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 urban realm stumbles the project has laid bare in an article published this summer, Carolina Miranda of The Los Angeles Times 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."

The building-over-street approach the project pursues is an architectural strategy that hearkens back to the post-World War II urban design sensibilities that have been largely rejected in recent decades, though several examples of this type of construction remain in Los Angeles. One example is the Los Angeles Convention Center complex in Downtown Los Angeles that spans over Pico Boulevard. The building was first constructed in 1971 by Charles Luckman & Associates and was expanded to its current configuration over a series of additions between 1981 and 1993 by project teams that include Gruen Associates and Pei Cobb Freed and Partners.  

Another example can be found nearby at the base of the two-towered One California Plaza, where a public terrace spans over Olive Street. The tower complex was built in 1985 by Arthur Erickson Architects. 

The approval for the LACMA proposal marks the latest step in a series of milestones for the project that include the allocation of public funding for the project that was approved in May of 2019 and a series of other planning approvals. The approvals come, however, as reports of stalled fundraising efforts throw the viability of the plan into question, a development that follows an earlier downsizing of the scheme due to previous fundraising concerns. 

Regardless, the project is well on its way toward breaking ground. An anticipated completion date for the new museum is scheduled for 2023.