MTA Headquarters Tower Los Angeles, CA

MTA Headquarters is a major component in Gateway Center, the 52-acre urban complex built near downtown Los Angeles on former railroads. The Center is intended to rejuvenate the Union Station area as an important transportation hub, and is a highly visible physical and psychological tie connecting the Central Business District with the growing East Los Angeles community. The building's design establishes a distinctive architectural vocabulary derived in part from the historic 1938 station, the last of the great train stations built in America during the past 150 years. The project's physical character is distinctly Southern California in spirit, with numerous contextual influences of the 1930's Hispanic-Deco imagery of the adjacent Union Station and Post Office facilities. The MTA's headquarters tower was completed on-time and on-budget without a single change order, perhaps the only major office building to achieve this distinction.