Meet the "sustainable" gas station
The Helios House in Los Angeles, a relic of 2007 greenwashing
In Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision for Broadacre City, a proto-suburban community in which each single-family house would be situated on one acre of land, the legendary architect argued that gas stations would form the new center of American (i.e., “Usonian”) civilization.1
Wright wasn’t so far off the mark, as for the last 75 years, the United States’ car-dependent landscape has featured a galaxy of gas stations, generally uninspiring, canopied self-service kiosks often paired with convenience stores offering dubious-looking hot dogs and frightfully flavored frozen drinks (Piña Colada Slurpee, anyone?) And nowhere is that car dependence more evident than in Los Angeles, home of 650 miles of freeways.
As the metropolis (eagerly / anxiously) anticipates the 2028 Olympics, Los Angeles’ roadways are slowly changing, with the advent of the expanded streetcar system and the unsettling presence of Waymo self-driving taxis. And yet another vision of a (perhaps) tarnished future can be found at the corner of Olympic and Robertson Boulevards in West Los Angeles—the Helios House.
The geodesic design, reminiscent of an upside-down computer rendering of a geothermal eruption, feels like a distant cousin of the so-called “parametricist” buildings of Zaha Hadid. According to NADAAA, the firm that designed the Helios House, the project sought to create “the paradox of creating a green gas station.”
Though the station still sells gasoline (originally BP, followed by Arco, and now Speedway Express), the station started out with a green roof over the bathroom and a canopy featuring 90 solar panels, generating enough electricity to power 2-3 houses. The steel façade, while not made of recycled materials, was recyclable. A kiosk offered the typical gas station snacks. However, did the Helios House live up to the longevity and reliability of its namesake, the Greek god of the sun?
According to the architectural firm’s website, the gas station was intended as a “learning lab… designed to stimulate dialogue, promote education and foster discussion on the topic of environmental stewardship.” And according to reporting in The Press Democrat, when the Helios House first opened as a BP station, a “green team” based out of the station checked customer tire pressure and offered “energy-saving tips on recycled paper embedded with flower seeds that sprout when the card is planted in the ground.” The building was also apparently the first gas station to receive LEED certification, a widely-touted metric of a building’s energy efficiency.
The station’s architects were hired by prominent ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. One can only suspect that the stunt concept of a “green gas station” was to help BP market itself as an eco-friendly force, an echo of the company’s history as the originator of the carbon footprint concept, the idea that the blame for global warming rested exclusively with an individual’s poor choices, rather than the companies that harvested and sold the product causing the problem. And with BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster coming three years after the station’s 2007 completion—that didn’t help BP’s image, either.
Seventeen years after construction, the station is starting to show its age. The onsite bathrooms are closed to customers (the bathroom roof no longer appears to be green), and a display rack intended for the postcards-implanted-with-seeds seems not to have been replenished for some time. Moreover, the world has begun to envision a post-gasoline, albeit still car-dominated, future—we’ve moved far beyond the Prius-hybrid era. Perhaps the Helios House could add a charging station with electricity generated from the canopy’s solar cells?
Without institutional continuity, the mission of the “learning lab” appears to have fallen off, and now Helios House remains a fascinating artifact of early 21st century greenwashing. And even if the Helios House is not a center of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian civilization, it’s certainly a frequent stop for West LA residents who commute on Olympic Boulevard.
Yes, that is why the blog is called what it is called.