Vista Hermosa Natural Park

Studio-MLA, Los Angeles?
By Mimi Zeiger

At the turn of the last century, the 10 acres on which Vista Hermosa Natural Park sits was a forest of oil derricks. Located on the outskirts of a nascent downtown Los Angeles, dozens of wellheads replaced the native sage and chaparral scrub. A photograph from 1901 shows a poisonous landscape glistening with pools of what might be water?or oil. 
Fast-forward a century and the land was still a toxic mess. Working-class homes (built decades after drilling) were bulldozed to make way for the Belmont Learning Complex. A project of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the $200 million middle school campus and housing complex was once deemed ?the most expensive school in America? and was meant to bring high-tech learning to the city?s Temple-Beaudry neighborhood. But by 2000, construction had halted, and the planned complex was enmeshed in political scandal that bubbled up to mainstream news outlets.  The Nation described the site as ?a half-built peach-and-beige-colored brick building towering over hills of dirt, wild mustard, scattered trash, and tumbleweed.? Under that urban bricolage lurked dangers left behind by oil speculation: methane gas, hydrogen sulfide, benzene, patches of crude. Deeper still, a fault line. 
Vista Hermosa Natural Park. Photo by Hunter Kerhart.
Conditions were mostly unchanged when Studio-MLA and KPFF Consulting Engineers embarked on the design for Vista Hermosa Natural Park ...