This class focuses on addressing environmental issues in site design, from remediation to restoration, and long term sustainability and environmental resilience. Our class was divided into groups of 3, with each group tasked with redesigning Johnny Carson Park in Burbank, CA and the surrounding space, including a presumed decommissioned 134 freeway that runs through the park. Our design is intended to take place in the future, when climate change impacts have increased, and there is a greater reliance on electric cars and public transportation. My group was greatly influenced by our individual precedent case studies: Crissy Field in San Francisco, Magic Johnson Park in Compton, and Billy Wolf Trail in Nebraska, which each incorporate unique methods of stormwater management and environmental rehabilitation. Our final design, Return to The River, incorporates: a stormwater management pond fed by dry runoff during the summer months to clean stormwater before it enters the Los Angeles River; a terraced, re-wilded portion of the LA river to bring back native habitat, recreational access, and improved stormwater capacity and infiltration; adaptive reuse of the freeway berm bisecting the site for underground parking and architectural buildings set into the hillside for natural cooling effects; a hillside bowl and stormwater infiltration meadow; multimodal paths and viewpoints; and various other program elements for surrounding diverse communities. As a team, we collectively researched, analyzed, conceptualized, and designed the site. We each individually created an enlargement of a certain area of the site, with a corresponding section elevation and perspective. I created our group’s master site plan illustrative, and the select site analysis diagrams shown below. Our full booklet can be viewed on the UCLA Student Show website here.