A cool, light-up art piece intended to spruce up an overpass in downtown Los Angeles is nearly complete after almost a decade of planning. The project, called LA Pergolas, has been underway since 2007 and is now nearly finished. It looks like a curved, skeletal arch spanning along the 101 Freeway overpass from L.A. City Hall to Union Station, DTLA Explorer reports. Attached to the arch are several steel plates, and at night, the piece incorporates LED lights that change depending on the weather, pollution measurements and pedestrian movement.
The idea for a piece of art in this location began in 2006, when city officials expressed a desire to make the area more welcoming to pedestrians, who had been complaining about feeling unsafe while walking on the desolate street, Downtown News reports. Felicia Filer, L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs' public art director, told DT News that initial improvement plans involved a simple chain-link fence and a heightened curb. However, the Bureau of Engineering wanted something more.
In 2007, the City selected artists Ned Khan and Jenna Didier's proposal for the space. Didier was then joined by artists Oliver Hess and Marcos Lutyens, with whom she had worked with previously as part of an art collective called Infranatural. (You can see a piece Infranatural did in Santa Monica here.) It took a long time for the project to get off the ground, mostly because numerous City agencies had to approve the design, but it should be finished next month.
Didier and Hess also worked on a similar project that was completed in 2014 at the Port of Los Angeles in Wilmington.
[h/t to Curbed LA]
