Building Up Form and Function

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By MICHAEL LEHRER

That we are again engaged in a positive national discussion on infrastructure spending is a ray of hope in this dark economic passage for our city and nation. We must seize this rare opportunity to build public works that are durable, useful and beautiful. Los Angeles, a region brimming with both world-class design and engineering talent, and unmet infrastructure needs, can lead the nation.

A city, a state, a nation that builds infrastructure exhibits a key hallmark of a good, permanent and improving society. Yet a vexing conundrum of infrastructure spending is that when it is done well, the results are nearly invisible. Lights go on. The subway works. Public universities produce architects, engineers, doctors, scientists and teachers year after year. Cargo surges through ports. No one ever fills a glass with clean water and exults, “See! Government spending works! And every time!”

Indeed, public perception of infrastructure spending is often myopically negative, as when subway construction in Hollywood results in traffic snags, or when the media rightfully seize upon boondoggles dressed as public improvements. And who wants to pay taxes on infrastructure bonds?

But to shortchange responsible infrastructure spending is to shortchange ourselves and our children. A visit to a Third World city finds Taj Mahals amid streets strewn with sewage, roadways and railways clogged with traffic, unreliable utilities, the uneducated eternally toiling at menial tasks. Commerce and culture are thwarted at every turn by the lack of spending on infrastructure. A society that chooses luxury before infrastructure spending will soon have neither.




Generating support

Beyond shortsightedness, there are some reasons for infrastructure apathy. Too often in the postwar era, local infrastructure endeavors focused on the functional, without regard for the human needs of beauty and recreation. Opportunities were lost to create parks, walkways, refuges or even evocative massive forms in the construction of many local public works projects. Forgotten is the lesson of Hoover Dam.

In the depths of the Great Depression, L.A. architect Gordon B. Kaufmann (also designer of the Los Angeles Times building) was selected to redesign the drab look of the proposed Hoover Dam, a public works project of immense economic value to this day. Kaufmann transformed the proposed Soviet-style monolith into a transcendent art deco masterwork replete with sculpted turrets, an attraction for generations of tourists. The popular Hoover Dam that instills such pride in citizens the timeless monument that speaks deeply of human confidence and triumph was born as much by design as engineering.

In contrast, consider the Los Angeles River, a necessary project successful at flood control but also a scar that runs through the heart of the city. Barren and unappealing, the river offers scant recreational opportunities, and inspires almost no one. The chance to create evocative repeating concrete forms, a string of parks or tree-lined bike paths to the sea was missed.

Remarkably, the famed landscape architecture firm Olmsted Brothers crafted a plan in 1928 for a chain of parks along the Los Angeles River, a study commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. But that brilliant document was ignored by the Army Corps of Engineers, which built the modern river sans amenities. As a result, the Los Angeles River became iconic of impassive public works projects, not of urban planning genius.

That result should never happen again! Los Angeles is blessed with the talent to create public works that triumphantly inspire the culture and boldly embrace the future. Let us aspire to create works that trumpet our confidence, our style, our love of the city, and that embrace our citizens.


Attract business

While it is sound policy to invest in infrastructure, it is also good business. Obviously, well-run ports, rails and roads are necessary for commerce. Beyond that, the postindustrial service economy (such as Microsoft, Google and other professional services) can choose hometowns based on amenities that attract employees. A major city with a crumbling, banal infrastructure and limited recreational options is less able to attract or retain business. The American experience suggests that once business begins to leave a city, property values start sliding.

To avoid such a future, we must undertake great infrastructure projects today, and with great vigor. And when we build be it an Alameda Corridor or the Metropolitan Transit Authority maintenance facility at Taylor Yard (along the Los Angeles River), or subway and light-rail stops we must add form, beauty, culture and recreational options.

When the $2 billion Alameda Corridor was constructed, could not have parks and sculpture gardens been built also? Could not observation platforms endowed with train artifacts be built at Taylor Yard so kids could watch trains?

The good news is that time and again, city and county voters have approved infrastructure spending, including recent measures to improve schools and mass transit. They have shown themselves wise stewards of their region, in many ways gifted with a deeper vision of the future than many leaders.

They should see manifest benefits for their willingness to endure taxes and construction. They should be rewarded not only with durability and usefulness, but with beauty.


Michael Lehrer is founder of Lehrer Architects in Silver Lake. He is a past president of the American Institute of Architects, Los Angeles, and has served as vice chairman for the School Construction Bond Oversight Committee of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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