Archinect - Features

Is it a Museum? An Up Close and Personal Review of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Broad Museum

2019-02-13T12:44:00-05:00

The Broad is much more than a building, so to review it only as a physical object would be to fall for the decoy. The Broad is playing next-level games with art and real estate, in a similar way that Trump played next-level games with the media during his campaign. The benefit to The Broad’s games, of course, is that people can go see some beautiful art for free - or, more accurately, they can go see art at no cost to them, but which nevertheless is considerably subsidized by the City of Los Angeles. (More on that later.)

The Broad

Built: 2015
Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Executive Architect: Gensler
Location: 221 S. Grand Ave Los Angeles, CA

Building Score: 5.7

The Broad Museum opens its doors for a look beyond the veil

2015-09-23T09:02:00-04:00

The white cube museum to end all white cube museums has touched down in Los Angeles. This past Sunday, the personal post-war and contemporary art collection owned by billionaire philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, housed in Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s meshed white box, opened for public viewing as the brand new Broad Museum, located just south of Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall on downtown’s Grand Avenue.

What makes an artless museum?

2015-06-16T11:00:00-04:00

Architectural criticism that begins with “it looks like [insert Platonic object here]” is suspect at best, but the temptation to gamble with semiotic stickiness is too great: if I see a contraceptive sponge when I look at the new Broad Museum, I want to say that.