Andrew Leicester, Artist/Designer from Minnesota, visited the Metro Gold Line bridge Thursday, November 8, 2012. Leicester was the Metro Gold Line bridge winning designer out of a competition of 17 other entries. Leicester was pleased the way the bridged looked and said, “that it looks like his finished design”. The last piece of median false work is being removed from the Metro Gold Line bridge, where it was used for workers installing the “basket” at the north send. It signals the end of actual construction, and the bridge will be officially opened the second week of December. (SGVN/Photo by Walt Mancini)
The following article originally appeared in the November 14, 2012 edition of the Pasadena Star-News.
By Janette Williams, SGVN | Updated: 11/14/2012 07:31:26 AM PST
Andrew Leicester, Artist/Designer from Minnesota, visited the Metro Gold Line bridge Thursday, November 8, 2012. Leicester was the Metro Gold Line bridge winning designer out of a competition of 17 other entries. Leicester was pleased the way the bridged looked and said, “that it looks like his finished design”. The last piece of median false work is being removed from the Metro Gold Line bridge, where it was used for workers installing the “basket” at the north send. It signals the end of actual construction, and the bridge will be officially opened the second week of December. (SGVN/Photo by Walt Mancini)
Gallery: Andrew Leicester, winning designer of (210) Metro Gold Line Bridge in Arcadia visits bridge
ARCADIA – Eastbound commuters on the Foothill (210) Freeway have watched the 584-foot Gold Line Bridge gradually take shape over the past year.
With the last wooden support platform gone and next month’s installation of concrete “reeds” rising from the giant concrete baskets, construction will end on the most visible part of the 11.5-mile light rail extension project.
Seeing both 25-foot Native American-inspired concrete baskets without scaffolding for the first time, artist Andrew Leicester said they look just as he’d hoped.
“I like that they look very clean and quite slender. I worried that the material would make it look very heavy, but not at all,” the Minnesota-based artist said Tuesday. “There’s a nice gracefulness to it. And the detailing of the baskets is better than I thought it would be. Of course, they don’t have the reeds on yet, and metaphorically and literally they are the crowning details of the work.”
The reeds and other final details on the $18.6-million bridge, including lighting and landscaping, will be completed next month, said Habib Balian, CEO of the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority.
The bridge baskets, made of 60 stacked segments and weighing 800 pounds apiece, cost about $500,000 to make and install, officials said.
“I think it’s fantastic, it’s exactly what we wanted,” Balian said of the bridge project. “We wanted it to be unique – you won’t see any project like this anywhere in Los Angeles County or the country. … It’s what we envisioned: a stand-alone piece of art that’s also a functional, important bridge that links the right-of-way running parallel to the freeway to the historic railroad right-of-way” through Arcadia.
The bridge is “just one element” of the $1.2 billion project, Balian said. “There’s still three years’ worth of work” on the 11.5-mile eastward extension through Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale and Azusa.
Leicester said he originally came up with “all kinds of ideas, using all kinds of materials” for the bridge, including tiles, water features, wind turbines and “ivy growing all over it.”
“Caltrans wanted a maintenance-free bridge, so gradually there was a simplification of concepts until I finally came up with the final one you see today,” Leicester said. “I looked at Native American basket-making almost from the get-go, but I wanted to include color into the cement and use tiles to create colored patterns on the columns – that was immediately squelched by Caltrans. They worried that tiles would pop off in an earthquake and land on windshields.”
The simpler, monochromatic and more abstract solution – using concrete with added quartz and mica crsytals and mirrored glass for sparkle – worked out better, he said.
“Funnily enough, a lot of people looked at it and said it looks like a space ship – something from `Star Trek’ that’s come down and is crouching astride the freeway,” Leicester said, laughing. “It has a slightly mechanistic look to it.”
The award-winning artist was chosen in a long selection process that involved all the communities on the eastward extension, Balian said, and “anecdotally” public reaction has been positive.
Leicester said he was gratified by the honks and waves from passing motorists when they were trying out different spotlight effects “in the pouring rain” last week.
“It was very heartening to me,” he said.
A video highlighting Leicester’s design sketchbook for the project is on display as part of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design’s “Pages” Exhibition, which runs through Jan. 13. It can be seen at: http://youtu.be/9xcMtAak9zU.