On the Road - photography

[Alex]

I'm sure you can find many examples of individual power structures that have been designed to something less utilitarian, but I think the driving factor in their look is the fact that you need several of them per mile of line.

The Pacific Intertie transmission line connects Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River in Washington to Los Angeles. That one high capacity line is more about 900 miles long. Meaning that several thousand towers are needed. So, I imagine that fincancial considerations quickly reduce all design considerations to:

1. What design requires the fewest materials.
2. What design requires the least work to construct.

Personally, I find them to be elegant statements of functional design, and even within that there are interesting variations. They're only rendered boring by their ceaseless repetition. But that complaint is somewhat like saying they should do something to make railroad ties more visually powerful.