the following is

the portfolio hoola designed for :

Di Zock
Landscape Architect

viewed as spreads
 E D U C AT I O N Professional Certificate - UCLA Extension Landscape Architecture Program 2008

BA in International Relations from Stanford University

SKILLS Autocad, Photoshop, Sketchup, In-Design, Word, Excel

AWA R D S 2006 • Recipient of Jim Smith Award for excellence in Design Process

2007 • Outstanding Third Year Student for Academic Achievement
• Southern California ASLA Student Award of Merit
• Award of Excellence for Advanced Design Studio Project: Recovery & Transformation of Man Made Sites

2008 • Recipient of Jim Smith Award for excellence in Design Process

• Southern California ASLA Student Award of Honor for Senior Thesis Project:
The Geography of Somewhere: How rediscovering a wetland can reconnect a community

PROFESSIONAL 2004 - Sole Proprieter of Residential Landscape Design business, Di Zock Gardens
EXPERIENCE Present

1991 - 1998 Production Supervisor and Production Coordinator for Feature Films including Lords of Dogtown,
& Cider House Rules, Pleasantville, Romeo & Juliet, The Truth About Cats and Dogs
2001 - 2004

2003 Documentary Co-Producer : Mama/M.A.M.A.: Investigation of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy

1999 Documentary Associate Producer : The Jaundiced Eye

1998 - 2000 Manager of Production - Tree Media Group

Managed web projects for corporate and non-profit clients

CO M M U N I T Y • Volunteer for Obama ‘08 Campaign

I N VO LV E M E N T • Volunteered for Heal the Bay’s watershed monitoring program
• Co-chaired fundraising events for Earth Island Institute
• Co-founded environmental activism website geared to provide information to promote and support
environmentally responsible decision-making and local action by using the power and reach of the internet

514 1⁄2 Santa Clara Ave. Venice, CA 90291 • 310 612 2235 • dizock@ca.rr.com • www.dizockgardens.com
DI ZOCK
SEE
SITE ANALYSIS : BERGAMOT STATION
Site is comprised largely of the light
industrial city yards. The yard not
only handles all of the city’s solid
waste operations and fleet mainte-
nance, but is also the site of the Santa
Monica recycling center, where both
the city and public bring recyclables
for weighing and payment. Much of
the equipment is outdated and much
of the yard is built on landfill. Best
efforts should be made to use new
technologies to consolidate existing
facilities and turn transfer station into
an energy asset. The other half of
the site consists of Bergamot Station,
a campus like art gallery complex of
art spaces flanking a large parking lot
in the center of the compound. Site
was originally a stop on the red line
trolley, dating back to 1875. The trol-
ley cars stopped running in 1953 and
the site was converted to industrial
use. Site was converted to art spaces
in 1994 by the city and co-develop-
er Wayne Blank. Consider preserv-
ing a piece of this historical complex.
SEE
Connections absent, broken,
and frayed
At the western terminus of Venice Blvd
which stretches from downtown to the
Santa Monica Bay, lies Venice, CA. The
Shortline once carted throngs of sight-
seeers and vacationers down this namesake
boulevard to Abbot Kinney’s dream city.

Today that robust connection to greater

SITE ANALYSIS FOR THESIS : VENICE
Los Angeles is gone and those railroad
right of ways are a collecton of medians,
parking lots and missed opportunities.
Venice Blvd., which once connected Ven-
ice to the east, now acts as a physical and
psychic barrier within the community.

Similarly, Lincoln Blvd., once an impor-

tant wagon trail between Santa Moni-
ca and the city of Compton, is now so
clogged with traffic and strip malls that
people joke about spending a lifetime
without having to go “EOL”, (east of
Lincoln) in spite of the fact that a good
quarter of the community of Venice
resides within that orphaned domain.
Henry Huntington’s Lagoon line once
connected Venice and Santa Monica.
That connection to one of the most
walkable communities in the LA Basin is
oddly frayed. What would be perhaps
the most obvious pedestrian connection
between the two communities, Main Street, has a debilatating dead zone
between Windward Circle and Rose Avenue.
Pedestrian and bike access to the Ballona Wetlands, an important eco-
logical adjacency to the south is convoluted in parts and broken in others.
The historical town center, Windward Circle, is now a broad expanse of
concrete, dedicated entirely to the car. When the city of Los Angeles
annexed Venice in the late 20’s, Abbot Kinney’s Windward Lagoon and
broad waterways were traded inch for inch for asphalt throughways, clear-
ly with little thought for the repercussions to the pedestrian experience.

