Observing Los Angeles

Union Station is wonderful, but one of the world's most beautiful?

union-station-flavorpill.jpgFlavorpill's Los Angeles bias is showing through again — not that we're complaining. Its Flavorwire site has put Union Station, sometimes called the last great American rail station to be built, in 1939, high on its aggregation of The Most Beautiful Train Stations in the World. The site's writers previously included Central Library among the world's most beautiful libraries and Spring Street's The Last Bookstore among the world's most beautiful of those. In each case, the less familiar photos of truly grand structures around the world are worth the click. Here's Madrid's Atocha station:

atocha-madrid-flavorwire.jpg

Meanwhile, there are new renderings this week of architectural visions for enhancing Union Station. Street views of the station have already been hurt by new construction and palm trees, if you ask me. Now come some visions by companies hoping to win the Metro contract to develop a master plan for the station.

Here's an example, from Grimshaw/Gruen via The Source:

Grimshaw-union-station.jpg


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