The Ascot Reservoir located in El Sereno is home to a large plot of land and is one of the many tank reservoir site typologies located around Los Angeles. Initially, the Ascot Reservoir was a earth dam formed to create the first open water body on site. After the site was labeled as an insufficiently functioning water dam due to its inability to deal with seismic regulations, the original reservoir was drained and later encompassed by a sole steel water tank in the middle of the site. The Ascot Reservoir presently remains as a site that is inaccessible and disconnected from its context and history, seeking resolution from its sole infrastructural element. Our take on the Ascot Reservoir looks to reconfigure the tank body encompassed on site in a manner that directly confronts the geological formation of the site as well as a reinterpretation of the tank body that transforms it into a hybrid aesthetic while retaining the layers of information that it currently inhabits.
Through a process of accumulation of found assets on site and a reinterpretation of these assets along with the tank, our proposal looks to reformulate the existing site into a functioning working one that provides a environmental research center for the students along with it. Our strategy is to reintegrate the infrastructural mediums within Ascot Reservoir on top of the realigned assets to restore the historic body of water encompassed in the tank, utilizing it with the intention of reinstating the functionality of water to spread around the site for the vegetation, the research centers and for alternative sources of energy via activated macrobiotic life to form an operational space for the public and the environment.
