Last Saturday, a dramatic building by Morphosis opened to the public: the Orange County Museum (OCMA). Sited on the campus of Segerstrom Center for the Arts (SCA), in Costa Mesa, California, this ambitious project—which had weathered multiple changes in program, scheme, and museum leadership—finally reached completion, more than 14 years after Morphosis won the competition to design it. (The museum’s prior location was about seven miles away in Newport Beach.)
The resulting $94 million, 53,000-square-foot structure is a hybrid that’s “part urban space, part landscape, part building, part outdoor, part indoor,” says Morphosis founding partner Thom Mayne. As SCA’s last undeveloped parcel, the site—long intended for an art museum—had been a grassy field, explains Morphosis partner-in-charge Brandon Welling, “and that inspired us [conceptually] to lift the field and insert the museum under it.” By then creating a roof deck one story up, with full public access, he adds, “the design essentially gives back to the community 70 percent of the building footprint.” That 28,000-square-foot “outdoor room” includes landscaping by The Office of Jim Burnett, as well as a grand stairway that’s less a circulation route than an amphitheater and social gathering space, overlooking the plaza below.
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