Las Urbanistas

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Musicians in Mariachi Plaza, in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles, with the light-rail construction site in the background.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 3 — While Carlos Sanchez, a guitarist, waits in front of Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights to be picked up for his next job, he likes to look at a mural behind the plaza’s kiosk on First Street.

The New York Times

Boyle Heights is isolated from downtown and beach areas.

The mural, with colorful squares and spheres and scenes of local flavor, is reminiscent of the work of Mexican muralists like David Alfaro Siqueiros, but it is functional, too. It hides construction of a light-rail link that supporters in Boyle Heights and neighboring East Los Angeles say will change the face of their communities.

Boyle Heights, part of the City of Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles, an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, have long been home to thousands of Latinos. Both communities are cut off geographically from the city’s beach districts and central business areas.

The light-rail train, set to begin running in 2009, will allow passengers to get to areas throughout the county. For many low-income residents, like Mr. Sanchez, 38, who do not own cars, the train will replace bicycles, unreliable buses and costly taxis.

“I’ll be using the train because it’s going to be more convenient and a faster way to get to where you want to go,” said Mr. Sanchez, who often car-pools to jobs with fellow musicians.

The train, named after Edward R. Roybal, who in 1949 became the first Mexican-American elected to the Los Angeles City Council, will travel six miles from the Little Tokyo/Arts District in downtown through Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. It will link to the Los Angeles subway system on the Gold Line, which runs south from Pasadena. A one-way trip now costs $1.25.

Diana Tarango, who is on an advisory committee for the project, said the light-rail link had been in the works for 12 years.

“The Gold Line is a method of transportation that is very much needed in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights because we’re so transit dependent,” she said.

“So many of our people do go out to work in houses in West L.A.,” she said. “In order to get there, why shouldn’t they have the luxury of something comfortable, fast and running on schedule?”

Community advocates see the train as a possible gateway to improving East Los Angeles and bringing economic vitality to the area, the oldest Mexican-American community in the county.

Standing before Mariachi Plaza, so named because Mexican musicians gather there to wait for work, José Huizar, a Los Angeles city councilman, spoke of plans to transform the intersection at First and Boyle Streets, which is a jumble of construction sites and small businesses.

“The potential here is tremendous,” said Mr. Huizar, who grew up in Boyle Heights. “My vision for this area is to have restaurants and a commercial center here. We’re going to have a lot of people from downtown coming up here during lunchtime. They’ll be on the subway in five minutes and get here and listen to mariachi music during the day and evening.”

The area’s county supervisor, Gloria Molina, said the light rail was part of what she called the renaissance of East Los Angeles.

“The first thing you do is upgrade the area,” Ms. Molina said, “and that will attract private investment.” She said a Starbucks opened in East Los Angeles in March, and a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and a Quiznos sandwich shop opened three years ago.

But there are no major stores like Target in the area. The storefronts that line major streets are small businesses like clothing stores and restaurants trying to keep a foothold as local shoppers head to stores and malls in nearby cities.

The makeup of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles has changed little since the late 1960s. Both areas are known for their large Latino populations and for Mexican-themed murals on convenience stores, schools and public buildings.

But that has not always been the case, said George Sanchez, a history professor at the University of Southern California.

At one time, Boyle Heights had significant Jewish and Japanese communities. Other ethnic groups, including Russians and Italians, also called the area home.

“Boyle Heights from the 1920s to the 1950s was the most diverse suburb in both the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County,” said Mr. Sanchez.

Evidence of the region’s past cultural diversity also extends to East Los Angeles, where Jewish, Serbian and Chinese cemeteries can be found. Proof that Chinese residents worked on the railroads in the 1800s was unearthed in the form of grave markers and bones during the construction of the light-rail project.

“The one thing you can say about East L.A. is that it’s never had an identity crisis,” said Oscar Gonzales, president of the East Los Angeles Residents Association. “It’s always known of its history and, more important, its future.”

That future, with the rail line, may be gentrification, Ms. Molina and others say. “It should change for the better,” she said. “You’re going to see more businesses along the transit lines.”

The high-design luxury residential towers marching across Manhattan pose a problem for an architecture critic. What if I should fancy one? Isn’t that just what its developer is hoping? A critic can’t help but feel a bit queasy, teetering on the edge of becoming a real estate promoter.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Bernard Tschumi’s new residential building at Norfolk and Delancey Streets.

Yet I can’t get the Blue Building out of my mind. Amid the old brick tenements of the Lower East Side, the glittering exterior of this structure, Bernard Tschumi’s latest building, will strike some as another step in downtown Manhattan’s relentless pace of gentrification.

But the 17-story building, which is to be finished later this month, avoids the ostentatious self-importance that infects the design of so many of the new luxury towers. Encased in a matrix of blue panels, its contorted form has a hypnotic appeal that is firmly rooted in the gritty disorder of its surroundings. It reminds us that beauty and good taste are not always the same thing.

This is partly because of Mr. Tschumi’s sensitivity to the neighborhood’s changing identity. Towers are sprouting all over downtown, and most of them are awful. The cheerless facade of the new Hotel on Rivington, decorated in bands of aqua-colored panels and glass, is visible a few blocks away. Just beyond it stand several generic brick residential towers, displaying the kind of superficial historicism that remains the norm among many mainstream developers.

By contrast Mr. Tschumi’s interests lie in an older vision of the neighborhood: the mix of old tenement buildings, public housing complexes and rusting infrastructure that extends down Delancey Street to the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Seen from a distance the Blue Building’s crystalline form seems to twist and bend as it rises. The exterior bulges out on one side so that its form leans over a lower commercial building next door. A big penthouse terrace is cut out of the west facade; the top of the east facade is sliced off at an angle.

These contortions are a sly expression of the various forces that this architect had to contend with while designing the building: the tight site, the restrictions imposed by the zoning envelope, the developer’s desire to squeeze out as much rentable space as possible.

But the effect also sets the entire composition wonderfully off balance. As the eye intuitively follows the lines of the building down to the ground, its tapered form gives the impression that the tower has been squeezed to fit into the site’s tight footprint, so that from certain angles the building appears to be on the verge of tipping over.

This sense of a building both rooted in and straining to escape from its context is reinforced by the quality of the exterior surfaces. A matrix of dark and pale blues, the window pattern evokes the shifting rhythms of Mondrian’s painted ode to New York, “Broadway Boogie Woogie.”

Much of the inspiration, however, comes as much from the gutter as from museum walls. The building’s milky blue colors bring to mind the cheap illuminated plastic signs still found on some old East Village storefronts. Air-conditioning units are punched through the facade. Flowered drapes hang in some of the windows.

I mean this as a compliment. Part of the problem with so many of the new luxury towers is that they look so self-consciously refined. “Look at me,” they seem to purr. “Aren’t I sooooo sophisticated?” Mr. Tschumi’s building is less self-conscious, more playful.

As you reach the upper floors, for example, the apartments get increasingly idiosyncratic. Exterior walls tilt backward or forward; rooms are tucked into what seem like leftover spaces. Big canted columns are set just inside the facade, as if bracing the rooms against some invisible force.

The tension between the tautness of the walls and the weight of the columns vaguely evokes the 1970s-era houses designed by Kazuo Shinohara, whose muscular concrete structures seemed to strain to preserve a tiny oasis of tranquillity amid the chaos of postwar Tokyo.

Unlike Shinohara’s houses, the Blue Building is not a major work of art. But it nonetheless captures an aspect of the city that is slowly fading from view: its role as a sanctuary for misfits and outcasts, a place full of dark corners and unexpected encounters. If only such people could afford the price tag.