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...
— Los Angeles Times
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.
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 display art."
Miranda also points out, "key details are still outstanding" and "the renderings depict solemn (too solemn?) gray interiors with black terrazzo floors." While final interior details are yet to be confirmed, Zumthor's team, along with collaborating firm SOM, are keen on addressing the use of concrete throughout the museum, flooring, and getting the wall color and texture "just right," says Michael Mann, managing director of SOM.
As the museum's progress continues, critics and the public seem to be bracing themselves for what is to come.
35 Comments
So a lot of box galleries without the cathedral skylights in the very first batch of renders.
No skylights and just a huge, empty flat roof is a wasted opportunity.
Really particular about expressing the seams in the ceiling and walls, but no divider strips in the terrazzo? Right.
Oh, and looking at these updated renderings it's pretty clear Govan has a hard-on for Kunsthaus Bregenz without much thinking behind it other than"sheetrock bad, concrete good".... someone mentioned it before but the acoustics are going to be horrendous inside with all the kids+families.
It also seems like a vast majority of exhibitions at that museum hardly seem to touch the walls and instead use the lack of interior partitions to create installations and sculptures.
You can patch and paint to match drywall perfectly, concrete not-so much. So dumb. and for what???
As far as the colors go, I mean.... you're already building an bridge that looks like a highway and you're not doing yourself any favors to eschew all of the critics saying the museum looks about as inviting as an underpass with raw grey concrete walls like that. Also, can we talk about all the arbitrary orientations of the boxes and the dead spaces in between? Yikes. Not happy at all with how this is progressing.
i dunno. all the zumthor projects i visited were pretty damn excellent. He doesnt miss often, if ever. If it was a project by someone else i might wonder at the execution, in this case I would expect it to come out quite well. The idea of floating over the road, coming from his experience while teaching at sci-arc is a nice narrative. At least the city is incorporated in the design, uncommon in our paranoid times.
What is the issue with lines in the ceiling but not in the floor? Does it signify something that he doesnt do that?
Beyond those kinds of I like it or dont like it comments, seems like the only legitimate critique/missed opportunity remains the lack of floor area and the admin on another site. How shitty to work in a place you cannot experience directly as a user.
The size of SOM's role in this project is key, I think. Zumthor has never done a project at this scale and hasn't done any work in North America either. As the project starts to resolve all the nitty gritty details, the role of the executive architect in processing and realizing Zumthor's design will probably make or break the project. I think some time ago, Zumthor was looking to hire a North American liaison of sorts - his office even posted an ad here on Archinect.
will, the issue with the dividers is such a minor gripe but it is only significant to me for the fact that there is a tremendous amount of effort to coordinate lining up intricate concrete formwork pattern throughout the ceiling and walls on something that will remind most Angelenos of the inside of a parking garage or underpass. I personally love raw concrete, but I'm questioning the rationale for my aesthetic hangups and acoustical concerns.
I see a conceptual reference to the black blob returning with the seemingly monolithic pour of terrazzo, so I understand why expressing joints might be at a minimum, but I'm always left question the evolution of material expressions throughout the development of this project.
enough of my curmudgeonry with this project... I drive by it every day and am actually really excited for it... I'm just being a bit of a purist ideologue dummy when it comes to Zumthor's work.
Renderings?! Renderings! Renderings. We're talking about renderings? Seriously?
what else can we talk about? At least they aren't on zoom. Soon enough it will be real, and we might even be able to visit the place, assuming the fires or covid dont signify the end of the world. These renderings are better than the first ones. I assume that is why they made them. Those were so extraordinarily bad they probably created 50% of the hate for the project.
what movie are you referencing, it's killing me.
My man, Allen Iverson. https://youtu.be/tknXRyUEJtU
Will, but the 50% who hated them, were likely 95% architects. I trust Zumthor, I trust their process. We'll see if that trust, at this scale, will be rewarded.
yes, totally. that's because architects are a venal jealous lot. Its one of our traditional past-times; to snipe from the sidelines at people who aim high is the height of architecting! We are such a sad profession, we eat both our heroe s and our young
i'm intrigued by the rendering that shows some gaps along the walls to let light leak in.
i suspect zumthors studio has many fascinating studies to figure out what's going on which the renderings totally miss. he's not a guy who expresses ideas in renderings. i guess we'll be able to buy the monograph from the museum gift shop in 10 years.
i hope so anyway, otherwise this will have been not only absurd but disappointing.
Right? To think we got into this stupid industry, to snark from the sidelines about two dimensional images? I'm not even thrown by the plans, because I don't think they're representative of the ultimate built form...
The unfortunate thing is that LACMA chose to release these images and plans after all the poor publicity (Which has waned since the opposition to Govan's plans launched a public competition to re-design LACMA and ended up with terrible winning entries). So indeed, even if Zumthor/SOM thinks otherwise, LACMA decided these images were the best weapon against the design's detractors and the best means to let the public better understand the project. A building is never "complete" until it is open and running - until then, representation remains the sole means to understand/evaluate the design. The Boundary is a top visualization studio anyway.
