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Eli Broad’s Art Showcase in Los Angeles, Still Unfinished, Sues Over Delays

United Kingdom Architecture News - Jun 04, 2014 - 12:14 3096 views

A rendering of the Broad, which is to house Eli and Edythe Broad’s contemporary works, on Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. CreditThe Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro

The flagship museum of the billionaire financier and art collector Eli Broad, still under construction, has filed a $19.8 million lawsuit against a German company for what it describes as delays in fabricating the building blocks for its unusual latticed facade.

The suit, filed on Friday in Superior Court, offers a window onto the delays that have dogged the museum, known as the Broad, which had planned to open on Grand Avenue by the end of 2014 but announced in February that the date had been pushed to 2015. The $140 million showcase, designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro, is to house the vast contemporary-art trove amassed by Mr. Broad and his wife, Edythe.

Based outside Munich, the German architectural fabricator, Seele, specializes in boxy or curved facades that create a sense of lightness and transparency. The firm fabricated the crystalline facade of the Seattle Central Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas; the glass curtains of Renzo Piano’s headquarters for The New York Times in Manhattan; and signature elements of several Apple stores, including the glass cube atop its Fifth Avenue store in New York. Calls to officials at Seele and its American subsidiary were not immediately returned.

Eli Broad’s Art Showcase in Los Angeles, Still Unfinished, Sues Over Delays

The Broad promises to be an attention-getter, with a honeycomb-style shell made of steel and glass-fiber-reinforced concrete that wraps around the building’s exterior.CreditThe Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Karen Denne, a spokeswoman for the Broad Art Foundation, said that Mr. Broad would not comment on the lawsuit, which, she said, “speaks for itself.” She added, “We are fairly confident that the museum will open in 2015, and we will announce an opening date later this year.”

Ms. Denne said that all of the facade’s components have now been fabricated, and that Seele is currently assembling the components at the construction site.

Known as the veil, the facade consists of a honeycomb-style shell made of steel and glass-fiber-reinforced concrete that wraps around the building’s exterior. Critics regard it as one of the building’s most distinctive features.

Yet despite Mr. Broad’s own decades of construction experience, the project has been challenging from the start. According to The Architect’s Newspaper, early plans to make the veil out of load-bearing precast concrete were scrapped because of the complexity and cost, and more steel supports were introduced in the design.....Continue Reading

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Submitted by WA Contents

Eli Broad’s Art Showcase in Los Angeles, Still Unfinished, Sues Over Delays

United Kingdom Architecture News - Jun 04, 2014 - 12:14 3096 views

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