LAX Tower Design a Flight of Fancy : Transportation: A controversy has broken out over the airport’s nearly completed air traffic center. Some call it unique; others say it’s just plain ugly.

In Detroit, Denver and Dallas, they settled for a generic air traffic control tower. In Chicago, they liked the basic plan, although they wanted the support column slimmed a little, with a reflective glass finish.

But when it came time to build a new tower at Los Angeles International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration’s “plain Jane” concept just wouldn’t do.

Our artistic arbiters called for a local landmark, something one architect said should be as identifiable as the Eiffel Tower.

It cost the nation’s taxpayers an extra $1 million to $2 million to do it, according to the project manager. You can judge the results for yourself.

The whole thing is still topped by an ungarnished, octagonal “cab” from which controllers will direct aviation traffic in and around LAX. But underneath the cab, what once was envisioned as a plain support column has been bedecked with “struts,” “wings,” a “butterfly egg” and assorted other non-functional paraphernalia.

One critic said the largely completed, 289-foot-tall control tower looks like a “shaggy palm tree”--not an inappropriate image for Los Angeles. Another likened it to a kid’s treehouse. If you don’t like it, you can at least be grateful that it is being painted battleship gray. At one point, they wanted to paint it red.

Daniel Olivas--the FAA manager saddled with the unenviable job of shepherding the project past the varied artistic tastes of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission, the Los Angeles Airport Commission and the commission’s citizens advisory committee--was asked the other day his opinion of the final design.

After a thoughtful pause, Olivas took the easy way out.

“I’ll pass,” he said with a grin.

Fred O’Donnell, a frequently quoted FAA spokesman, chose the diplomatic route.

“It’s different,” he said. “It’s certainly different.”

Perhaps sensing that he might be accused of damning with faint praise, O’Donnell warmed to the task.

“It grows on you,” he added. “That tower will clearly be identified with the airport. It will become a symbol. It’s representative of the community. The butterflies in the sand dunes. Wings. Struts. And the butterflies. That’s what it’s all about.”

That is not what the FAA had in mind seven years ago, when it decided that LAX needed a new tower.

The existing tower, erected in 1961, had become increasingly cramped as more aviation traffic required more controllers, with as many as 12 crammed into a cab that measures 350 square feet.

Even more important, the tower--only 165 feet tall--has blind spots, created by the erection of new passenger terminal buildings and the expansion of old ones. The construction of the Bradley International Terminal at the west end of the passenger complex in time for the 1984 Olympics completely blocked the controllers’ view of “the 50-yard line,” the mid-airport taxiway that connects the two north runways with the pair on the south.

Responding to the needs of several airports across the country, the FAA commissioned the design of a new prototypal airport tower--tall, functional and unadorned.

The city’s Cultural Affairs Commission rejected the idea, calling instead for something unique to Los Angeles.

“We didn’t try to impose what we wanted on the community,” O’Donnell said. “We contracted with an architect (Holmes & Narver Inc./Siegel Diamond) to build something that was acceptable to both the FAA and the community. . . . For a while there, it was going back and forth.”

In its statement of intent, the FAA said the “key untouchable elements included the critical air control cab with all of its functional equipment . . . the primary structural system and the elevator access layout. Everything else could be reconstructed.”

The architects responded with curves mimicking the arches of the adjacent LAX Theme Building--curves, the FAA said, that “express the metaphoric theme of wings/flight/aircraft. . . . The wings are supported by a system of columns and tie-downs that are intended to be reminiscent of the struts of old bi-wing airplanes.”

An oval medallion on the side, backed by blinking lights intended to resemble the blips on air traffic controllers’ screens, is said to represent the El Segundo blue butterfly, which flourishes in the sand dunes at the west end of the airport.

The tower is “the penultimate adult treehouse,” the FAA said.

The cultural affairs folks liked the design, but the Airport Commission didn’t.

Attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. of O.J. Simpson trial fame--then a member of the Airport Commission--admitted that it was “not what I had anticipated.”

Roy Hefner, president of the advisory committee, went further, calling it “a monstrosity. It looks like something a kid would make out of Tinker Toys.”

The designers went back to their drawing boards, trimming the wings, pruning the struts and toning down the paint job. Finally, on Sept. 16, 1991, the Airport Commission gave its approval, and construction began on the $20-million structure.

The tower now in use, built in 1961, will be kept as a backup when the new one goes into operation.

To make sure that the new cab is laid out properly, a full-scale mock-up--complete with pasteboard workstations, paper radar screens and a cardboard coffee machine--has been constructed in an unused hangar. The airport’s air traffic controllers have tried out the mock-up, offering suggestions to improve the layout.

“It’s a better working environment,” Olivas said. “And the visibility will be much better.”

Structural work is largely completed, but it will be 10 months or so before all the electronic equipment is installed and controllers can start practicing. Until then, the new tower will serve primarily as an adornment.

“It’s meant to express Los Angeles’ confidence in exploring the art of architecture,” said Katherine Diamond, a design consultant for the project. “We’ve always been willing to explore architecture in Los Angeles.”