Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has released new images of LACMA Museum from its new-launched website. Deasinged by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, working on the project for over six years, the new images show the LACMA Building for the Permanent Collection will be approximately 368,000 square feet (34,000 square-meter), 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. 

Namely, the project results in a reduction of approximately 25,000 square feet (2,322 square-meter area). The new building is composed of eight semi-transparent pavilions that support an elevated, organically shaped, and translucent main exhibition level. 

The main exhibition level extends 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. 

Today, LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection that includes more than 130,000 objects dating from antiquity to the present, encompassing the geographic world and nearly the entire history of art. 

Among the museum’s strengths are its holdings of Asian art, Latin American art, ranging from pre-Columbian masterpieces to works by leading modern and contemporary artists, and Islamic art, of which LACMA hosts one of the most significant collections in the world.

A museum of international stature as well as a vital part of Southern California, LACMA shares its vast collections through exhibitions, public programs, and research facilities that attract over a million visitors annually, in addition to serving millions through digital initiatives, such as online collections, scholarly catalogues, and interactive engagement at LACMA. Situated over 20 acres in the heart of Los Angeles, LACMA is located between the ocean and downtown.

LACMA has recently received $75-million donation, raising its budget to over $600-million to move forward. LACMA is a seamless integration of new building with the existing park and remaining LACMA buildings with 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.

But, skeptics about its environmentally effects are still remaining and regarding that the Country of Los Angeles has published a document titled Notice of Preparation (NOP) in the website, explaining that ''the potential environmental effects anticipated to be studied in the EIR, and the environmental factors not potentially affected that would not be addressed in the EIR are set forth in the Initial Study and summarized here.''

The Country of Los Angeles has also announced Public Scoping Meeting in order to solicit input regarding the content of the Draft EIR. ''The Scoping Meeting will be in an open house format. No decisions about the Project will be made at the scoping meeting,'' explained the authorities of LA. Public Scoping Meeting will be held on August 24, 2016 at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art , Broad Contemporary Art Museum Building (BRAM).

If everything goes on a plan, construction will begin in the second half of 2018 and completed in 2023. New Metro Purple Line subway will be directly across from the museum and will be open in 2023.

Site plan

All images courtesy of LACMA

> via buildinglacma.org