Archinect - News

L.A.'s Petersen Museum receives 2017 American Architecture Award

2017-04-13T16:58:00-04:00

Despite receiving a substantial drubbing from architectural critics, the Petersen Museum has managed to garner a 2017 American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athanaeum Museum of Architecture and Design (among 78 other finalists).

The award, which has been given out since 1994, recognized the new design of the museum for transforming "the Petersen building into one of the most significant and unforgettable structures in Los Angeles." The award panel went on to note that:

Unlike most museum renovations, which involve complete building teardown, this is a repositioning project. To use the metaphor of a car, if the existing building is a car’s chassis, the design is the body. The bones of the structure remain, and the existing concrete portico on Wilshire is removed. The rooftop becomes converted into a party space which can be rented out. A corrugated aluminum rain screen outboard wraps around the building on each of the three street frontages, giving the museum an entirely new l...

A populist triumph over museum elites? Craig Hodgetts takes on the Petersen Automotive Museum

2016-03-11T13:42:00-05:00

That the skin is an exercise in advanced digital fabrication, applied with such élan is, in itself, a proclamation, a sort of late-career renaissance, which thrusts the firm into a next generation spotlight. Whether naively assuming (wrongly) that Los Angeles was ready for a jolt of architectural electricity, or sincerely reflecting a populist genre (rightly), Kohn succeeded in outflanking its neighbors, and disrupting the conventions governing the museum establishment.

Craig Hodgetts, leader of UCLA's 2015 Hyperloop Suprastudio and former automotive designer, takes a contrarian view on the Petersen's widely critically-maligned redesign. We also spoke with Craig on the podcast about his views on transportation's future – take a listen for some context alongside his thoughts on the Petersen.

Want more Googie goodness? Check out our review of the Petersen, and more related news on Archinect:

LA's redesigned Petersen Automotive Museum: so bad the public will love it?

2015-09-25T13:56:00-04:00

The scaffolding is off the Petersen Automotive Museum on Mid-Wilshire, and even though the building isn't yet open to the public, the reactions have been passionate. "The New Look of the Petersen Automotive Museum is Really Really Bad," trumpeted a headline in Curbed. (The story, by Marissa Gluck, went on to describe the building as "the Guy Fieri of buildings: obnoxious, loud, and, ultimately, sure to be inexplicably embraced by the public.")

Los Angeles is enjoying its fair share of museum-related news these days: