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.
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?
somebody at LACMA needs to buy Zumthor a plane ticket and have him walk around LA on July 15.
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The lack of even schematic plans is unnerving
the god hermit peter zumthor has no time for pedestrian orthographic projections
This is true of most postings here on Archinect, and reveals its curation by non-architects more than anything else. Not that everyone needs to be an architect (thank goodness, they don't).
Architects work and think in plan. Buildings are designed in and constructed from a variety of plan drawings. Elevations, renderings, models are all important-- but a plan (site, floor, concept... whichever) should be as common an illustration here as any of those other image types. Including a plan would be educational for all, including the many non-architects who frequent this site.
I rarely see plans or elevations (really the best representations) on pop media, but archinect is better in that regard (when the plans are available, we see them, sometimes).
But when architecture PR firms prioritize fancy renderings, it's a chicken-egg problem. Even Zumthor was trying to ignore the rendering craze at first but probably got a talking to. As this process shows, he probably should have just stuck to the first plan. Death by PR firm
Good points. I suppose some of this could be a (plan) supply problem. If that's the case, then editors and item-posters are hereby encouraged toward a bit of due diligence.
Utterly incompetent. Textured concrete walls(?) for display, 1970's style pendant lamps for lighting, psychotic exteriors with unrelated forms, etc.
The La Brea Tar Pits is a fitting metaphor for this shitty design and the entire project from concept on down. The skeleton of Zumthor's career will be immortalized here.
So true! What happened to Zumthor?
Has never done something at this scale and in such a context.
and it looks like he's never been to LA
At least they didn't give Renzo Piano another crack at it.
That plaza is a recipe for misery. Despite the rendering, I don't see too many kids playing soccer on it in its future.
Wish it wasn’t all so monochrome. At least mix in some black and color.
The plaza is also weak. I like the idea but the composition isn’t working... needs some kind of interest ... like if the curving 2nd level hovered on pilotis I never more spots
So they read the comment sections of the previous renderings and photoshopped them based on the criticisms?
somebody at LACMA needs to buy Zumthor a plane ticket and have him walk around LA on July 15.
I've noticed this trend: that architects who become famous in LA do poor work outside of LA, while architects who become famous elsewhere do their worst work in LA.
Maybe because whatever you do in LA doesn't really matter?
Or maybe it has a cultural identity that is both more unique and less influential than either side is willing to admit.
LA cannot be influenced as much as outsiders want, and it doesn't carry influence as much as insiders want.
The irony of all this - six years of design and a cool $10 million in design fees - is that Govan's curatorial approach basically doesn't need an expensive space at all. His Dia Beacon was the ideal architecture - a giant converted warehouse. Now LACMA is a giant one-level warehouse floating in LA - but one that is grotesquely expensive.
I really like the building and its geometry from an aesthetic standpoint. The programmatic issues are worrying- but that's not for me to judge.
HOWEVER (!!!)...in 2019, why are we still designing such bad plazas??? Big shade trees, this should be the easiest thing.
Because most architects treat landscape as a podium to dock their egos.
Reminds me of his Kolumba museum rooms:
This just doesn't make sense as a museum. It's hard to believe the curators and their art didn't lose out wholesale.
Lighting a painting evenly is a challenge—I did it several years at the Berkeley UAM. Demands change with different works, and it takes a variety of fixtures and bulbs from varying angles. It's the reason most museums have track lighting. Look at the interior shot above and see the hot spots on the walls and art. Those fixtures are inadequate and detract from the interior itself.
The perimeter windows will make lighting the art harder, not easier and better. Most museums I've seen only use diffused daylight from the ceiling for general atmosphere lighting. Gehry's Guggenheim/Bilbao had to make such adjustments.
I assume the roof overhang takes care of shadows and glare, though it's hard to tell from the picture and I wonder if the rendering is correct for light and shadow. But there will still be variances of shadow and reflection that will be distracting and make the paintings difficult to light and view. And the natural light will vary with the weather and time of day. I doubt the building will have fixtures that can automatically adjust accordingly. They will have to light for nighttime or make a compromise. Then some art can't take much natural light, not long, such as work on paper or that with delicate colors which can fade. UV corrections still are inadequate.
You also have to wonder how much art the building can actually hold, with a large amount of potential exhibition space on the perimeter wall here taken up by glass.
Light reflected from the plaza through the windows won't make it hard to keep the temperature at archival conditions? I don't know much here.
What is gained by the exposure from the outside? I suppose it will be interesting to see people moving about the hanging squares of art, this design enhancing the design's energy and giving the building detail it lacks. Small details from small paintings might be irritating, however. And this view does nothing for the art itself, too far away to see clearly.
This exposure will be distracting for those inside looking at the art as well. We enter art museums to leave our world and enter the world of art. Here there is competition between the two—to what end? And what, exactly, is there to look at from those windows anyway?
You get the sense this is a design to which art is added to the building for decoration at best or at worst as an afterthought. But it isn't a museum. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe they can add a jogging lane inside the perimeter, where patrons can breeze through, glancing at the art as they pass, sensing the pleasant blur of trees and sky. It's what our times call for. Refreshment stands selling bottled water, etc., could be placed strategically.
O ye of little faith!
It's ZUMTHOR, it will be fantastic! This is already pitt-approved so why so worried?
sejima's 21st century museum in kanazawa has a similar approach. Boxes in a glass lined perimeter. Lighting isn't a problem that I notice. Been there dozens of times and it's always good. Her design is more pragmatic, and the art is probably more contemporary than LACMA, perhaps. There are different lighting options based on the location of the art. Is it always true that variation is bad when it comes to lighting art? Or is choice a possible plus?
Will—
Do they hang paintings on the perimeter spaces? I didn't see any in my five minute virtual tour. The outer circle looks more like a transitional space, which is interesting. The light and shadows might work with sculpture and other three dimensional installations. On flat works such as paintings it is distracting.
About Sejima, some artwork is in the perimeter space, which is entirely public by the way, and accessible from several sides (kind of). But that is the point of the design. Art as public attraction, not elitist, visible from the street and easy to access. The stuff that needs to be in controlled light and with controlled humidity is in the large and small boxes scattered within the abstract perimeter. Best of both worlds. Zumthor makes a blob, Sejima makes a circle. Boxes are similar otherwise. Sejima's building is brilliant. My friends have exhibited there and they seemed to enjoy the experience. Maybe it is different for dead artists, I dont know...
Neither building is designed for the traditional eye, but isnt that what modern (meaning contemporary) art is about? Shouldn't we expect to be challenged? That is the big critique of the MOMA in NY, isn't it? That it has become basically just another boring box, a shadow of a 100 year old style, barely representing the past, nevermind the future of design?
The only critique that makes sense to me about the LACMA building so far is that there is not enough space for showing the collection, which would be a silly thing to do. That may or may not be true, depending on the curation. There could be some wilful blindness going on with the people pitching the project, or it might just that the critics are being too pedestrian. Honestly my intuition is the latter, but I reserve the right to be unsurprised that the former is true.
Zumthor rendering, via the NY Times.
This picture shows only one painting, poorly lit, and seven visitors, only two of whom are actually looking at the painting. The others stroll or sit and relax or gaze out at the landscape or take a picture. The museum is about itself, not about the art.
Among the seating, only the bench faces the wall, where I assume there is more art.
Only one of the couple on the bench is looking at the wall, however. The other is fiddling with his phone. The art is not that important, in fact comprises only a tiny percentage of all else there is to see. (The outside view doesn't look like great shakes, though.)
Really, I'm sure this is a statement rendering, that fixtures will be added along with more paintings. Zumthor is showing what the museum asked for, a spacious, relaxed environment:
Natural light and views will reduce “museum fatigue” and link the gallery space to the urban and park environment outside.
From LACMA director Michael Govan's statement in the LA Times, "LACMA’s new building is visionary — and big enough."
The design is visionary only in the sense that there is a lot to look at, but there is no coherent scheme or purpose to the "vision." Add glass and make transparent, give room to more around, et voilà—vision! The ability to look around upstages the vision of the art. Without the glass and views the design really is just an inexpressive blob.
But Govan is just reflecting current trends, and I'm sure the museum will draw a crowd. This isn't democracy. It is the vision of the Facebook culture: make it a place to see and be seen, to take pictures to feed social media. "Museum fatigue"—it's also a design for a culture whose frame of reference and attention span are diminishing. Don't challenge or tax us.
It's what's so disconcerting about the Heatherwick Vessel and the proposals to cover Notre Dame with a glass roof. They are places for movement and sight and exposure and little else. Climb the stairs and get a workout. Go up to the roof of Notre Dame and stroll around and look out and ignore all that rests below you.
The whole point of art is that it challenges us and gets us to see the world in a different way, an essential part of democracy, of any vital culture. Museums need to respect this and provide a place where art can get the special attention it needs.
