January 21st, 2012
Taganskaya Station at 36 meters below Moscow streets
Taganskaya Station at 53 meters underground
The announcement that the 77-year-old Moscow Metro would be wired for Wi-Fi access later this year prompted my perusal of photos from a visit to the Russian capital, where, daily, some 6.5 million daily riders descend into the subterranean netherworld. The second heavily used rapid transit system in the world, after Tokyo’s, the Moscow Metro was first constructed in 1935 and spans over 12 lines and 185 stations.
Flipping through hundreds of images largely fixated on babushkas, I stumbled upon a couple divergent snapshots of the Taganskaya Metro station, off Taganka Square. The depot provides an archaeological cross-section of Moscow’s transformative urbanism from the 1950s to 1970s.
Connecting the Koltsevaya Line with the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line, Taganskaya actually consists of two stations, one for each line, at 36 and 53 meters below ground, respectively. The latter, deeper station was built in 1950, at the height of post-war garishness so typical of Stalinist Neoclassicism; the former station, closer to the surface, was added in 1966 and designed in a more spartan fashion, privileging function over form.
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March 4th, 2010
“La Mona” by Armando Muñoz García, Tijuana
An alley off Avenue Revolution, Tijuana
January 17th, 2010
Former Mark Twain Hotel on Wilcox Avenue, Los Angeles
Former home of Macintosh Clothes
and Newberry School of Beauty, Los Angeles
October 11th, 2009
Los Angeles’s spin on the Art Walk serves more than just the obvious purposes of promoting foot traffic and celebrating art in the flatland of mini malls and gas guzzlers. The monthly spectacle constitutes a larger urban project: the gentrification and “revitalization” of Downtown LA.
Since Antonio Villaraigosa’s first term in office, the LA mayor has worked with the City Council in redeveloping the desolate city center with a billion-dollar makeover. In recent decades Downtown has devolved from a bustling business hub to a destitute ghost town, where by day careerists flood the skyscraper landscape and by night rush to their suburban pockets leaving a nocturnal community of itinerants. The homeless population in Downtown LA alone exceeded 30,000 in 2004.
Today, the district lies in continual renovation and the lines blur between skid row and Gallery Row. Million-dollar lofts overlook boulevards dotted by sleeping bags and cardboard boxes. There is literally no street in the 5-square-mile area without an old warehouse or hotel from the Roaring Twenties converted into contemporary, luxury residence.
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