This Relic of Industry Works by Mixing Form and Function

Amid the anonymous warehouses that line the northern reaches of La Brea Avenue, one structure stands out. It grinds, reaches and cantilevers. Its towers present a vision of a raw world of hard-working parts, unconstrained by the niceties of the world of cars and signs that surround them.

This Mad Max castle is not a stage set. It is a concrete plant, a relic of an industrial world that has been almost completely priced out of the Westside.

Several years ago, when Los Angeles was the center for architectural experimentation in the country--if not the world--a few brave souls opened a commercial gallery devoted to architecture. They chose a space in the building at Romaine Street and La Brea Avenue that offered carefully framed views of the Transit Mixed Concrete plant, because architects love this place.

The irony, of course, is that no architect had anything to do with the plant; it was simply assembled from standard concrete-industry components. But architects are enamored of the way this steel construction shows you every piece of itself. They point out how all of these parts come together into a composite that, in its freedom from the conventions of building, resembles the audacious recombinations of reality proposed by modern artists.

There has always been something modern and heroic about industrial architecture: Things are what they seem to be, and they work, and yet these structures are so complex and on such a large scale that they have an aura of mystery about them. The Transit Mixed Concrete plant certainly has all the romance of modernity.

If you look at it carefully, you can discern three separate tanks, suspended over open bays that the trucks can drive through to be loaded up with concrete. The tanks are funnel-shaped and are fed by a system of conveyor belts and tubes. Around these relatively simple shapes, however, is a complicated scaffolding of structural steel, mixing vats, catwalks and pipes that turns the whole structure into a giant Erector Set.

Somehow, the purely functional arrangement of the parts keeps all of these gangly gimcracks together. The conveyor belts, for instance, balance each other. The one to the north runs perpendicular to La Brea; the one to the south, parallel. Between these two buttresses, the tanks also rotate in relation to each other, creating contrasting forms whose similar shape and color (the whole building has been slathered with concrete-colored paint) give you the sense that you are looking at an abstract sculptural composition.

Certainly, the plant has all the sense of a work of art: It sits alone in an almost empty yard, surrounded by low walls and unlike everything

around it. Its shapes play off against the background of one-story buildings, echoing the wildness of the Hollywood Hills.

By showing you all the pieces of steel that are usually hidden behind facades, the plant makes you notice the metal details in the surroundings. All of these strange parts weave together into a singular object, reminding you of some fantasy structure that exists only in your imagination.

More than a work of art, though, the Transit Mixed Concrete plant is a piece of architecture. It is a composition that works--both to mix concrete and to mix the metaphors and forms of our landscape into a fantastic structure that stirs the imagination.

* Transit Mixed Concrete plant: 1000 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood