The LA Times has given us a sneak peak at the designs by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro for Eli Broad's ambitious museum plans in downtown Los Angeles.
Christopher Hawthorne, the Times' architecture critic, opines, "... for anyone familiar with the work of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, New York-based architects of the three-story, 114,000-square-foot museum, what comes across most strongly in the design is a sense of a restless creative imagination muted, held back and otherwise reined in. There are few signs in the scheme of the firm's hyperactive, hyper-analytical approach to architecture and its playful willingness to race back and forth across disciplinary boundaries."
Staff writer Mike Boehm writes, "The plan is to open in 2013 with about 200 of the best works from a collection that dates from the 1950s onward and is built around such luminaries as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Then a cycle of rotating special exhibits will begin, each focusing in-depth on one of the artists the Broads have collected and occupying up to a third of the 33,000 square feet of exhibition space. Curators eventually may augment works from the collection with borrowed pieces that help fill out the story of an artist or a strand of contemporary art history.".
It looks like there won't be lengthy delays in construction...
"I'm impatient," said Broad, who is 77. "I'm not getting any younger. We don't want this to be a memorial building."
16 Comments
I am happy to be the one who develobed 3dh, -- what I question about this structure, is why it is so important, not to gain the obvious savings , doing it right for a honeycomb structure, so all questions about how, is easy displayed. -- that there area structural idea, that make it buildable at a third or less, must be more imprtant, than the cubes having domino shape only to set it apart from 3dh, that would produce the actural building core, far better much cheaper and in a serious building method.
Anyway, -- if this realy will be build, it will be extreemly expensive, if domino shaped cubes is prefered, when doing sections the right way, make each part manufactorable, by N.C. cutter. -- but offcaurse, then it is 3dh.
inwardly beautiful solution. outwardly abrasive.
one of the best things I've seen in a long time. I could endlessly rewatch that video of the driving approach past the disney hall -- perfectly extending the composition, unfolding through moving vantage point, almost completing it. Interior concept is a trip, but clear.
a bit too bad about the uncustomized-parametricism of the facade -- are we saying that the technology is only at a point where have to just keep the pattern constant and cut through it to fit the form -- instead having the pattern finish the edge? I mean, when's grasshopper going start recognizing trim curves, anyway...?
The plaza reminds me of Alice Tully. To be honest, I am really excited to see this get built in Los Angeles, it would be a great addition to the architectural diversity that this city houses. Kind of interesting, we'll have a Gehry, Moneo, Coop, and hopefully a D+S(+R) - all 5 minutes from one another.
Will look almost exactly like the France Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010, right down to the lifted corner on the "veil."
http://www.designrulz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/french01.jpg
I went to the expo and the French pavilion was one of the least architecturally impressive ones.
I think this is the best thing they've done, and I think it's fantastic that the honeycomb facade is structural. (Check out the America Cement Building on Wilshire and MacArthur Park: the N and S facade lattice are structural there as well. Inspiration...?)
My only concern is that $130 Mil seems a bit light, and I worry that structural facade will lose some of it's delicacy as costs come in...
randomwg. really.? you can't be serious that you think it looks like the french pavilion. if you can't tell the difference, i am concered that you should continue to practice architecture. that is like saying a mobile phone and a television remote looks the same because they are small electronic devices with buttons on them...
Exciting stuff. It's as though they're absorbing the sculptural qualities of Disney into the core, surrounding it with scrim that cuts a more polite urban figure than the Disney (and which also looks as though it would make a lot out of the effect of light and shadow that is so much about LA). I quite like the compressed tunnels in the swiss cheese of the middle as a counterpoint to the openness of the rest of the buildng. Maybe a little like an inverted cathedral - instead of compression before opening into a lofty space that is separate from the city, this takes that compression into the middle of the building - a much needed re-centering device in a trippy core as you move into different gallery spaces - and places the loftiness on the exterior: a filtered panorama of LA itself, which I think is making a very positive statement about the city. Hope this happens.
The anal probe of the elevator in the lobby ? oh my ....this is just a horror. Everything here says DSR is past the spoil date and will mock anything to stay ahead. Looks like a student project.....Fail.
...too many books out on loan, not enough original text.
Can't wait to see this little prince go toe-to-toe with a contemporary master....there's no place like B-612.
as of now in presented rendering, the exhibition space with floating free standing walls, this is an "art + white wall" type programming for painting based private collection. it is kind of a space that makes the art collection quantitative. no big deal really. the hole is sort of reversed louvre entrance.
as far as the urban interaction, city could request they not separate the sidewalk and proposed lobby space with glass but leave it as a covered public space, an extension of the sidewalk, at least big portion of it.
lastly, an additional and redeeming beauty dimple about this museum would be if the philanthropist owner makes it open and free to public at all times.
"The anal probe of the elevator in the lobby?"
Yeah, this is exactly what I thought. Seems like a more appropriate entrance for a pornography museum. Or a birthing center. Maybe this museum should be relocated to the Valley.
The whole design reminds me of a chunky woman's thigh in fishnets, the way the soft blobs are encased in netting that has clearly been stressed and pulled in one too many places. It also seems like a over-worked iterative of Asymptote's YAS Hotel Project, which I think was a much more successful examples of this sausage casing trend that has popped up lately.
I guess D+S have always been the borrow and steal firm when it comes to building projects - A Neil Denari knock-off for New York, an Asymptote for Los Angeles - so it really isn't surprising the lack of imagination with this project.
I hope they resolve the corner detail of the lattice/sausage casing during DD.
best comment from LAtimes...
at least most of the spaces are daylit and there would be decent solar control - but can't say there is much more about building an ego grater that is sustainable.
Yes, it's flush with beautiful interior spaces, especially the sublime top hall (but what wouldn't be at that scale?). But where is the architecture? Is it embedded in the 'look what I can do with computers'?
A nip here, a tuck, a lift of a veil as a nod to the corner, a couple algorithmic tweaks that will make for great minimalist photographs--these are very easy moves. At least the Concert Hall has the rigor of being a composition.
Where is the articulation of public space at the street/facade interface? Where is the articulation of the facade? The urban design is near non-existent.
This is all not to say the project isn't excellent with respect to the Zeitgeist, it is.
When will we grow out of this spaceship-making?
- OUROUSSOFF pulls no punches.
...[Broad] is known as someone with a gift for getting the worst buildings from the most highly regarded talents...
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