Archinect - News

LACMA sets April 2026 opening date for David Geffen Galleries

2024-10-30T18:26:00-04:00

The LA Times is reporting that the new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA will finally open to the public in April of 2026. This ends speculations as to when exactly the 110,000-square-foot Peter Zumthor design would debut after multiple delays to the orginally $750 million project. Spaces inside the new building will be open to the public for a two-week period once the city grants a temporary certificate of occupancy (TCO) in May of 2025. The newspaper had previously reported the project budget to be in excess of $835 million as of our last update.

Peter Zumthor details LACMA’s design inspiration in new interview

2024-10-08T11:02:00-04:00

This must do something to the city—like the Pan Am Building in New York—but somehow today the courage is lost. It must mean something to the city that there is a shape that is hard to understand crossing the road. The owner’s representative in charge of our project recently said to me, “Peter, I’ve now started to understand what this building is doing on all sides.”

LACMA recently pushed back the opening of Zumthor's David Geffen Galleries to 2026 as Christopher Knight quoted an unnamed museum source in the LA Times as saying the project's budget (which had been an initial hurdle to clear) is now in excess of $835 million.

"In about a year, one end will open," Zumthor said, speaking of a public viewing period that could begin once the temporary certificate of occupancy (TCO) is obtained next May. "Some curators were critical of the spatial concept of the layout of the museum. But now since they can go and see the space for the first time, they start to like it. And they see the beauty of the handmade concrete body of the building—so I am told."

LACMA updates design details, public opening timeline for David Geffen Galleries

2024-09-16T13:04:00-04:00

Here’s a brief update on the progress of Peter Zumthor’s David Geffen Galleries at the LACMA. The project now won’t open in full until 2026, the museum's J. Fiona Ragheb wrote in a staff memo obtained by the LA Times. The memo states that public access may be granted for two weeks after a temporary certificate of occupancy (TCO) is obtained in May of 2025 and before the installation of the permanent collection. Galleries are to be arranged thematically based on six oceanic regions thereafter. Christopher Knight, who first reported the news, quoted an internal museum source as saying the project’s budget is now in excess of $835 million.

LACMA shares custom-built glass facade details in new spring construction update

2024-04-16T13:39:00-04:00

New updates have been shared recently by the Los Angeles Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), charting progress on the $750 million new David Geffen Galleries from Peter Zumthor that is expected to finish construction by the end of this year.

According to the museum's most recent April 5th update, interior walls and exterior glazing are being installed on the site’s western side, facing north to Wilshire Boulevard. Work on the building’s MEPs is now underway, and the concrete pour for the roof decks has been completed to the east side of the site. Formwork, rebar installation, and concrete pours for the roof decks are also advancing on the Spaulding Lot.

This follows the March 8th update that detailed the removal of the site’s prominent tower crane. LACMA has yet to release a public opening date. (A recent look inside the project with its contractor Clark Construction can be found here.)

Image courtesy LACMA

Also of interest are the 243 individual custom-made glass facade components...

Take an inside look at the form-making process for LACMA's new David Geffen Galleries

2024-02-06T12:15:00-05:00

LACMA’s Unframed blog recently profiled the work of contractor Clark Construction to build the concrete structure for the Peter Zumthor-designed $750 million new David Geffen Galleries extension. The concrete will be left untreated to match its architect’s long-established aesthetic and elevate the "hand of the craftsman."

Work will now commence on the installation of the 347,500-square-foot gallery’s interior walls, plus its exterior facade glazing, MEP systems, and roof-level horizontal decks.

"The building has no columns!," Chris Bell, the project executive for Clark Construction, shared with Unframed. "Instead, there are seven 30-foot-tall park-level pavilions that support the entire exhibition space. That's three football fields long with supporting cantilevers that hold people, glass, artwork — cantilevers that are 60 feet long. Being able to achieve and balance the structural and architectural requirements, it's a feat unto itself."

The update comes after LACMA celebrated t...

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.

...

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.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Urbanize LA (@urbanizela)

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 ...

LACMA makeover: Five active cranes signal midway point for $750 million Zumthor project

2022-07-13T12:20:00-04:00

A significant next step has been taken in the construction process that will eventually culminate in Peter Zumthor’s brand new David Geffen Galleries building for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as it inches closer to its anticipated 2024 completion date.

According to Urbanize Los Angeles, two new tower cranes are now in operation at the site, in addition to the three that were brought online back in October. The project is now approximately at its midway point after a delayed start in 2020.

Image courtesy LACMA

LACMA says it has recently completed concrete pours on the western portion of the mat foundation for the estimated $750–$900 million project, which replaces William Pereira’s 1965 “floating campus” trio of buildings (and their 1986 Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer-designed extension) in favor of the controversially smaller, new two-story building that bestrides Wilshire Boulevard next to the La Brea Tar Pits.

Previously on Archinect: In Los Angeles, institutions build, but...

Cranes have risen at the site of LACMA's upcoming David Geffen Galleries

2021-10-05T17:29:00-04:00

A year after we last checked, a trio of tower cranes has risen at the former site of LACMA's lost William Pereira- and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer-designed buildings, showing the most visible signs of progress on a controversial $750-million remodel of the Mid-Wilshire campus.

The heavily criticized Peter Zumthor-designed project is expected to be completed in 2024. Urbanize Los Angeles highlights a report that cites internal emails between Los Angeles County officials warning that the final cost of the project could rise to as high as $900 million. This coupled with the museum’s existing financial troubles is a cause for major concern. However, the site of recent construction activity is a positive sign.

Previously on Archinect: LACMA Set to Reopen Amidst a Year of Construction, COVID Lockdown and Harsh Criticism

The construction process for the new David Geffen Galleries began in 2020 with the demolition of four older buildings designed by William Pereira and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer.

LACMA's demolished buildings will live on thanks to this Los Angeles artist

2021-08-02T14:23:00-04:00

The proposed installation is the work of Cayetano Ferrer, a Los Angeles-based artist who has long had an interest in the ways in which issues of design and memory intersect. It is being executed in collaboration with landscape architect Bron Ruf. Ferrer acknowledges that working with fragments of a building whose demolition was loudly contested and for which many Angelenos felt a deep nostalgia is a loaded thing.

The Pereira-designed pavillions have been at the center of the doomed effort to save LACMA's original La Brea campus from what critics say is an unnecessary and expensive redevelopment campaign. Ferrer shares he got the idea while working on a conservation research project at LACMA's Art + Tech Lab in the midst of the debate over the beloved modernist buildings was reaching its conclusion. Ruf is currently a vice president at the landscaping firm Moss and Associates.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by @tano4g

The demolished pieces will be reassembled and installed in a new pocket park adjacent to the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. Some of the fragments will be exhibited in a one-day show at the Commonwealth and Council gallery in Pasadena.

You can read Carolina Miranda's full interview with Ferrer here.

Long-awaited floor plan and interior gallery images of Peter Zumthor's LACMA redesign emerge

2020-09-18T17:03:00-04:00

There have been countless unknowns surrounding LACMA’s vast rebuilding project: the nature of the landscaping, whether the underside of the massive concrete structure would feel like a pleasant, shady spot or an oppressive freeway underpass, where the museum’s playful Alexander Calder fountain sculpture might go. The biggest question mark has hovered over the form and nature of the galleries...

With the fate of Los Angeles' beloved LACMA museum making headlines since Swiss architect Peter Zumthor received the bid, public response to its redesign has been primarily negative and controversial. With construction well underway despite the recent pandemic, images of museum interiors and gallery plans have been shared.

Ground level floor plan courtesy of LACMA

Exhibition floor plan courtesy of LACMA

Core gallery render of David Geffen Galleries. Image © ATELIER PETER ZUMTHOR & PARTNER/THE BOUNDARY

Los Angeles Times writer Carolina A. Miranda provides the public with a breakdown of what to expect thanks to renders and a long-awaited floor plan. Miranda shares, "other than necessary mechanical systems and bathrooms, the building's entire second story will be devoted to galleries, a total of 110,000 square feet of exhibition space. The galleries are composed of two dozen rectilinear spaces — basically, boxes — arranged in clusters and surrounded by interstitial spaces that will also ...

