Archinect - News

Take a look at new Iwan Baan photos of LA's Sixth Street Viaduct ahead of its grand opening

2022-07-08T15:27:00-04:00

Concluding a multi-year construction effort that began with the demolition of the original 1930s Sixth Street Bridge in 2016 and saw the new structure begin to rise one year later, the City of Los Angeles is set to celebrate the opening of the largest bridge project in its history with a slew of public events this weekend, July 9th and 10th.

Spanning 3,500 feet in length, the new $588 million Michael Maltzan-designed Sixth Street Viaduct reestablishes a vital connection between Downtown LA, the Arts District, and the historic Boyle Heights neighborhood by expanding the focus of transportation from merely car traffic to also prioritize pedestrians and cyclists, offering wide sidewalks as well as 10-foot-wide Class IV protected bike lanes along each side of the viaduct. The opening of the ambitious PARC project (Park, Arts, River, and Connectivity), overseen by landscape architects Hargreaves Jones, is anticipated for 2024-25.

Photo by Iwan Baan, courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture...

Construction update: Maltzan Architects concrete arches are coming together on the new Sixth Street Viaduct

2021-09-02T21:27:00-04:00

Concrete arches along Los Angeles’s iconic Sixth Street Viaduct are rounding into shape as one of Michael Maltzan Architecture’s signature projects nears completion.

Images courtesy City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering via Facebook

The $500 million project offers an update to the original span, which had to be demolished in 2016 owing to concerns related to its ability to withstand earthquakes due to the degradation of concrete in the original 1932 structure. (An arch from that structure was able to be preserved by the city later that year as over 1,000 components were given away in a promotion titled “Rock Day LA”.)

Images courtesy City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering via Facebook

The soon-to-be-completed replacement recently went on display at this year’s Venice Biennale will feature added green space in addition to the pedestrian walkways and the 40-foot high arches, which are now about 50% completed based on photos recently published by the city and Urbanize LA.

Images c...

L.A.'s new Sixth Street Viaduct makes construction progress and shines at the Venice Biennale

2021-06-02T17:22:00-04:00

The Michael Maltzan Architecture-designed Sixth Street Viaduct is slowly taking shape in Los Angeles as new photos by LA Times photojournalist Allen J. Schaben show.

The $588 million bridge project, the biggest in the city's history, emerged as the winning entry in the 2012 design competition for a new bridge to replace the original 1932 structure and connect Downtown LA with the Boyle Heights neighborhood across the Los Angeles River, the 101 Freeway, 18 sets of railroad tracks, and a new park.

The design team also includes HNTB (Engineer and Executive Architect), Hargreaves Associates (Landscape Architect), and AC Martin (Urban Planning).

Take a look at some recent construction snapshots below and in this recent Los Angeles Times article.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Los Angeles Times (@latimes)

Meanwhile in Italy, the Sixth Street Viaduct project is on display at the recently opened 2021 Venice Biennale in the Emerging Communities section in th...

Michael Maltzan Looks to Inuit Art as Inspiration for a Canadian Museum Project

2021-03-27T13:28:00-04:00

It was a trip to the Arctic that gave a Los Angeles-based architect the inspiration for the new 36,000 sqft expansion of the Winnipeg Art Gallery opening this weekend in the nation's seventh-largest city.

Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Michael Maltzan Architecture with associate Cibinel Architecture. Photo Lindsay Reid.

Michael Maltzan's design for Qaumajuq, a center for Inuit art almost a decade in the making sprang out of an excursion he took in 2013 with the museum's director Stephen Borys.

Qaumajuq, the Inuit art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Photo by Lindsay Reid.

After being tapped the year before for the design and completion of the IAC, Maltzan began studying both the artistic traditions and topographies endemic to the Inuit people in areas hundreds of miles to the north.

Qaumajuq, the Inuit art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Photo by Lindsay Reid.

“It changed everything,” Borys told the New York Times. “When he got back to L.A., Micha...

Michael Maltzan Architecture announces plans for new Goethe-Institut headquarters in Los Angeles

2020-06-12T17:14:00-04:00

Michael Maltzan Architects has announced it is leading the design team for a new headquarters facility for the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.

The forthcoming headquarters is slated for a site in the city's rapidly gentrifying Westlake neighborhood just outside Downtown Los Angeles, where many market-rate and affordable housing developments are currently in the works and where cultural organizations, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, have expanded their footprints in recent years.

Previously on Archinect: "Michael Maltzan's Winnipeg Art Gallery Inuit Art Center set for late 2020 opening" Image courtesy Winnipeg Art Gallery.

According to an announcement published on the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles website, "The goal is to transform the setting into an interdisciplinary venue for art exhibitions, lectures, performances, film screenings, and other cultural events."

The statement continues: "MMA's projects cross a wide range of typologies, from housing to city infrastructure...

Michael Maltzan's Winnipeg Art Gallery Inuit Art Center set for late 2020 opening

2020-02-13T14:36:00-05:00

The new Inuit Art Centre (IAC) at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Winnipeg, Canada designed by Los Angeles-based architects Michael Maltzan Architecture is set to open its doors later this year.

A statement published on the Winnipeg Art Gallery website states that the space is "constructed to house the bulk of the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s and the Government of Nunavut’s collection of 13,000 Inuit carvings, textiles prints and beyond that represent the largest collection of its kind in the world" and that "the new centre will make it possible to display works that were previously relegated to storage."

The statement adds that "A digitization project is also underway to make the entirety of the collection available online."

The 40,000-square-foot addition will feature a double-height vestibule that includes a series of internal shelving displays filled with heritage objects. The objects make up collections that would typically be held in a secluded "vault" but that are being brought out for...

L.A.'s 6th Street Bridge: Built by (some) women

2019-12-11T13:36:00-05:00

The 6th Street Bridge team of 170 includes 15 women — the most on any commercial project in Los Angeles and nearly double the Department of Labor’s participation goal of 6.9% female crew members.

The Los Angeles Times reports on the relatively high proportion of women construction workers helping to build the Michael Maltzan Architecture-designed 6th Street Bridge in Los Angeles. The bridge is being constructed via a joint venture between Skanska and Stacy and Witbeck. Skanska recently redesigned some of its construction site protective equipment to make the items safer for women to use

According to Bureau of Labor statistics cited in the article, the construction industry represents a rare bright spot for women with regards to pay equity, where women make 100.8% as much as men do.

Describing the number of women who are working on the project, Rosa Garcia, a carpenter on the project, told The Los Angeles Times, “There’s been jobs where there’s been 800 guys and one female — and I’ve been the only female. This is the first project that I walked on to where I couldn’t believe how many women I saw.”

Los Angeles's fancy new bridge falls further behind schedule

2019-08-26T12:30:00-04:00

The Michael Maltzan Architecture (MMA)-designed Sixth Street Viaduct project in Los Angeles, a new $488 million span considered the largest bridge project in the city's history, is taking longer to complete than originally expected.

Although the bridge has been under construction for over three years, work on the forthcoming serial concrete arch spans that make up the massive project has slowed down in recent months. Curbed reports that a recent project update from the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering (BOE) expects the bridge project to be completed in March 2022, roughly 20 months later than previously estimated.

View of the below-bridge areas that will include pedestrian and park spaces. Image courtesy of Michael Maltzan Architecture.

In a statement explaining the reasoning behind the delay, BOE, writes, "The project has experienced construction challenges in the installation of temporary shoring and falsework to support the bridge while under construction, the development of c...