Look Ma. No Car!
by Lysbeth Chuck
In late 1999, the Los Angeles' Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) asked some original thinkers how the city could use technology to solve its transit problems.
80-year-old Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, who has lived in Los Angeles for most of his life, was only too happy to oblige. Bradbury is only one of the more than 11 million people living in the Los Angeles basin. But he is not one of those who drive any of the area's seven million cars.
Bradbury criticized the sumptuous new $500 million MTA headquarters as a waste of money. So did about 10 million other Angelinos. He also said one of the most important things missing in the MTA's rail and bus system was "fun."
If he still thinks that, he's probably more or less alone. And he obviously hasn't had a chance to ride the two-year-old red line subway.
In the metro station located at Hollywood and Vineperhaps the world's most famous intersectionartist Gilbert Lujan has created an environment that reflects the "history, glamour, excitement" of the Hollywood film industry "in its yesteryear and its great movie palaces."
At street level, the Hollywood and Vine bus shelters are designed after the Chinese Theater and the Brown Derby restaurant, and the station entrance resembles an actual movie marquee. The interior is star-studded with artifacts of the film industry.
Recycled film reels decorate the ceiling, and Paramount Pictures has donated two original film projectors from the 1930s for an exhibit. The floor reflects The Wizard of Oz's "yellow brick road," and the plaza railing design incorporates the musical notes to "Hooray for Hollywood." Finally, Lujan's several ceramic benches depict LA's famous car culture and underline the automobile's significance to the city.
There are other interesting stops on the metro's red line. The Hollywood/Western Avenue Station attempts to reclaim a different past, paying homage to California's native Mestizo heritage and its original European settlements, not to mention the panethnic backgrounds of the more recent immigrants who make up the country's second-largest city.
Michael A. Davis' Vermont/Sunset Station transports commuters down escalators to a chart, which maps their place in the universe. The station's architectural details are borrowed from the neighborhood around it as well as from 1950s sci-fi and contemporary post-modern designs. The station floor and walls, for example, are inlaid with granite patterns of celestial orbits, and metal etched with spheres containing medical symbols and microscopic images of life formsiconography commonly shared by astronomy and medicine, since the hospitals around the station and the Griffith Park Observatory are both visible to passengers exiting the station. The observatory's famous domed form is even echoed in the design of the building's elevator.
The Vermont/Santa Monica/L.A. City College station won an Architectural
Design Citation from Progressive Architecture magazine. In another collaborative exercise with the surrounding neighborhood, artist Robert Millar worked with the nearby Braille Institute and neighboring Los Angeles City College, which boosts a strong theater curriculum, to incorporate a variety of interesting textures into the station for the visually-impaired, and even provided a performance area at the plaza level for aspiring theater folk!
Marked by strong simple lines, the station's design emphasizes natural vs. artificial light through a series of skylights that introduce natural light into the station. According to the designers, the station should heighten the awareness of riders to their location, by questioning the nature of "place" versus "space."
The station at Vermont and Beverly, on the other hand, celebrates the appeal of classical architecture and nature. Patinaed bronze column capitals provide a stark contrast to the natural-looking rock formations found at all levels of the station, including the entrance. Realistic-looking fake rocks, designed by artist George Stone, are the result of his painstaking study of the actual geology and rock formations of the site. The design is intended to remind riders that even great technological achievements cannot contain nature, and invites them to "question their relationship to both the environment and technology."
All of these stations are on the Metro's two-year-old red line subway. To get there from the Convention Center, SLA attendees can take the blue line from the Pico Station (right around the corner from the Convention Center), go one stop to the 7th Street/Metro Center Station, and change there to the Red Line to North Hollywood. To learn more about each station's art and architecture, log on to www.mta.net/metroart.
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