Ah, modern architecture. Distilling everything down into an abstract sculpture with all the warmth and humanity of a tomb!
Begone, trad, begone.
Besides the images looking predictably boring, it's surprising to see such rectangular spaces when the building presents itself as an amorphous blob. Btw, The irony of using a traditional symbol to expel hypothetical demons is a nice touch. Ideology's a straight jacket.
Must be tough for you being unable to scratch your ears.
I just thought it was funny how folks down trad arch yet use trad culture all day. Why the exception for buildings? Rhetorical?
b3tadine[sutures], Oh puhleeze! I can't believe that appealing to the human condition is something that can only be "Traditional". You get over your bad self.
Well put. The distinction between traditional and modern is stupid and irrelevant to solving any problem.
physician, heal thyself
I can't believe that that appealing to the modern, can't appeal to the human condition.
bunch of sugar cubes in mammoth's stomach. hehe...
At first it seemed like the flat roof and dark spaces were a misstep. Looking again, its giving a weird cloisters vibe, with just a little ambient light from the windows outside. Maybe a stealth critique of LA modern architecture--adding a little darkness and mystery to the typical white box museum. As was the original dark scheme. Missing in these photos are the impressive tall spaces that connect floors. The shading and heavy material seem like a big plus for the California climate as well. Just build it! The public will love it.
I don't think there are no cloistered double height galleries anymore - they have been VE-ed out.
It seems unclear what the first floor interior space is. One rendering shows a large lobby space similar to the previous rendering. Other areas may be similar. Don't think they were galleries before
People will love it for sure. I went by the site the other day to photograph the last remaining wall of the Preira building and saw a lot of public with birthday balloons and wedding dresses around Chris Burden's street lights. Public spectacle alright, like the new museum will be similar to nearby the Grove shopping mall. Instagram triumphs...
The biggest accomplishment of the new building will be extending the level ground public park and setting the Goff's building, natural history museum and the tarpit which will remain the real star of everything in the park. West side will be more of a part with the new motion picture museum and even the Peterson car museum further down across from old May Co.
I wish there were less boxes on the ground level so the continuation of the open space would be more pronounced. But yes, public will love the new museum having their cocktails, expensive lunches and dinners, and shopping in the gift stores.
Some art will look great in the museum as some important art will look out of place.
Maybe it was the general feel of the demolition as often the case, the whole project seemed like a big waste of public money and loss of a good group of buildings during my last visit. But, the Preira's museum was finished for me in the eighties when they built the Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer's addition which buried the original group of buildings behind it.
I don't know, maybe it's the curse of the mammoths underground, nothing ever quite looks right on that site.
Has there been a release of the landscape design of the plaza? Is Zumthor/SOM in charge of that? Given the building's rather boring and limited interface at the ground level, the landscape all around is all the more critical.
Some of the exterior drawings show landscaping/planting. There was a landscape competition around the tarpit. I think extra care must be taken on an already overbuilt park. https://archinect.com/news/article/150155187/weiss-manfredi-ds-r-and-dorte-mandrup-unveil-competing-schemes-for-l-a-s-la-brea-tar-pits
Last mention was that Robert Irwin (and Spurlock in collaboration with Zumthor) would be shaping the landscape around the new building as he's done for the current campus over the last number of years. The article below mentions the desert garden at the Huntington as precedent https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-venice-biennale-zumthor-lacma-20160526-snap-story.html
i'm probably as big a zumthor fan as there is but... i'm so on the fence. i certainly don't know the site as well any current angeleno but having visited since the piano went in... i'm just not sure this thing is going to work - the materiality will (should) be amazing, given the 750M price tag, but the big moves and overall proportions just feel like they were made for a building about 1/2 this size. or out in the middle of the alps where you have a wholly different grist to work against. the tan seems far too tame compared to the black concrete; i agree that the loss of the skylights/monitors is unfortunate; the concrete walls are a take/leave proposition (they do work at the bregenz project, really well actually).... i really, really want it to come out well, but secretly think it's going to be underwhelming. sigh.
this does point to a theory i've had for a long time that artists/architects have a 'scale' that they ultimately do their best work in. stretch too far out of that zone, and the chances of success decrease significantly. zumthor at this scale... too big, i think. h.dm - no problem. piece of cake at this scale.
Exactly. And this is what a lot of the critics have been talking about. Zumthor has a certain scale + context he is most comfortable in...not sure it will work here. But then again, Orhan is right. Its all about the instagram moment anyways these days...
I really, really, really don't understand why Govan doesn't just bring Frank Gehry aboard at this point. I actually liked Zumthor's initial black amoeba-like design. I even liked the first few iterations of the Wilshire-spanning redesigns with the "cathedral" galleries. At this point though, with these drab-looking gallery-spaces and a shocking drop in square footage, I think Govan has to consider starting from scratch. It's obviously too late to renovate the now-gone Pereira buildings, but Gehry is LA's most iconic architect and, if $750 M is really the price point for building this, I'm sure he could build something spectacular at this site that would elevate LACMA's status around the world. With that in mind, this article from 2014 is worth rereading:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/ar...
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