MUSEUM ARCHITECTURE THAT RIVALS THE ART

“Artists rarely do the same thing over and over again. Art is about the new, doing things in a new way.”

“I'm strong-willed. Architects are strong-willed. You get the best results with a strong client and a strong architect working together.”

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Shea Gibson 10121372 Dr. John Brown EVDB: 697: Field Trip April 1, 2016 THE BROAD

Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro Location: 221 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012, USA Area: 120000.0 ft2 Project Year: 2015 Total Cost: $140 million

The Broad Museum. A new institution with a striking and powerful architectural design found in the heart of the growing arts district of downtown Los Angeles. This structure is one of the most striking pieces of architecture that I have ever visited and experienced. The field trip we undertook to this to the great American city was crammed with evocative 20th Century displays of architecture, and contemporary wonders of the 21st Century. The Broad, however, stood head and shoulders above the other pieces we observed and studied during our adventure in Southern California.

The Broad Museum is a new contemporary art museum built by billionaire philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.1 The museum was designed by world- Image 1: Aerial photograph showcasing The Broad in it’s site, along Grand renowned architect firm Avenue and adjacent the famous Gehry piece, The Disney Concert Hall. Diller Scofidio + Renfro (whom I had not known of prior to the visit), and is home to almost 2,000 different works of art from The Broad Art Foundation and the Broads’ personal collections, who also possesses one of the most prominent holdings of post-1950s and contemporary art in the world.2 With its now famous and innovative “veil-and-vault” concept, the massive 120,000-square-foot, $140-million building incorporates two floors of art gallery space to showcase The Broad’s comprehensive collections as well as a housing the administrative offices of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library.

1 ArchDaily, “The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro,”August 13, 2015, accessed March 15, 2016 from . 2 Ibid. Image 2: Original concept sketch by Diller Scofidio + Renfro of The Broad’s design.

One facet of the architecture I had been introduced to before the trip was the famed conceptual diagram again dubbed “the veil and the vault,” which summarizes the museum’s design as the merging of two key programs: the public exhibition and gallery space and the storage that will support it, both metaphorically through The Broad Art Foundation’s extensive lending activities and structurally. The online architecture tour provided by the museum explores to a greater degree some of the intentionally behind the design, illustrating how rather than relegate the storage to secondary status, “the vault” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience starting from entry right through to the exit. The heavy opaque mass of the structure and view is nearly always visible while wondering the gallery space as it hovers midway in the building. The main floor interior features a carved underside that shapes the lobby below and public circulation routes, and the top surface of the vault is also the third-floor galleries.

The vault is enveloped by the “veil,” which is labelled as “a porous, honeycomb-like, exterior structure that spans across the block-long building and Image 3: The famous illustration of the two main provides filtered natural daylight.”3 The components of the building—the veil and the vault.

3 Katharine Schwab, “At the Broad Museum,” The Atlantic, September 16, 2015, accessed March 15, 2016 from . museum’s veil lifts at the corners, welcoming visitors into an active lobby and greets them once again as they head out the exists. This cavernous lobby, finished with plain undulating walls, is stark, and plays a fitting contrast to the exterior facade with attention directed toward a massive escalator that takes visitors up to the third-floor gallery, the museum’s main exhibition space. As side from the dazzling facade, which I will explore further on, I found the architecture on the main Image 4: The lifting of the veil which greets and envelopes its guests as they arrive. Reflective of opening a fabric curtain through a doorway. floor plays with a very clever, artfully designed concept which delivers, functionally and atmospherically. The museum also reflects the idea of being in an object that transforms itself into something quite unexpected as soon as you enter the building under one of the two raised “skirts” at the corners of the main facade. Suddenly, and with an almost childish pleasure (or according to some students a hippie vibe), you’re standing under a flaring, claylike cantilevered dark-grey Image 5: The escalator which takes visitors through the centre of the concrete canopy which vault, “squeezing” the visitors before releasing them to the openness of immediately stirs in my mind the surface of the vault above. ideas of elephant skin, underwater caves, and dark fungi. This strange, for lack of a better term, internal sculpting sets up a fantasy stage-set atmosphere that’s heightened by stairs and a long escalator that strikes upwards through this sombre concrete gullets. There’s also a glass elevator that projects you upwards to the main gallery floor and back down to the main lobby. Image 6: Section through the museum showing the three floors and the cantilevered portions of the second and third floors.

After the visiting crowds are drawn upwards via escalator, through a tunnel into the bowels of the vault the journey continues as you reach the summit where you arrive onto nearly an expansive column-free gallery space bathed in diffuse light from above. The gallery has 23- foot-high ceilings, and the roof is supported by 7-foot-deep steel girders.4 Personally, I also found that the top-floor gallery is a true genuine triumph in art and architecture. It is the quintessential design I have experienced where the museum itself truly rivals that of the art found inside. The expansiveness of open, clear, column-free space, with the concrete veil wrapped over the top, its teardrop-shaped slits angled to true north is mesmerizing (and became one of my favourite scenarios to photograph during the trip). It is, as Diller says, “a big industrial space.”5 The space also during possess a certain grace and accidental wit: the reflections of the veil’s slits in ’ Balloon Dog Blue give it a few extra “huzzah!” moments.

4 Jay Merrick, “The Broad Museum: Los Angeles has a new powerhouse of art,” Independent, September 27, 2015, accessed March 15, 2016 from . 5 Ibid. Image 7: Jeff Koons’ famous Balloon Dog Blue on Image 8: My favourite piece from the museum, Green display during our visit to the museum. Blue Red by Ellsworth Kelly, showing a marriage of biomorphism and minimalism, figure and ground, through striking contrasting colours.