"His work means a lot to me," Director Wim Wenders planning Zumthor documentary

2020-09-11T12:53:00-04:00

German film director Wim Wenders is planning a new documentary covering the recent work of Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

Regarding the forthcoming release, Wenders tells the dpa news agency, "His work means a lot to me. I have been accompanying two of his arguably most important buildings from their creation, the new LACMA Museum in Los Angeles and the expansion of the beautiful Fondation Beyeler (by Renzo Piano) in Basel with an additional large new exhibition building."

Further, Wenders explains that his intention is for the film to have a theatrical release rather than a purely digital one. Wenders explains "I only know one thing, namely 'whether' the film should go to the cinema. Of course, absolutely! There is no better awakening of a film than in a cinema, seen by hundreds of pairs of eyes at the same time."

As such, a release date for the film is currently unavailable due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Demolition of LACMA complex is well underway

2020-08-20T14:28:00-04:00

The Ahmanson Building is the last standing structure of four buildings being demolished at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Leo S. Bing Center is completely gone; construction workers are removing the foundations of the Hammer and Art of the Americas buildings. Demolition of the Ahmanson began this week, museum representative Jessica Youn said Tuesday, and should be completed “in the last quarter” of this year.

Workers have made swift progress demolishing the history William L Pereira and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates-designed buildings on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus.

Demolition of Los Angeles County Art Museum @LACMA continues @MiracleMileLA #LosAngeles @KNX1070 pic.twitter.com/VSjbdILB8V
— Frank Mottek (@frankmottek) August 11, 2020

Of the three existing buildings, two have been wiped away with the third currently undergoing demolition. LACMA envisions completing the demolition of the existing buildings sometime toward the end of 2020 so that work on the Atelier Peter Zumthor-designed replacement structures can begin. A completion date for that project has yet to be announced.

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.

Demolition of William Pereira-designed buildings gets underway at LACMA

2020-01-14T13:56:00-05:00

Demolition has started to take place at the existing Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LACMA) complex, where a collection of buildings designed by William Pereira and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates are expected to give way for a new structure designed by Atelier Peter Zumthor.

According to Urbanize.la, the institution began to demolish the existing complex as the new year got under way. The existing collection of Late Modernist and Postmodern buildings will be cleared to make room for a new single-level gallery space designed by Zumthor set to span over Wilshire Boulevard to the south.

The controversial plan for the 350,000-squar...

Save LACMA group could challenge museum proposal at the ballot box

2019-12-16T20:48:00-05:00

Save LACMA, a non-profit entity that has formed in response to public outcry against the controversial Atelier Peter Zumthor-led replacement proposal for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) campus, has announced that it is considering placing a ballot measure on the 2020 ballot that could challenge the standing of the project as recently approved.

In a fundraising email sent to the group's newsletter subscribers, Rob Hollman, Board Chair for Save LACMA, writes that the group has recently retained the services of the ballot initiative law expert Bradley Hertz and the Sutton Law Firm, where Hertz is a Partner.

Bird's eye view looking east. Image by Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

In the message, Hollman writes, "After thoroughly briefing Bradley on LACMA's situation, and the museum’s insistence on moving forward with demolition of its existing campus to clear space for an unpopular, undersized and underfunded new building by Peter Zumthor, he suggested a bold li...

LACMA overpass maneuver is approved by Los Angeles City Council

2019-12-06T13:41:00-05:00

One of the more contentious elements of the controversial Atelier Peter Zumthor-designed Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) redesign project has been unanimously approved by the Los Angeles City Council.

This week, the Council approved the project's planned span over Wilshire Boulevard, The Los Angeles Business Journal reports. A significant portion of the plan had already been approved by the legislative body, but the overpass element required special approval due to the radical nature of the design and the fact that the building would cross over a public street. The overpass element has been highly controversial in public and critical discourse, and represents an effort on the part of the architects and LACMA Director Michael Govan to create a single-level mega gallery. Criticism of the plan includes a relatively helter-skelter approach to the urban design for the areas surrounding the proposed museum, including Hancock Park, where the museum is located.

Describing the urb...

New graphic novel is set in Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals in Switzerland

2019-10-31T18:27:00-04:00

Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals, the hotel and spa in Switzerland, was designed intentionally devoid of clocks so that visitor's sense of time would be suspended and immeasurable. Completed in 1996, there is a legend about a mountain in the village of Vals that is said to have a mountain that periodically swallows people.

