Soon after Michael Govan became director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2006, he called Swiss architect Peter Zumthor to begin reimagining the museum’s campus, with its awkward collection of buildings of various vintages (now seven in all). The exploration began in earnest in 2008, but the museum didn’t present a scheme publicly until 2013. The institution has since unveiled four more iterations—most recently on April 5, when Govan hosted an onstage discussion with the architect. Less than two months earlier, during a talk at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Zumthor had hinted about significant design changes, and by April, a packed house at LACMA’s Bing Theater awaited the latest revelations.
The initial design, in 2013, proposed a black, amoeboid building, hovering (with supporting vertical elements) above the ground. It evoked the dark, oily character of the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits, an archeological site and museum with prehistoric remains. Zumthor’s 387,500-squarefoot structure was designed to replace four existing buildings: LACMA’s three original 1965 pavilions, by William Pereira, plus a 1986 addition by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates. (The museum says two estimates placed the cost of seismic and safety upgrades for those buildings at $300 million.)
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