Forget Symbolic Palms

In answer to Suzanne Muchnic’s opening questions in her story “LAX Gateway Hits Turbulence on Its Way to a Quick Landing” (May 12)--”a $28-million boondoggle? A Las Vegas-style folly? Or a much-needed upgrade highlighted by a spectacularly beautiful portal?”--I have to say: Yes, yes and no.

Ted Tanaka’s design is reflective of this hurry-up scheme spearheaded by airport officials to be finished in time for the Democratic National Convention in August. It is a heavy-handed proposal that seems to show little thought about creating something more than an expensive symbol for LAX.

Unaware of this project at the time, my students at Otis College of Art and Design environmental arts department and I had been analyzing and proposing alternative ways in which landscape could be looked at, beyond mere “decoration” and “beautification,” by using LAX as a site of investigation. Within the six-week project, these students came up with a variety of proposals that, though largely conceptual, all had sophisticated approaches of looking at what landscape could be that went beyond the “symbolic.” Not one proposal, unlike Tanaka’s, contained a single palm tree.

If the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners wants to create a lasting impression not only for the Democratic National Convention but for all visitors to LAX (or, for that matter, any other Cultural Affairs Commission project), then they need to take a more progressive approach to how art and design can engage with its proposed audience-user in more systematic ways. Ways that are beneficial to all parties involved beyond mere symbols or decoration.

MICHAEL SY

Los Angeles