In his debut graphic novel, Swimming in Darkness, cartoonist Lucas Harari builds on this modern mythology. The new publication centers around an architecture school dropout named Pierre, who, after a breakdown, travels to Vals to visit Zumthor's baths, which were the subject of his unfinished thesis. Upon his arrival, Pierre discovers secret rooms within the Therme Vals and attempts to uncover their hidden truths.

This psychological thriller drops the reader into Zumthor's work and uses it as a vehicle to explore this young protagonist's existential predicament. Concerning the work, Lucas Harari said:

I visited the thermal baths of Vals as a teenager and the place str...

In Los Angeles, institutions build, but they can't plan

2019-07-12T18:34:00-04:00

“We have this museum district,” says architect and theorist Dana Cuff, who oversees cityLAB, an urban research and design center at UCLA, “but the stuff that holds everything together is the part we call the city, and that is the part that Los Angeles has never gotten right.”

Carolina Miranda of The Los Angeles Times reports that despite a number of new and forthcoming institutional expansions coming to the Miracle Mile museum district in Los Angeles, the area's urban design is sorely lacking.

The problem, according to Miranda, is worse by the fact that the designers and directors of the forthcoming building projects, which include Atelier Zumthor's Los Angeles County Museum of Art overhaul, have largely ignored a planned subway extension slated for the district.

Miranda writes, "all of the development raises concerns about how the architectural pieces—and, more important, the public spaces around them—will come together after the last nail has been banged into place."

Dana Cuff of UCLA's CityLAB tells Miranda, “There is no there there,” adding, “there is no urban design that has been created for this chunk of Wilshire that will be one of the most pedestrian and populated parts of the city.”

'So far, I see no difficulties:' Peter Zumthor comments on his revised LACMA proposal

2019-07-05T13:34:00-04:00

Last week, Zumthor spoke about the project for the first time since museum officials presented a new plan in April. In an interview in the Zurich newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung first spotted by art writer William Poundstone, journalist Sabine von Fischer asked Zumthor about the controversy surrounding the museum’s proposal, and why the design has endured so many major changes.

Curbed Los Angeles quotes the Swiss architect from his recent Neue Zürcher Zeitung interview: "Zumthor’s early experimentations within the grid-like limitations of the existing site left him unable to 'establish a meaningful relationship with the various architectural and urban elements' on the LACMA and the La Brea Tar Pits campuses. The 'Black Flower,' Zumthor’s name for the original amoeba-like design, solved the problem, he said. 'When I began to respond to it with a free building form, we made the breakthrough.'"

Asked if the controversy surrounding his museum redesign bothered him, Zumthor revealed to the NZZ that LACMA director Michael Govan had told him that it was unnecessary for him to read it. "You do the design, and I'll do the rest, he said."

Model of future LACMA campus now on display

2019-06-28T19:27:00-04:00

The newest design for the LACMA campus, masterminded by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, has received more criticism than your average museum expansion. LA Times writer Christopher Knight had some choice words about the futile nature of the proposal while Kate Wagner has dismissed it as little more than "a museum that benefits nobody and satisfies none of the needs of the art in its collection, nor of the public that will view it."

Model of Lacma Campus on display at LACMA. Photo by author.

In response, LACMA has dedicated a space to the exhibition of the new plan with a 15-foot model built in Zumthor's studio. The site model is a single slab of molded cement, reproducing several blocks of the Miracle Mile with abstracted precision to focus attention on an all-white volumetric model of the LACMA addition.

Model of Lacma Campus on display at LACMA. Photo by author.

The exhibition is held in a space formerly reserved for Art Catalogues in the part of the campus that will soon be demolish...

A curator's take on a smaller 'expanded' LACMA

2019-06-17T15:51:00-04:00

[...] it’s worth considering one of the issues that drove so much of the criticism: the ideal—said to be lost in the soon-to-be-transformed institution—of the museum as an “encyclopaedia” of collections, one necessitating a particular form of architecture permanently exhibiting its collection in chronologically sequenced galleries organised by medium and culture.

Michael Conforti, former director of the Clark Art Institute and previously a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and also at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, writes in defense of LACMA's controversial plan of a considerably smaller 'expansion,' designed by Peter Zumthor, citing curatorial shifts in recent decades.

