New renderings from LACMA by Peter Zumthor

The Swiss architect, Peter Zumthor has been working with LACMA Director and Chief Executive Michael Govan for years on an ambitious and controversial new building to hold the museum’s permanent collection.

Aerial view. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

En 2013 LACMA showed early models at an exhibition connected with the Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time series. This summer an oversized model of one section of the Zumthor wing, which will be clad in dark gray concrete and raised on eight giant pieces as it spans Wilshire Boulevard, has been on view in Italy as part of the Venice Architecture Biennale.

The new building would be composed of eight semi-transparent pavilions that support an elevated, organically shaped, and translucent main exhibition level. The main exhibition level would extend over Wilshire Boulevard to the Spaulding lot on the southeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Spaulding Avenue. The project design will open up two-and-a-half acres of new public outdoor space, including landscaped outdoor plazas, public programming and educational spaces, sculpture gardens, and native and drought-tolerant vegetation integrated with the new building and the surrounding park. Existing spaces on the Spaulding parking lot will be relocated to a new parking structure to be built on the west side of Ogden Drive, south of the corner of Ogden and Wilshire Boulevard.

The LACMA Building for the Permanent Collection will be approximately 368,000 square feet, replacing four inefficient, deteriorating buildings within LACMA’s East Campus (the Ahmanson, Art of the Americas, and Hammer buildings, as well as the Leo S. Bing Center) that comprise approximately 393,000 square feet. Overall, the project would result in a reduction of approximately 25,000 square feet.

They plan to break ground in the fall of 2018, when The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is expected to open. They have a five-year construction timeline. The new building would open in 2023 when the new Metro station will open across the street from the museum.

Project key facts.-

New building size: approx. 368,000 sq. ft. replacing approx. 393,000 sq. ft. of existing buildings. Net reduction of approx. 25,000 sq. ft.
2.5 acres of new public outdoor space.
Existing parking spaces on the Spaulding lot will be relocated to a new parking structure on Ogden Drive.
Seamless integration of new building with the existing park and remaining LACMA buildings.
Replacement of inefficient, deteriorating buildings with new, environmentally sustainable structures, embracing state-of-the-art resource management and technology.
West Campus facilities (BCAM, Resnick Pavilion, and Pritzker Parking Garage) and the Pavilion for Japanese Art will remain.
Construction will begin in the second half of 2018, completed in 2023.
New Metro Purple Line subway will be directly across from the museum and will be open in 2023.

However it was criticised by LA Times critic Christopher Hawthorne, who described it as "the product not so much of boldness as a combination of diplomacy and fidelity — perhaps misguided — to certain elements of his original design". We'll see how it ends, and if the critic was right or wrong.

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Site plan. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

Crossing Wilshire from Spauling Avenue. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

View from "urban light". LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

Underside view. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

North stair exhibition level. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

Meander Gallery Along Wilshire. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

Meander Gallery between blocks. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

Chapel. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

Cabinet Gallery. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

View from Japanese pavilion. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

Model. LACMA by Peter Zumthor. Image courtesy of LACMA.

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PETER ZUMTHOR

Peter Zumthor was born on April 26, 1943, the son of a cabinet maker, Oscar Zumthor, in Basel, Switzerland. He trained as a cabinet maker from 1958 to 1962. From 1963-67, he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Vorkurs and Fachklasse with further studies in design at Pratt Institute in New York.

In 1967, he was employed by the Canton of Graubünden (Switzerland) in the Department for the Preservation of Monuments working as a building and planning consultant and architectural analyst of historical villages, in addition to realizing some restorations. He established his own practice in 1979 in Haldenstein, Switzerland where he still works with a small staff of fifteen. Zumthor is married to Annalisa Zumthor-Cuorad. They have three children, all adults, Anna Katharina, Peter Conradin, and Jon Paulin, and two grandchildren.

Since 1996, he has been a professor at the Academy of Architecture, Universitá della Svizzera Italiana, Mendrisio. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California Institute of Architecture and SCI-ARC in Los Angeles in 1988; at the Technische Universität, Munich in 1989; and at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University in 1999.

His many awards include the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 2008 as well as the Carlsberg Architecture Prize in Denmark in 1998, and the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 1999. In 2006, he received the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture from the University of Virginia. The American Academy of Arts and Letters bestowed the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture in 2008.

In the recent book published by Barrons Educational Series, Inc. titled, Architectura, Elements of Architectural Style, with the distinguished architectural historian from Australia, Professor Miles Lewis, as general editor, the Zumthor’s Thermal Bath building at Vals is described as “a superb example of simple detailing that is used to create highly atmospheric spaces. The design contrasts cool, gray stone walls with the warmth of bronze railings, and light and water are employed to sculpt the spaces. The horizontal joints of the stonework mimic the horizontal lines of the water, and there is a subtle change in the texture of the stone at the waterline. Skylights inserted into narrow slots in the ceiling create a dramatic line of light that accentuates the fluidity of the water. Every detail of the building thus reinforces the importance of the bath on a variety of levels.”

In the book titled Thinking Architecture, first published by Birkhauser in 1998, Zumthor set down in his own words a philosophy of architecture. One sample of his thoughts is as follows: “I believe that architecture today needs to reflect on the tasks and possibilities which are inherently its own. Architecture is not a vehicle or a symbol for things that do not belong to its essence. In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings, and speak its own language. I believe that the language of architecture is not a question of a specific style. Every building is built for a specific use in a specific place and for a specific society. My buildings try to answer the questions that emerge from these simple facts as precisely and critically as they can.”