Amid the back-slapping and media-event hoopla surrounding the better-late-than-never opening of the LAX/Metro Transit Center on Friday, physicist and origami master Robert Lang looked pained.
Lang was holding a copy of the official “LAX/Metro Transit Center Station Art Guide” that describes the facility’s gigantic Distance of the Sun sculpture by artist Glenn Kaino, which was based upon Lang’s original origami spaceship designs.
“It reads, ‘The artist worked with an origami master’…to create this monumental project,” said Lang. “No mention of who that was.”
Lang showed the brochure to Kaino, who also looked pained. A Metro Arts representative, standing nearby to answer questions about the sculpture, quickly summoned the correct response.
“We’re going to have that reprinted with the right information,” she said. “We will send you copies.”
The trip to LAX for the station’s grand opening was a long journey for Lang, who lost not only his Altadena origami studio in the Eaton Fire but a previous home he and wife Diane had on the market and another house they recently purchased.
Three properties reduced to rubble and ash.
When we visited Lang at his studio in 2023, he stressed the importance of rescuing the detailed “folding books,” the instruction manuals for all of his designs, if a fire should every threaten the studio.
In the Eaton Fire, the folding books were practically the only items saved from the fast-moving flames.
“The family photos are all gone,” said Diane Lang, who attended the Transit Center opening with her husband. “Little things I bought in Germany when Robert was a post-doc before going to Caltech, those too.”
Following the opening ceremonies of the new transit center, we had a late lunch at Philippe the Original in downtown Los Angeles.
It had been a long day. LAX finally had a train station, like every other supposedly civilized world-class metropolis.
And there was a new Distance of the Sun to celebrate. Finally.
