. . . whereas the Santa Monica/San
Diego intersection is a work of art, both as a pattern on the map, as a monument
against the sky, and as a kinetic experience as one sweeps through it.
--Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies
You can’t underestimate the importance of avenues, boulevards, and freeways if you live in Los Angeles. If you have driven long enough in this city, then you probably have your favorites. I happen to really appreciate 6th Avenue from downtown to Mid-Wilshire through Rossmore Park, especially in the Spring and Summer under a full canopy of trees. Another favorite stretch is the bend of the 101 freeway coming out of the Valley as you enter Hollywood. To your right is the famous Capitol Records building and to your left are the charming older high rises on Franklin, nestled at the foot of the Hollywood Hills. And while there aren’t many sections of the 10 freeway I enjoy, what’s better than riding it to its western conclusion and emerging out of the Santa Monica tunnel with the Pacific Ocean before you? A drive that I’ve come to appreciate recently is the 110 freeway south from downtown to the 105 freeway - The Imperial highway (a great name for a freeway - as if it played a part in some great historical event). Typically I drive this route on my way to the airport and I have, over the last few years, acquired an appreciation for its architectural magnificence and aesthetic possibilities.
As you begin heading south on the 110 from downtown towards the Exposition boulevard exit you drive under massive concrete structures with dramatic curves and lines. On a clear day the geometry of the intersecting overpasses, on ramps and off ramps, can create a variety of geometric frames for the sharp blue of the sky, resulting in fleeting abstract color fields. If you happen to be driving following recent rains and the day is exceptionally clear and bright, then the roads are washed and sparkling and this can be especially pristine.
As well as the architecture, the high-speed metallic motion of so many cars is also a part of this freeway aesthetic and that motion seen from a distance appears not only technological but biological. The collective movement of the cars on a distant but approaching overpass intersecting this stretch of the 110 south is not dissimilar to the motion within a cell seen under a microscope. From this vantage point the mass of vehicles look both organic and automated as well as part of a grander scheme.
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As you continue south and begin to approach the Imperial highway, on ramps rise towards awesome four level interchanges with a variety of shapes and curves. Two different roadways form a large oval window above you as you drive under this gigantic intersection of roads. These imposing multilevel interchanges are like downtown high rises in that their scale is otherworldly. Like skyscrapers, you may have witnessed them in the various phases of construction and even seen people at work on them, but when they are finished this is all forgotten. Now it is inconceivable that the freeways were not always a part of this landscape and they are so massive and inhuman as to be alien and unfathomable. The freeways perhaps even more so because they extend beyond the eye in many directions, seemingly infinitely. Not just infinitely, but anthropomorphicly, as if beyond the horizon new extensions were being grown independently without the aid of human labor, continuing to invite one car after another into their outstretched arms.
Freeway structure is ostensibly purely functional and primary considerations have to do with durability and moving traffic efficiently, not aesthetics. But if we imagine this particular section of the 110 south without cars (or get a hint of this while driving in the pre-dawn hours), a different but just as arresting aesthetic emerges. The lines and angles are now more easily appreciated as well as the way the Y shaped supports gradually lift the elevated blue line beside and above you on the 110. What emerges are massive cement and asphalt testaments to our culture that are possibly as informative about us as the pyramids were about ancient Egypt. It’s not difficult to imagine how sections of this freeway might be left standing as a monuments to this civilization. I can conceive of a distant future where the huge concrete fragments of these freeway intersections and their large shadows would be the outstanding feature of the landscape. The shadows from the Y-shaped supports of the blue line, if seen from the air, would create a strange repetitive code. I see the visitors walking among them and marveling in the mid afternoon sun, as they stand quietly next to these crumbling roadways and try to imagine what it must have been like.
The freeways (and
the beaches) are one the few large scale places where you have a sense of community
in Southern California. (The interaction that takes place between strangers
here is largely silent. In place of spoken words the language of the freeway
is one of glance and gesture - although, of course, sometimes going far beyond
silence and escalating into violence). The totalitarian dictatorial community
that built the Egyptian pyramids was unified around service to one great leader.
While the teeming masses of cars on the Los Angeles freeways are less a model
of democracy than of a chaotic kind of cooperation, there is still unity to
be found here. But it is more the implausible and miraculous functioning of
a large organism than anything as intentional as service to an idea or leader.
Each solitary driver may attach a sense of independence to their automobile
but also understands on a deeper level the tradeoff implicit in the communal
experience that begins when entering into traffic on a large boulevard or merging
onto the crowded freeway.
So when I am in this community I may feel alone but also know I am a part of a larger whole. Some future visitors to the ruins of the Los Angeles freeways may insist on a strong spiritual presence at the site. And why not? In my dreams, my car often seems to stand in for my soul. I recall many dreams of driving, or as a passenger in a car with a friend or someone vaguely familiar at the wheel. Then there are the dreams where I’m looking for my car or I can’t find my car keys.
Perhaps
these dreams reflect that the freeway is a perfect microcosmic stand-in for
the journey through a life. I don’t believe my sleep was populated with
automobile imagery until I had lived in Southern California for some time. This
is hardly a scientific conclusion but it makes sense that something that takes
up as much of your time as driving in Southern California does (and something
whose fairly rudimentary operations take place at a level below consciousness)
would show up in your night time visions. If, as one popular theory of dreaming
goes, your dreams are for working out those things you do not process consciously
during waking hours (this my personal experience with dreaming), than maybe
images of driving serve two purposes in your dreams; Primarily at a symbolic
level as a metaphor for something related to you personal growth at that particular
time and secondly as way to process the actual driving experience.
These subconscious connections have led me to see a kind of divintiy in this section of freeway and the network of freeways that make up Los Angeles. The perfect orchestration of all of these cars moving at high speeds, shifting lanes, and the sudden adjustments of speed, are both efficient and implausible. (How is it that there are not more accidents?) The act of driving is an unconscious one where very basic operations are performed repetitively without thought. Again, optimally, there is also a sense of oneness, of all the cars in your immediate vicinity functioning together as part of a larger organism. In this concerted motion of so many mindless souls on the freeway - Southern California freeways that are so monolithic, impressive, and easy to imagine as ancient ruins - is not only architectural beauty, but also a kind of divinity.