I never objected to the old MOMA (haven't been to the new) because I didn't care. I went there to see the art. My favorite museum is the old Whitney. It makes a bold, expressive statement on the street, yet is inviting, with the bridge and first floor lobby. After that, it is all about the art. There's no need to look out. Rather, maximize the space with solid walls. The ceiling grid provides flexibility and options for exhibition space and lighting. All attention goes to the most effective way to see the art. And the space is intimate. It is all about you and the art.
Again, I worked at Mario Ciampi's UAM in Berkeley— brutalist and highly functional. The museum had three bays with glass walls, a small part of the perimeter surface. Those bays added ambient light and were fine for sculpture and environments. For paintings we moved sections in front of the windows to control lighting and make effective exhibition space. We had track lighting and a variety of fixtures and bulbs. I learned a bit about lighting, how to make a painting reveal itself by approaching it at different angles, with different lights. Also how to keep the lighting from being a strain on viewers. When they were around, I followed the advice of the artists—quite contemporary and often quite wild—who oversaw installation. Once more, the Zumthor has few lighting options.
Much contemporary art now is caught up in similar attention and $ grabbing loops, however, a lament for another site.
OK, I'll leave this alone now.
The woman has a phone held up to her ear. She is maybe glancing at some art while taking a phone call.
One more thought. As visitors stroll the perimeter, won't they have to make continual adjustment between a bright LA sky outside and dimmer gallery space? Won't this wreak havoc on their eyes?
good points. The rendering is not really useful as commentary on the design. They do suggest Zumthor doesnt give a shit that they are not communicating his design, but then he probably agrees with you about the instagram age and thinks renderings are bullshit.
I cant understand the angst about a view out. There are boxes for the people who want their art in a box. There is also space for those who want something else.
The lack of vision critique I kind of get. Then again Zumthor has never defended his work conceptually except as a product of his ideas about materiality, construction, the haptic realm. From photos those ideas do seem to powerful. I haven't been to anything by him but they do seem compelling.
You need to put "bullshit" and "haptic realm" in the same sentence.
Actually, some of these ideas are intriguing. I also see now Zumthor designed the Therme Vals, which gives pause—it is striking. I checked a floor plan of the Sejima, btw, and it looks like much perimeter space is devoted to entrance, gift shop, offices, etc., which is fine and good. I won't repeat my arguments against LACMA. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, what pressures, changes are brought to bear.
Therme Vals is nice, but it only has a fraction of the programmatic and technical requirements of a major art museum. I'm not sure Zumthor's talents are suited to solving the LACMA problem.
it is hard not to wonder if the scale is not too much for him. Ando was really good at small buildings, while his larger ones are not as convincing (I think because he didnt change his way of designing as projects became larger). This project doesnt feel like that though. Zumthor has done a few museums that look very good in photos and I guess live up to the hype. And you know. Brad Pitt.
I'm also wondering how much influence Govan has on the process, how much freedom Zumthor has. Govan, I see, is a wheeler dealer in LA. The recent proposed changes might have gone against the grain. I thought the early mockup showed more promise.
I'm really curious to see how this one plays out. This, after all, is a major museum, or is supposed to be.
The acres of wasted flat roof space is weird. Apparently there is no interest whatsoever in daylighting any gallery space from above and/or making an inhabited roof level for sculptures or roof garden.
Somebody should send this thread to the board members at LACMA.
Meant to add this earlier. Another problem is hanging pictures on concrete walls, especially textured ones. Christopher Knight recently discusses the problem here:
https://www.latimes.com/entert...
For safety and security you have to bore holes and sink anchors, difficult to patch. The UAM had several concrete walls for exhibition, all freely hit. I added my share, and we just left them. They looked like the wall for a firing execution, which I rather liked. The UAM was rough, built for use and abuse. Zumthor's LACMA is not.
And of course I'm intrigued with Knight's comment:
"In reality, the new LACMA just makes an Instagrammable spectacle of the conspicuous consumption inside."
"an Instagrammable spectacle of the conspicuous consumption inside" sums up a lot of the architectural work being done today.
wah whah wah. bunch of haters. please take a seat. go back to your crummy little architecture job, reading and thinking that you know better than anyone.
it will be amazing and an experience for a lifetime if judgemental people like yourselves don't get in the way.
The available evidence suggests otherwise.
But you have to love that deep, thoughtful analysis.
But then you would have to believe that you have actually good taste.... All evidence suggests otherwise. Go design your own LACMA in your parametric world
The available evidence suggests that RandMan500 is an intern at Zumthor.
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