Fellow Profile
Peter Aeschbacher
“Working with the Los Angeles Community Design Center (LACDC) allowed me to help the Center develop their capacity in sustainable design and community building...”
— Peter Aeschbacher
Fellowship Host:
Los Angeles Community Design Center
Los Angeles, CA
By the time Peter Aeschbacher began his Rose Fellowship, he had already worked on community development projects in South Africa during the transition from apartheid. While his time with the Los Angeles Community Design Center (LACDC) may have been less exotic, it was no less productive.
Working with neighborhood residents, Peter oversaw the design and construction of the Union Avenue-Cesar Chavez Community Garden and the Las Brisas Community Facility & Childcare Center. He advocated for small urban parks, spatial equity and bicycle transportation. He also served on a major urban park development board, co-founded a non-profit design-build advocacy group, co-organized a museum retrospective of community-based design work, and lectured extensively on design and non-profit development issues. In addition, he developed a pioneering design-build program linking the LACDC and Enterprise with university architecture programs.
Peter remained with LACDC as project designer until 2004 when he accepted an assistant professorship at Pennsylvania State University, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Department of Architecture. He is also the Director of Design at Penn State’s Hamer Center for Community Design. A founding member and current board member of CityWorksLA, Peter holds a degree in Fine Arts & Communications from Trinity College, and master’s degrees in both Architecture and Urban Planning from UCLA.
Gallery
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Peter Aeschbacher
The Union Avenue/Cesar Chavez Community Garden; Pico-Union neighborhood, Los Angeles.
Everyone pitched in to rebuild the second oldest garden in L.A.
Youth from the Eco-Academy spending their Saturday wisely.
New garden, new gate, new shade structure.
Celebrating the new garden.
The Las Brisas Childcare Center and Community Facility. View from the housing complex to the Community Center.
Roof overhangs and trellises are designed to shade in summer and warm in winter.
Each classroom has its own front yard.
Classrooms connect via sliding doors, are naturally lit (note the tube skylights), and high windows flush hot air out.
