Displaying items by tag: peter zumthor

On Wednesday, November 5, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved $125 million in funding for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) new building. The additional $475 million needed for the project will be raised by LACMA’s director, Michael Govan, and the museum’s nonprofit board. 

While  the $600-million revitalization project is still in the early stages, preliminary plans involve tearing down a portion of LACMA’s existing campus and replacing it with a sprawling structure designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. Located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile section of Los Angeles, LACMA’s campus features three William Pereira-designed structures from 1965.

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor has rejiggered his masterplan for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art‘s (LACMA) campus to avoid the neighboring La Brea Tar Pits. When the original designs for the massive, $650-million overhaul of LACMA’s disjointed group of buildings was announced last year, the administration of the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits raised objections and claimed that the Zumthor plan would block rainfall and sunlight on the geological tourist destination and still-active paleontological research site rich with Ice Age fossils.

The new plan, as Jori Finkel writes for the New York Times, calls for a building that keeps its distance from the tar pits, instead stretching across Wilshire Boulevard to land on a lot currently used for parking.

On Wednesday, May 1, 2013 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced that they will publicly unveil plans for a new building next month. The institution has picked Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor to design LACMA’s new home.

The project is expected to cost $650 million and will include the demolition of the original LACMA building, which was built in 1965, as well as an addition that was constructed in 1986. Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas proposed a similar plan in 2001 but fundraising problems prompted the museum to cancel the project. Michael Govan, the current director of LACMA, has been ramping up fundraising efforts since he joined the museum in 2006 and has succeeded in expanding donor funding and enlarging the museum’s board.

Under Govan’s direction, LACMA had opened two buildings designed by Renzo Piano, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, and the Resnick Pavilion. Zumthor’s plans leave the newer buildings untouched as well as the Pavilion for Japanese Art, which opened in 1988.