. Through this series, Ako led participants through various activities that encouraged playfulness and whimsy when interacting with the model and ultimately with the river. In the first workshop, participants created their own miniature characters from clay. Participants learned about storyboarding, walked the LA River, and created stop motion stories of their characters experiencing the river. This Saturday, you’ll have the opportunity to experience some of these same sentiments of play and discovery during the culmination event for this workshop series. RSVP at clockshop.org/events Saturday, April 12 2:00-3:00 PM Clockshop First stop motion by our Executive Director @suebellyank and her Daughter titled ‘Awkward encounter with Bethany’ Photographs by Gina Clyne @ginaclyne #ClockshopLA #AkoCastuera #LARiver #StopMotion

Join us Saturday, April 12 from 2:00-3:00 PM at Clockshop, to celebrate the spirited workshop series ‘Play is a Wild Thing’ hosted by Ako Castuera. @akocastuera Filmmaker Alejandro Palacios will premiere a short collaborative project incorporating footage recorded throughout the duration of the workshops. You and your family will have the chance to create your own stop-motion films, craft finger puppets, and have the chance to fingerboard. We will be joined by the Inclusive Infrastructure Design Lab @iidlab who will bring their mobile river lab so you can learn more about the LA River revitalization work being undertaken at the lab. RSVP at the link in bio or Clockshop.org/events #ClockshopLA #PlayisaWildThing #AkoCastuera

2.5.25 8:45AM #lariver #glendalenarrows @iidlab

Let’s Talk About the Model: Vegetation In this Let’s Talk About the Model, Karen Hunt, an MLA student with our lab, introduces our specialized vegetation model. Crafted from materials that mimic plant interactions, the plant models help simulate water flow through the L.A. River channel, allowing us to study vegetation’s impact on flood events. Through these tests, we gain insights into how plant life can influence water behavior and inform flood resilience strategies. #LetsTalkAboutTheModel

Our Principal Investigator Alex Robinson, and USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Dr. Mitul Luhar was recently featured on PBS SoCal’s Weathering the L.A. River Unsheltered. The special highlights the urgent challenges posed by climate change—extreme heat and flooding—specifically on people experiencing homelessness along the L.A. River. Through community collaboration, emergency response skills, and innovative modeling, we’re working to reimagine the channel and provide interactive learning for the community during these growing climate disasters. Check out the full feature at https://youtu.be/lCipsUEb5s0?si=cfTJ5eG0-eOoNaIz

💧 What does water want? Asks @rostenwoo Earlier last month at the @pstinla @clockshopla What Water Wants premiere of @rostenwoo LA River audio tour, we invited the community to engage hands-on with our model of the L.A. River, sparking dialogue about the future of this vital urban waterway. From reimagining flood control to understanding how climate change affects our most vulnerable, the model served as a tool for collective exploration and community-driven ideas. Thank you to everyone who came out and shared their visions with us! #WhatWaterWants #InclusiveInfrastructure #LARiver #CommunityEngagement

‘What Water Wants’ by Rosten Woo @rostenwoo is meant to be experienced along the Los Angeles River at sunset. It asks you to envision a warehouse, one mile from the site of the artist commission. Swipe to listen to a portion of ‘What Water Wants’ “And in that warehouse is a scale model of another city street, built out of wood and plaster, just slightly smaller than actual size. City engineers pour water through this model and measure it to see the way it backs up, or “stacks.” They do this to see how high they need to make the street curbs that scrape your car door, what shape works best for the enormous storm drains at downtown intersections. Every bit of this paved city has been engineered to bring water right here, where you are sitting.” Join our waitlist for the upcoming audio tour at clockshop.org/events Photographs by Gina Clyne @ginaclyne Sound design and score by Celia Hollander @ceellliiiia #ClockshopLA #WhatWaterWants #RostenWoo #LARiver

We had a great time tabling at the @nature_org #lariver #bowtie event in @riodelosangelessp state park on a scorching Saturday morning. We met some awesome local officials and community members. Thank you @_alejandra_mateus for providing Spanish translation and engagement! Thanks to the team for helping fabricate our portable magnetic photo board. @usclandarchurbanism @uscarchitecture

During the Summer Youth Fellow’s visit to The Inclusive Infrastructure Design Lab (IIDL), our fellows broke into groups and took turns working closely with former lab assistant and recent USC urban design graduate Leslie Dinkin. Leslie led fellows through a game in which they were encouraged to take on the roles of different local stakeholders—from longtime neighborhood residents, to engineers, to steelhead trout—and design the river channel according to their assigned stakeholder’s vision and values. This activity helped fellows understand the complex challenge of designing an LA River that meets the needs of a multitude of stakeholders. At the same time, the game itself was a wonderful example of what it can look like to do inclusive, participatory community engagement around land issues in Northeast LA—which community members are often altogether shut out of. The next time IIDL @la_ridl will be joining us is for our opening reception of our upcoming artist commission, ‘What Water Wants,’ by Rosten Woo on October 5. Subscribe to our newsletter for more information. Photographs by Mathew Scott @mscottphoto #ClockshopLA #SummerYouthFellowship

Fun podcast with @la_ridl / @usclandarchurbanism @aquercus , @dink.nation and EWNs Amanda Tritinger and host Sarah Thorne. Plus a great write up! @usacehq link in bio. @fiftyonemiles