Image: Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

"The early 21st-century art museum, civic and social space that it also is, is designed for a public expecting an equal experience with art, architecture and amenities, a public with little consciousness of the square footage applied to any one of these," explains Conforti's opinion piece in The Art Newspaper. "Los Angeles is now committed to building such a museum, doing so as it plans other sites for curatorial activity, ones responsive to its special urban condition. This seems appropriate [...]."

New lawsuit over a parking garage could delay LACMA's Zumthor redesign

2019-06-04T13:01:00-04:00

A local community advocacy group in Los Angeles has filed a lawsuit that has the potential to delay the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s $650m building project, which was approved by the county Board of Supervisors in April. Fix the City vs. the County of Los Angeles, dated 13 May and officially filed this week, challenges the Environmental Impact Report for the building scheme, claiming that it violates the California Environmental Quality Act [...]

A new roadblock that could significantly delay the debated Zumthor LACMA makeover is taking shape, and the impact on the neighborhood's parking capacity is at the center of it.

The Art Newspaper reports that "according to the lawsuit, the certified Environmental Impact Report 'fails to properly determine the impacts from, and mitigate the impacts of, the museum’s the operation of the Ogden garage', including its proximity to the Wilshire/Fairfax metro station."

"LA's Museum for Nobody": Kate Wagner's astute response to Zumthor's LACMA design

2019-05-31T12:44:00-04:00

The clunky, amoebalike building cannot seem to decide between the digitally derived expressionism of such architects as Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid, and Zumthor’s own brand of minimalist modernism. We’re left with a museum that benefits nobody and satisfies none of the needs of the art in its collection, nor of the public that will view it. And yet in April, it was approved...

With the recent approval of LACMA's redesign back in April, Peter Zumthor's design for Los Angeles' iconic art museum has received an alarming reaction from the public, specifically those in the architecture community. In Archinect's most recent coverage of the museum, many of our readers shared their concerns and criticisms of the new design. Questioning Zumthor's overall decision many worry the design fails to highlight the most important aspect of the museum itself, the art, and its connectivity to the community.

Museums and museum curators are always searching for new and innovative ways to increase the number of visitors and increase overall interest and engagement. In her recent op-ed piece in The New Republic, architecture critic Kate Wagner shares her thoughts on the new LACMA redesign and highlights why Zumthor fails to create a building that satisfies the art it will house and the public viewing it.

Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of cladglobal

Wagner notes on Zumthor's pas...

Updated renderings of Zumthor's plans for LACMA

2019-04-28T12:47:00-04:00

Three weeks after we announced that Peter Zumthor's vision for LACMA has been approved, a suite of updated renderings have been released by the Swiss Studio that are significantly more detailed than those preceding them.

Ground-level perspective, with Japanese Pavilion visible on the right. Image by Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

What are your thoughts on the newest batch of renderings for the LACMA makeover? Do previous criticisms still ring true when faced against the details newly present in these images?

Interior view. Image by Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

View looking East. Image by Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

Zumthor's LACMA has been approved - here's what will be lost

2019-04-09T18:39:00-04:00

The latest proposal for the LACMA campus, under the watch of famed Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, was unanimously approved by county supervisors earlier today.

However, it is this latest iteration that received the harshest criticism: LA Curbed's Alissa Walker shared a general sentiment when she commented that it "looks like a hermetically sealed freeway overpass that goes across the road," while the Los Angeles Times' Michael Kimmelman pointed out its fatal flaw: "it offers 10,000 less square footage than what it will replace!"

The latest iteration of the LACMA redesign by Peter Zumthor. Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

This might be a good time to take a closer look at what it threatens to replace: the original buildings on campus, built in 1965 and designed by modernist architect William Pereira, and a street front building erected in 1986, designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, by William Pereira. 1965.

Christopher Hawthorne r...

Christopher Knight tears the most recent LACMA proposal a new one

2019-04-02T15:05:00-04:00

What was once a project designed to add nearly 50,000 square feet of critically needed gallery space committed to showcasing the museum’s impressive and still-growing permanent collection of paintings, sculptures and other global works of art has been turned on its head. Now, rather than enlarge the capacity, the scheme is to reduce the existing gallery square footage by more than 10,000 square feet.

The criticism of Peter Zumthor's newest proposal for the LACMA campus offered by LA Times writer Christopher Knight is simple: it offers 10,000 less square footage than what it will replace! "I couldn’t name another art museum anywhere that has ever raised hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on reducing its collection space," Knight writes.

Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

Zumthor's plans for LACMA have been coming out for years, and the sharp criticism they receive each time appears to be addressed in each subsequent iteration. It seems unlikely that the current design would get approved with significantly less square footage than what it plans to replace, just as it is unlikely we will see the end of the design process any time soon. As Knight reminds us, Peter Zumthor "is known as a slow, deliberate designer whose aim is to craft evocative, atmospheric spaces."

Every redesign has come with an additional fee that already began at a staggering number. "The $600-mil...

Zumthor's LACMA makeover will be smaller than anticipated, new renderings show

2019-03-25T14:49:00-04:00

The project's latest iteration does not diverge significantly from its prior form, but does make adjustments to the Zumthor building's size and footprint. The most notable changes are a reduction in the square footage of the proposed building from approximately 390,000 to less than 350,000 square feet. Additionally, the removal of several planned galleries on the building's upper level will shorten its maximum height from 85 feet to 60 feet.

The recently published final environmental impact report for the ambitious $650m Los Angeles County Museum of Art redesign shows Peter Zumthor's swooping new building somewhat shorter and smaller than in previous planning iterations.

Image: Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

A new, revised timeline also cuts the expected construction period from previously 68 months to an estimated 51-month stretch.

Still in the books is the plan to span the building over Wilshire Boulevard, one of LA's major thoroughfares.

Image: Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

Brutalist Retreats and Gaudi Lawsuits: October 2018 in Review

2018-12-27T09:00:00-05:00

Eclectic is the word I would use to describe Archinect news in October: Bizarre lawsuits, advanced mapping algorithms and meticulous light displays were among the subjects of our most popular posts this month.

↑ Gaudi's Sagrada Familia fined $41 million for lack of building permit

Arguably the most famous building currently under construction, La Sagrada Familia, found itself in hot water this October when it was determined that it did not have the proper building permits for its century-old site. The church's trustees conceded to paying $41 million in fees over a 10-year period, so that the city can fund public transportation, increase accessibility, and make other improvements to the surrounding area.

↑ Muji's apartment prototype tackles long commutes and highly dense cities

Muji is a design company closely associated with small-scale minimalist objects, but in October the brand demonstrated their skills know no bounds. Equipped with an open communal space and kitchen, the Muji ...

Archinect - News

LACMA sets April 2026 opening date for David Geffen Galleries

Peter Zumthor details LACMA’s design inspiration in new interview

LACMA updates design details, public opening timeline for David Geffen Galleries

LACMA shares custom-built glass facade details in new spring construction update

Take an inside look at the form-making process for LACMA's new David Geffen Galleries

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

LACMA's Zumthor makeover makes construction progress

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

LACMA makeover: Five active cranes signal midway point for $750 million Zumthor project

Cranes have risen at the site of LACMA's upcoming David Geffen Galleries

LACMA's demolished buildings will live on thanks to this Los Angeles artist

Long-awaited floor plan and interior gallery images of Peter Zumthor's LACMA redesign emerge

​"His work means a lot to me," Director Wim Wenders planning Zumthor documentary

Demolition of LACMA complex is well underway

Does LACMA have its financial house in order?

Demolition of William Pereira-designed buildings gets underway at LACMA

Save LACMA group could challenge museum proposal at the ballot box

LACMA overpass maneuver is approved by Los Angeles City Council

New graphic novel is set in Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals in Switzerland

In Los Angeles, institutions build, but they can't plan

'So far, I see no difficulties:' Peter Zumthor comments on his revised LACMA proposal

Model of future LACMA campus now on display

A curator's take on a smaller 'expanded' LACMA

New lawsuit over a parking garage could delay LACMA's Zumthor redesign

"LA's Museum for Nobody": Kate Wagner's astute response to Zumthor's LACMA design

Updated renderings of Zumthor's plans for LACMA

Zumthor's LACMA has been approved - here's what will be lost

Christopher Knight tears the most recent LACMA proposal a new one

Zumthor's LACMA makeover will be smaller than anticipated, new renderings show

Brutalist Retreats and Gaudi Lawsuits: October 2018 in Review

"His work means a lot to me," Director Wim Wenders planning Zumthor documentary