Originally, the Academy had hoped to place its museum on Sunset Boulevard near the 101 freeway, in a building designed by French architect Christian de Portzamparc. Naturally, it took a winding path to get here. The completed project - which comes as LACMA is still trying to excavate foundations for its new building - feels like the dramatic denouement in a starchitectural poker movie: I’ll see your biomorphic blob and raise you a Death Star! The design even includes a piazza on the north side of the building. His design for the Academy Museum completes the circulation routes he originally proposed to LACMA almost two decades ago. building as part of a long-term lease arrangement with LACMA, and Piano was back in command of the unfinished western edge of the complex. “There’s this small European piazzettas style,” he told me in 2013, “which I think is ridiculous for Los Angeles.”īut in 2012 the Academy of Motion Pictures took over the May Co. Zumthor, in an early interview, expressed skepticism for Piano’s master plan. But the 2008 market crash put an end to renovation plans, with Piano’s master plan only partially implemented.Ī year later, LACMA director Michael Govan began courting Peter Zumthor to redesign the eastern campus, and work around the May Co. building to create space for additional galleries and a suite of offices, as well as a research center. Coming soon to the neighborhood: Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s monolith museum building for LACMA, which will bridge Wilshire.Īt this intersection of look-at-me design, Piano’s building seems to emerge as if it’s a giant eyeball to look out at you.Īt the time, LACMA’s intention was to one day renovate the May Co. It’s a formidable design feat considering the building’s location at the architecturally cluttered corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, which currently harbors the Googie coffee shop-turned-filming location Johnie’s and the flaming spaghetti forms of Kohn Pedersen Fox’s Petersen Automotive Museum. You can see it peering at you from the second story of gallery 1301PE. Even if you leave the LACMA-Academy Museum complex to visit the independent art galleries a block west at 6150 Wilshire, well, the Death Star will follow you there too. Its circular form is visible from the ramps of LACMA’s Pavilion for Japanese Art and over the sawtooth roof of the Resnick. The Geffen Theater - known colloquially as “the Death Star” - is absolutely inescapable. This is no run-of-the-mill renovation and expansion. In combination with the brash new Geffen Theater, the architect has remade the western edge of a blocks-long cultural complex that also includes the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum, as well as LACMA where he designed two other buildings: the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the Resnick Pavilion. But the team at Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Piano’s namesake architectural studio, has given this handsome structure new life. shuttered the store in the 1990s, the building languished. The museum honors the past, while exploring new critical perspectives on cinema’s present and future.After May Co. This approach creates a strong emotional response with longer lasting impact. However, due to the entertainment nature of filmmaking, some areas shift to a more colorful and dramatic realm here the presentation of artifacts and environments are reminiscent of the film’s style rather than as museum objects detached from their original purpose. To reflect the high level of artistic achievement, most artifacts were presented in a more “traditional” approach, using desaturated color, and low conservation-mandated light levels. Dramatically lit galleries provide the stage for visitors to engage in the world of the cinema.Īs filmmaking is based on light, many environments feature an interplay of light and projection, immersing visitors in a medium they not only perceive but experience. Available Light was tasked with artfully and responsibly lighting over 800 artifacts across 63,000 square feet on four-plus floors of exhibition space. The overriding goals of the exhibition are to engage visitors in appreciating the impact that moviemaking has had on the evolving nature of culture and to focus on key moments of artistic and scientific movie-making innovation. The new museum is the largest in North America devoted to exploring films and film culture. Located in Los Angeles, California the institution celebrates over 90 years of cinema excellence with immersive exhibits and programming along with an unparalleled presentation of historic artifacts including film, props, costumes, scripts, posters, photographs, puppets, and much more. Available Light had the pleasure of bringing movie magic to life! After many years in the making, the The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened its doors to the public.
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