Destination Crenshaw

How do you tell the story of Black Los Angeles in its own voice, along a mile of its own boulevard?

Client: Destination CrenshawLos Angeles Council District 8
Location and Date: Crenshaw Boulevard, Los AngelesMaster Planning through Design Development, 2018–2021
Role: Executive Creative DirectorCompleted at G&A
Press: 4 articles
GettyDestination Crenshaw
Artnet NewsSee Sculptures by Kehinde Wiley, Alison Saar, and More Commissioned for Destination Crenshaw
Alta JournalCrenshaw at the Crossroads
The Christian Science MonitorLos Angeles Crenshaw mural black art
Responsibilities led: Creative direction across all phasesTeam leadershipClient and community liaisonExperience strategy and storytellingInterpretive identity and design systemPhysical, digital and AR integration

Overview

Destination Crenshaw turns 1.3 miles of Crenshaw Boulevard into an open-air museum of Black Los Angeles. I led the interpretive layer as executive creative director at Gallagher & Associates: the stories, the voice, the graphics and the digital experiences that run the length of the corridor, developed with the community from 2018 to 2021.

For the full story of this project read the complete case study

Diagram: the corridor’s four themes, south to north: Improvisation at Slauson Avenue, Firsts at 54th Street, Dreams at 50th Street and Togetherness at Sankofa Park

Listening first

Before design development began, the team spent two days with the Community Advisory Panel: artists, organizers, historians and neighbors. They built personas, sorted story cards and walked the sites. Their words set the direction for everything that followed.

Seen from above, dozens of image cards of Black Los Angeles people, places and moments spread across the studio floor, with participants’ hands and shoes at the edges — Sorting the stories: image cards spread across the studio floor

“They live here but they’re left out of their own parade.”

Community Advisory Panel member, on young people in Crenshaw, design workshop, January 2019

Unapologetically Black

Out of the workshop came one idea to guide the whole storytelling layer. The panel asked to keep the project black, to see themselves in it, to claim it. We called it Unapologetically Black, and it became the test for every story, the voice, and the look. Through the work it became the project’s catchphrase.

One story, four ways

Every story speaks in the first person plural: not he did this, but we did this. Each one can be met on a street panel, on the mobile site, in augmented reality or from a pop-up truck, with the same title and illustration and more depth at every step. A kit of ten elements carries them down the mile.

Diagram: one story, Soul Train, told four ways: on a street panel, on the mobile site, in augmented reality and from a pop-up truck

Elevation of the kit of parts at street scale: banners, pole blades, shade structures, freestanding blades and a yellow glyph paver, with human figures for scale — The kit of parts, from street banner to sidewalk paver

Ancestors overhead

Under the ramp at Sankofa Park, portraits of the people who shaped Black Los Angeles cover the ceiling. At night, programmable LEDs turn them into constellations, and the app lets visitors find out who is looking down on them. At the top of the ramp, a 40-foot timeline set into the benches carries the park’s message: Been Here, Still Here.

Rendering under the Sankofa Park ramp by day, with the weathering-steel stair and an equestrian sculpture beyond — At night, the ceiling becomes a sky

The same view at dusk: points of light glow across the ramp’s underside like stars — At night, the ceiling becomes a sky

Rendering of the yellow timeline bench running along the ramp deck, dates in tall black type — The Been Here timeline along the ramp deck

BLACK, and a museum that moves

At the southern end, a sculpture with a double read anchors the Firestation campus: LA sits in the middle of BLACK, and LED arrays let the letters change with every event. Three branded trucks take the stories off the boulevard to schools, churches and events across the city.

Rendering of the BLACK sculpture at dusk: tall letters filled with magenta and violet patterns, people at their base — BLACK, with LA at its center

The general-purpose truck with a yellow glyph wrap and an open stage — A pop-up truck on the boulevard

A quilt for the mile

African American quilts recorded family milestones in pattern, often in code. The community glyph project carries that tradition into the street. Schools, churches and businesses contribute their own marks, which are combined into one pattern and engraved into pavers along the mile.

The pattern is also a way in. Visitors scan the pavers with their phones, and image recognition decodes each glyph: what it means, who made it, and where it came from. On the mobile site, anyone can draw a glyph of their own to add to the quilt.

The community pattern, organic patchwork

Scan a glyph to decode its meaning

Rendering of a plaza under steel shade structures, with a yellow glyph paver in the ground and a visitor reading a tablet beside it — Visitors on the quilt, scanning it with the app (Rendering: Perkins&Will, with the glyph paver added for this case study)

Rendering of a pocket-park plaza beside Crenshaw Boulevard, with a yellow paver of community glyphs set along the curb — The community quilt along the curb (Rendering: Perkins&Will, with the glyph paver added for this case study)

The layer on top

A mobile site anyone can open carries the full stories and the map; an app adds augmented reality at four places on the mile. The system was built to keep changing, with a curator, a community review of the story backlog every year, and street graphics designed to be swapped as new stories arrive.