And finally, due to topographical conditions, this beach town is visually cut
off from the Santa Monica Bay. One connection Venice does have to the Bay
is through its stormdrain system, which currently mechanically pipes untreated
stormwater and urban runoff directly into Venice’s most treasured asset.
SEE
FIELD ANALYSIS OF VENICE FOR THESIS
SEE
THINK
 Cultural Narrative : Reclamation of Gateways : series of Suture : stitch together Final Concept
non-hierarchical series former footprints gateways to Venice physical & psychic
of pocket parks adjacencies barriers of Venice

Layers of connection : Venice is connected to its

environmental and historical context & Greater LA
CONCEpT MARRIEd TO THE SITE : A matrix of quarter
mile walk radii are laid over the storm drain system and
an inventory of available properties within the Venice
boundaries to determine the network of bioswales that
connect new pocket parks to each other and ultimately
to a new stormwater treatment park.

THINK
IMAGINE
SITE PLAN FOR SANCTUARY : A NEW COMMUNITY AT BERGAMOT STATION : SANTA MONICA
The embrace of nature is the aperture through which Sanctuary is organized. It is a community geared
to building physical and mental health into our lives and the road to engendering that health is
through the mitigation of stress.

One of the first directives of that environment is to SLOW us DOWN and get us to take notice of our
natural surroundings. Convenience gets pushed down the priority list of design imperatives in favor
of mental, physical and spiritual health . Cars are largely relegated to the southern end of the site and
Sanctuary residents get to enjoy a walk through the redwoods and rich botanical gardens to get to
their homes.

A vein of deciduous pistacio trees courses through the center of the site, their dramatic seasonal
changes remind of the passage of time and the design that we are all connected to. Red, the color of
our lifeblood, reminds us that our health is connected to the health of the planet. And red, the color
of energy, symbolizes the perpetual exchange of energy in and energy out in a community commited
to making that a sustainable cycle.
A PASSAGE TO THE SEA
Today, when someone drives
to Venice Beach on a hot
summer day, it is possible
to get from the east side to
Venice, in half an hour. It is also
likely that once they hit the
corner of Venice and Lincoln
Blvds, they’ve got another
half an hour to sit in bumper
to bumper traffic for the final
3/4 of a mile in order to park
in one of the many blacktop
parking lots by the beach.
The Core Park Plan seeks
to address this unfortu­
nate condition for both the
visitors and residents of
Venice, transforming this
jour­ney into a passage to
the sea. Visitors can take
public transit to the corner
of Venice Blvd. and Abbot
Kinney and wander through
a series of green rooms from
the transit drop off all the
way to the ocean. This cen­
tral spine becomes a magnet
for people within the com­
munity; an ideal way to get
to the beach, walking or bik­
ing without encountering a
single car. A series of gardens
weave together plantings
pulled from the native ecolo­
gy and materials pulled from
the native Venice culture.
A water rill connects these
rooms, one to another and
metaphori­cally connecting
Venice to the ocean and its
past as a community of canals.
IMAGINE
Clockwise from top left : 1) Entrance to new VENICE LINEAR PARK 2) New ocean view through BEACH ENTRY POINT
3) Corten steel paths float above new TREATMENT WETLAND at the Postal sorting center site. 4) Stormwater detention POCKET PARK
5) Concrete platforms float over a reflecting pond and moveable seating at new VENICE LIBRARY READING GARDEN.

Clockwise from top left : 1) Stormwater detention POCKET PARK 2) ESTUARY GARDEN :
grid of the linear park breaks up and creates a small plaza that emulates an estuary
3) THE GRAND AVENUE STORMWATER TREATMENT TRAIN PARK : A series of detention and
treatment basins turns Grand Avenue into a working landscape, cleansing Venice’s urban runoff.

IMAGINE
RESIDENCE :
CAROLINE AVENUE
IMAGINE
RESIDENCE : DUXBURY CIRCLE
IMAGINE
RESIDENCE :
ILIFF STREET
IMAGINE
RESIDENCE : LARKIN STREET
IMAGINE
RESIDENCE : ABBOT KINNEY LOFT
IMAGINE
PLAN
CONSTRUCTION & LAYOUT PLAN
 PLAN
dEMO, GRAdING & dRAINAGE pLAN
CONSTRUCTION dETAILS PLAN
DO
DO
DO
DO