Archinect - News

Does LACMA have its financial house in order?

2020-02-21T14:37:00-05:00

According to the museum’s most recent 990 tax forms, filed in 2018, LACMA is carrying $331 million in county bond debt that was used to pay for construction of the Resnick Pavilion, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, the Pritzker Parking Garage and other projects. In addition to that debt, the museum has $112 million in other liabilities, such as accounts payable and accrued expenses. This brings LACMA’s total debt to almost $443 million.

Carolina Miranda of The Los Angeles Times takes a hard look at the finances for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as the institution prepares for the imminent demolition of its legacy William L. Pereira Associates- and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer-designed campus to make way for a $750 million Atelier Peter Zumthor-designed replacement facility.

In the report, Miranda compares LACMA's assets and debts with those of other leading cultural institutions around the country, finding that the Los Angeles museum is carrying an abnormally high debt-ratio. The worrisome financial situation has already lead to a series of revisions for the project, including a one substantial downsizing.

A Trump Tower in L.A.? Thankfully, that was only part of "Never Built Los Angeles"

2017-02-15T00:51:00-05:00

In LA, Trump bragged he was going to spend a billion dollars on what he claimed would become the world’s tallest building. His architect Bill Fain delivered a gilded 125-storey office tower etched in a diamond-patterned exoskeleton...David Martin also devised a skyscraper: ‘When I told Ivana [Trump] the basis of the idea was to put two diamonds together, she lit up,’ Martin said. ‘I think they were divorced a week later.’

Whether you've been following the tumultuous life of proposed architecture projects in Los Angeles or not (a stretch of Grand Avenue, for example, has been undergoing elaborate proposals designed in part by Frank Gehry for almost forty years) "Never Built Los Angeles," a book by architectural critics at large Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin, shows us via The Guardian the almost-reality of a Los Angeles-based Trump Tower designed by Johnson Fain back in 1989.

One-to-One #45 with 'Never Built New York' authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell

2016-11-07T13:51:00-05:00

Never Built New York, by curators and authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell, is an astounding collection of architectural projects that never made it into being. The book features projects from the last two centuries, sited all throughout the five boroughs, that range from the monumental to the mortifying. Alongside infamous projects like Buckminster Fuller’s dome over Manhattan and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Key Plan for Ellis Island, visions for an alternate New York-urbanism abound: aborted reflections of their time, place and politics.

The book continues in the tradition of Goldin and Lubell's 2013 exhibition, "Never Built Los Angeles", including focused research on each project alongside gorgeous drawings and visualizations. I spoke with the authors about their curatorial approach to the book, and the projects that they were most excited by.

Check out a selection of the Never Built projects below and in the image gallery.

Listen to One-to-One #45 with Never Built New York authors Greg Gold...

The NYC that could have been – 'Never Built New York' to be released this fall

2016-07-27T20:16:00-04:00

The authors and curators behind 2013's Never Built Los Angeles, a collection of fantastical and aborted projects from LA's 20th century urban history, have now turned their attention eastward, to New York City.

In Never Built New York, Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin (with a foreword by Daniel Libeskind) uncover nearly 200 urban projects from the last two centuries that, for any host of reasons, failed to launch. Some of the showcased never-beens are Buckminster Fuller's glass-domed (Brooklyn) Dodgers Stadium, Stephen Holl's Bridge of Houses (destined for the spot where the High Line is now), and what would have been Frank Lloyd Wright’s final project: his dream city, the Key Plan for Ellis Island.

The book comes out in the U.S. on October 1. More info here.

Susan S. Szenasy on the Importance of Design in the Everyday

2015-04-27T19:19:00-04:00

Inside the soon-to-be-demolished A+D Museum in Los Angeles, a small group gathered last week for a conversation with Susan S. Szenasy, the Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis Magazine, followed by a signing of her new book of collected writings, Szenasy, Design Advocate. The talk is likely the last the museum will host in its Miracle Mile location, as the museum prepares to move to a new home in the Downtown Arts District following the expropriation of the current building to make room for an extension of the Metro Red Line. Moderated by architecture writer and curator Greg Goldin (whose previous “Never Built: Los Angeles” exhibition was on show at the A+D in 2013), the conversation focused on the personal relationships we have with design in everyday life.

“I was always railing against the idea that people were never talked about in architecture,” Szenasy recalled of her formative years at Interior magazine. “Designers reflect us back to ourselves,” she added a bit later. “They have a hug...