Archinect - News

Christopher Hawthorne goes 1-on-1 with Peter Zumthor in LACMA makeover preview

2023-10-06T13:12:00-04:00

Zumthor describes the wing as “a concrete sculpture,” with floors, walls and ceilings of exposed concrete. There will be bronze surrounds on the window and door openings throughout the building. When I visited Haldenstein, he and his colleagues were weighing final choices for the color palette of the walls at the base of the new wing, inside the various legs. “Lively, not dark colors, to give identity to different spaces,” he said. “And then you come up into this world of concrete.”

Ahead of next year’s anticipated completion, Peter Zumthor says his sculptural new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA will be bereft of the most recognizable traces of his Pritzker-winning design signature — a claim the museum's director Michael Govan then refuted. The man who once said, “the real core of all architectural work lies in the act of construction,” pointed to a faulty concrete pour at the outset and difficulties with the site’s foundation as factors that forced his design to be streamlined. The paring down of the overpass-like wing connector that covers Wilshire Boulevard was another point of contention.

Critics like Mimi Zeiger have described the project as “environmentally tone-deaf.” Hawthorne has thus far withheld any criticisms of his own, preferring to cover the project through a more explanatory journalism.

Construction on the new building is now 65% complete as of October 1st. The article mentioned the new wing may not be fully opened to the public until 2026.

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LACMA's Zumthor makeover makes construction progress

2023-08-02T12:43:00-04:00

Construction work has been coming along in California at the $750 million makeover of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Urbanize LA reports.

The outlet just shared new aerial progress photos by Hunter Kerhart of the new amorphous two-story David Geffen Galleries building, which now also bridges over the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Boulevard where a collection of four now-demolished buildings, designed by William Pereira and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, once housed the museum's collection.

Completion of the Peter Zumthor-designed new 347,500-square-foot structure is anticipated in late 2024.

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LACMA construction update: Falsework is in place as David Geffen Galleries' structure comes into focus

2023-01-05T17:36:00-05:00

The ongoing makeover of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has reached an important step as Urbanize LA is reporting that construction falsework is now in place for the $750 million new David Geffen Galleries by Peter Zumthor.

The rest of the falsework should be installed by the end of January. The temporary metal structures are required to support the construction platform for the 350,000-square-foot wing as it bridges over Wilshire Boulevard from west to east, where it replaces William Pereira’s pavilions and other buildings that were demolished to make way for the futuristic-looking consolidated exhibition spaces.

Additional shoring, formwork, rebar installation, and concrete pours for the basement-level and elevated horizontal decks continue to the north and west side of the construction site for the two-story addition. After reaching its midway point near the end of last summer, the project is now on track to be completed sometime in 2024.

Falsework is in place above ...

Montalba is making over Edward Durell Stone's iconic 9720 Wilshire building

2021-11-02T13:56:00-04:00

A Beverly Hills icon is getting a long overdue facelift thanks to a top-notch local firm.

Santa Monica-based Montalba Architects is behind a newly announced renovation that will transform the former Pacific Mercantile Bank building, an eight-story office tower on Wilshire Boulevard by New Formalist master Edward Durell Stone.

Image courtesy Montalba Architects

Stone was the architect of the Ahmanson Center and responsible for several other midcentury commercial developments on Wilshire Boulevard that have become synonymous with the visual landscape of Los Angeles thanks to artists like Ed Ruscha and David Hockney.

Image courtesy Montalba Architects

The building’s characteristic Romanesque facade will remain untouched as the fronting fountain and plaza area are reimagined in order to make space for a “sunken garden” that allows the architects to activate its previously unused basement substructure. Interior renovations will be made using a “reserved palette of materials that harken th...

Sale of Twombly painting to help fund OMA-designed addition to the Wilshire Boulevard Temple

2015-09-16T20:59:00-04:00

It's something like cultural alchemy: the sale of a single painting is set to pay for half of a new OMA-designed annex space for the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, according to an announcement made today by the congregation. Donated by the philanthropist Audrey Irmas, the painting is a 1968 "blackboard" painting by the artist Cy Twombly.

Actually, according to predicted figures, the sale of the eight-foot-wide, grey-and-white painting would just about cover the $60 million price tag of the new building. As reported by the New York Times, the sale of a similar, but smaller, painting last year at Christie's brought in $69.9 million.

Irmas is a long-time congregant at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the oldest in Lost Angeles and a historic center for the Jewish community.

“I am thrilled and honored to be a part of the new addition designed by the world renowned Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture at Wilshire Boulevard Temple," Irmas stated.

According to the press release...

Rem Koolhaas tapped to design Los Angeles Temple expansion

2015-04-24T12:54:00-04:00

Wilshire Boulevard Temple, famous for its ornate 1929 synagogue, is trying to create another Los Angeles landmark, negotiating with the Pritzker Prize-winning Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to design a building next door for special events. It would be open for use by the public as well as by congregants. “Architecture is a form of prayer,” said Rabbi Steven Z. Leder of the Reform congregation, which is in Koreatown.

L.A. County supervisors approve initial funding for new LACMA building

2014-11-06T13:22:00-05:00

The Board of Supervisors has approved a road map for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as it plans a $600-million makeover that would tear down and rebuild most of its Miracle Mile campus [...]. If there are no serious bumps in the road ahead, the plan would yield a streamlined, curving 410,000-square-foot new museum building designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor that would open in 2023, spanning Wilshire Boulevard with an enclosed bridge that doubles as gallery space.

Previously

Urban Operations: Wilshire Star Maps

2011-09-14T19:45:00-04:00

No other place in the world has such a fantastic collection of underecognized and underappreciated vertical architecture as in Los Angeles. In a city of mostly low-density avenues and sprawling suburban tracts, no other street in L.A. contains as many of these Modernicus Erectus as Wilshire Boulevard.

Since 2006, the annual pamphlet on skyscrapers is published as an ongoing research project by the office of Los Angeles architect John Southern, Urban Operations. This year's issue, "Wilshire Star Maps" is a limited edition of 100 prints and a digital edition you are about to enjoy. It also features an essay by Orhan Ayyüce, "Wilshire Boulevard: A Drive-By Family".

Digital copies of Urban Operations' previous pamphlets, Slopscraper, Sumoscraper and Skyscrapers of the Dead are also available at their website.

Wilshire Star Maps by Urban Operations

Urban Operations: Wilshire Star Maps

2011-09-08T17:04:25-04:00

Digital copies of Urban Operations' previous pamphlets, Slopscraper, Sumoscraper and Skyscrapers of the Dead is also available at their website.

Wilshire Star Maps by Urban Operations