Does the Line Connect L.A.?

We don’t often think of subway stations as local tourist attractions. They are more readily identified with making cities accessible to the churning masses. Both as transportation networks and as physical objects, the world’s most celebrated subways sum up the egalitarian notion that cities are cultural melting pots--places where communities are in a perpetual state of flux and friction. Subways function as the ultimate social condenser, breaking down man’s penchant for retreating into like-minded communities and distinct social classes.

So Los Angeles Metro Rail’s notion that the design of each of its new stations should reflect individual visions by a varied crew of artists and architects is a bit perplexing. It reflects a Balkanized Los Angeles--a fragmented, divided city rather than a cohesive metropolis. This week, five new Metro stations will open along the Red Line, each with a different theme: Hollywood, for instance, gets the Brown Derby and a stretch limo, Los Feliz a loose rendering of the Griffith Park Observatory.

The wide range of the designs serve as a neat metaphor for city government’s century-long failure to fuse its separate communities into a greater civic whole, to show its citizens that the city belongs to everyone. As architecture, the results here are pot luck. The best of the stations are playful novelties. The worst are comic structures that reinforce the cliche that Los Angeles is built on empty fantasies.

Los Angeles’ colossal struggles to create a valid transportation system are legendary. In the early 1930s, train and streetcar systems covered 1,000 miles of track. The destruction of that system, of course, can be traced to the foundation of the National City Lines in 1936, a conspiracy of business interests led by General Motors that successfully sought to replace the city’s transit system with freeways that would more closely service their own interests--a Chinatown-like parable of corporate greed. The last of the Big Red cars, as they were affectionately nicknamed, were phased out in 1961.

The current episode of this sorry tale is an extension of that lack of responsible urban and social planning. Logic would dictate that the main line of any Metro system for Los Angeles should run the length of Wilshire Boulevard, along the city’s central spine and through its densest neighborhoods. Instead, the Red Line makes an abrupt turn at Vermont Avenue up to Hollywood and, eventually, through the Cahuenga Pass into North Hollywood. As far as envisioning the system as a means of connecting the city’s ethnically segregated communities--east and west, Latino, Asian and Anglo--the East Side line has now been entirely scrapped due to lack of government funds.

Such thinking, of course, harks back to the failed urban strategies of the 1950s and ‘60s, when gargantuan civic projects were built with the aim of sparking urban growth in underdeveloped areas, rather than reinforcing existing urban patterns. Since that time, it has become increasingly obvious to most that such projects work best when they seek to strengthen the city’s underlying structure. After all, why not serve people where they actually live and work?

Whether intentional or not, the decision to form some kind of connection to communities above reflects unease about the rail system’s inability to connect to the city as a whole on a more direct level. In all of the new stations, ground-level plazas are meant to function as outdoor public spaces. Several miles from the Hollywood / Vine faux landmarks, the Vermont / Santa Monica stop has the most contemporary feel of the new stations. Designed by Mehrdad Yasdani in collaboration with the artist Robert Millar, the portal is topped by an enormous canopy made of steel. Eye-shaped in profile, the canopy tilts up dramatically, an enormous machine-like funnel pointing down toward a subterranean world.

This is not theme-driven drivel. Yasdani and Millar were able to create a dramatic entryway by letting natural light in through a glass-block ceiling and playing up the 45-foot height of the entry space. But the team could not overcome the scale of the 20,000-square-foot exterior plaza. Yasdani provided outdoor electrical outlets behind the portal so street performers will be able to plug in their instruments. He also allotted some space for local vendors. But until Metro officials can provide such much-needed services and events, the plaza seems like leftover space. It reflects a desire to pump up the system’s importance rather than to satisfy the needs of local commuters. Do people really want to loiter here? What you want is a newsstand and a hot dog vendor, the necessities of the urban voyager.

Few of the stations, however, aspire to such lofty aims. At the Vermont / Beverly Station, for instance, a cluster of enormous fake boulders looms above as you descend into the station. Designed by artist George Stone and made of spray-on concrete and wire mesh, the boulders resemble the faux landscapes of any aquarium or zoo. Here, the image of tumbling rocks also evokes earthquakes, an unfortunate effect. But the classical motifs of the rest of the station’s architecture--painted in a beige and green palette--is no less artificial. Designed by Anil Verma Associates, it reduces classicism to an uninspired platitude.

But for the truly mundane, there’s the new Vermont / Sunset station. Above ground, the main elevator is encased in a banal glass cylinder capped by a semi-spherical steel cage. The image is meant to bring to mind the Griffith Observatory that on a clear day can be glimpsed far off in the distance. The portal is pulled back from the street to make room for an empty plaza--ringed by five palm trees--whose function is hard to fathom. Otherwise, there’s not much to see.

Below ground, some of the new stations are a bit more inspired. As in his design for the entry portal, Yasdani’s station interior takes advantage of the dramatic height of the platform area to create a sleek urban room. Rows of wing-shaped louvers line the ceiling, their shimmering forms drawing the eye upward. The stainless steel-clad columns and cantilevered upper platforms echo the form of a submarine deck. The art here, softly colored florescent light sculptures, reinforce that feel of urban toughness.

At Hollywood / Vine, kitsch gives way to a more playful sensibility once you enter the station. The low arches of the underground passageways--despite their enchanted castle-like surfaces--have the appeal of a child’s rendering of underground catacombs. Squat columns are topped off with lime-green capitals in the shape of palm leaves. The ceiling is sheathed in empty recycled film reels. The work of architect Adolfo Miralles and artist Gilbert Lujan, this is still theme-park architecture, but it has a genuine innocence that is appealing.

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There is nothing inherently wrong with artists meddling with what is traditionally an architect’s task. After all, the point here is to build a Metro system that the city can be proud of, and if an unlikely collective--be it professional artists or a third-grade art class--could do that, we should all stand up and cheer. But it certainly complicates things. And Metro Rail’s long-standing scheme to piece together different teams for each station always seemed certain to guarantee mixed results. Given the difficulty of producing first-rate design in any civic project, why increase the odds of disaster?

Once you get over the silliness of all of this, reflect for a moment on the world’s great Metro systems. Hector Guimard’s Paris Metro portal gates are masterpieces of Art Nouveau design. The Moscow Metro stations resemble ornate underground palaces. Even Bilbao, Spain’s newest cultural destination, has a sleek new subway system designed by the British architect Norman Foster, with glass-and-steel canopies that appear to worm their way out of the ground like gigantic orifices.

Los Angeles is a long way from reaching such heroic standards. But there is still the possibility of fine-tuning. Metro Rail is hoping eventually to develop some of the plaza sites along with local businesses, which means they could be re-imagined as more lively, densely packed urban spaces. There’s always room for hope.