Upon our visit during midday hours, the gallery was completely lit by natural sunlight. It was a very unusually, being in such an expansive space, with little directly visible interaction to the outside world while also experiencing a unique density of light (there is a very faint hint of neutral greyness to it) that is constant with almost zero variation across the entirety of the space.

The pierced solidity of the almost dropping veil truly excels inside, where the slivers of glowing light create a radiating, mysterious effect. From the street it takes on a more solid appearance, albeit lightened by the fact that it only touches the ground only once on Grand Avenue. Still the relentless patterns and sharp edges can be mesmerizing as you walk closer to, and around, the building.6 The facade is composed of a meshlike exoskeleton of over 2,500 fiberglass- reinforced concrete panels that wrap the entire edifice. Each of the panels feature a different combination of sizes and angled perforations that channel indirect natural light to the interior spaces (from above as skylights, and horizontally as windows) while keeping the Broad’s considerable Image 9: A section through The Broad’s gallery skylight collection safe from overexposure system from the sun.7

6 Sam Lubell, “The Broad art museum by Diller Scofidio + Renfro opens,” Wallpaper, September 16, 2015, accessed March 15, 2015 from . 7 “The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro.” Image 10 & 11: Photographs of the skylights, showing the different effects and scattering of the sunlight which illuminate the galleries below.

Image 12: The uniform distribution of natural lighting was one of the first architecture details I experienced in the space that I was particularly moved by and considered an incredible strength given the buildings role as a house of art where direct sunlight can be damaging. Internally, I compared this space to the brutalist, sunlight void that is the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. Image 13 & 14: Detailing of the facade that presents the concrete paneling, showing the depth, and variably of the indentation. The image on the left shows a view from the outside and the image on the right displays and interior view.

Image 15: The corner of the facade above the entrance where the veil is lifted, showing the interesting relationship that is generated at the corner and intersection point of the concrete panels.

I figure it is fitting that the Diller, one of the architects, comments on the ‘experiential-ness’ of one of the spaces where he describes the veil as a coy shroud around the vault, which “tempts you from the street with its lifted corners. By lifting the storage off the ground and “floating” it in the building, the collection itself becomes an artifact.” Scofidio additionally describes the experiential attributes of the architecture by stating how “there is a choreography here. The moment you walk in, you want to go up the stairs or escalators. It’s a little bit like coming into a forest.”8

Lastly, as you initiate the journey out of the galleries you make a decent from the third floor gallery space through the vault via a winding central stair that offers glimpses into the vast holdings of the collection, a tease to inspire future visits and reveal the extent of the Broads’ collection of which takes up a considerable chunk of the second story.

Image 16: A window along the decent down through the vault that enables passersby a glimpse into the what else exists as part of The Broad’s collection.

Following our visit we did also engage in some of the public amenities associated with The Broad, such as the adjacent public plaza/greenspace. The plaza’s trees and grass were installed to be a public place for picnics, outdoor films, performances and educational events, though when we visited it was raining and generally unused.9

Though I, and most of the general public, found the museum to be an incredible feat of art, architecture and engineering, it was not without its faults and short comings. From my own subjective perspective I found that the implementation of “The Oculus” not very compelling. It acts somewhat like a blemish in my eyes against the rest of the facade, and in its role as an opening it does not succeed in being anymore transparent or open that the rest of the veil. It’s simply more curved and inserted. Perhaps even more disheartening is that as visitors you do not have direct

8 Merrick, “The Broad Museum.” 9 “The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro.” access to the oculus. It is almost hidden away in the administrative portion of the second floor, as part of a lecture space. As something very visible from the outside, it is unfortunate that such a

Image 17: Interior photograph of the oculus from outside the lecture space. feature is unavailable to the general public to participate with. Additionally, a walk around the entirety building down Second Ave and up to the public plaza revealed a further space that does not necessarily work, and that is the rear street level/ parking space. In comparison to the buildings front entrance and side walls, the building rear feels considerably different as a pedestrian. The pathway on the sidewalk squeezed between the business of the roadway, and the dark fenced off envelope creates an unfriendly environment and deters participants (I was the only individual in this space compared to the many dozens of people at the main entrances). Image 18: Plan of The Broad museum’s first floor, including a 15,000-square- foot gallery space and outdoor public plaza.

Image 19: Plan of the second floor of The Broad Image 20: Plan of The Broad museum’s 35,000- museum. square-foot, column-free third floor gallery space. Bibliography

ArchDaily. “The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro.”August 13, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2016. .

BrainyQoute. “Eli Broad Quotes.” Accessed March 28, 2016. .

Cochran, Samuel. “A First Look At Los Angeles's Newest Museum: The Broad.” Architectural Digest. April 30, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2016. .

Lubell, Sam. “The Broad art museum by Diller Scofidio + Renfro opens.” Wallpaper, September 16, 2015.Accessed March 15, 2015. .

Merrick, Jay. “The Broad Museum: Los Angeles has a new powerhouse of art.” Independent, September 27, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2016. .

Schwab, Katharine. “At the Broad Museum.” The Atlantic, September 16, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2016. .

Image Notes

Title Image: Chan, Benny. The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro. August 31, 2015. Photograph. Accessed March 15, 2016 from .

Image 1: Duran, Jeff. Warren Air. The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro. August 31, 2015. Photograph. Accessed March 15, 2016 from .

Image 2: N.N. Image courtesy of The Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro. August 31, 2015. Sketch. Accessed March 15, 2016 from .

Image 3: N.N. Image courtesy of The Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro. August 31, 2015. Rendering. Accessed March 15, 2016 from .

Image 4: Gibson Shea. Untitlted. February 17, 2016. Photograph.

Image 5: Baan, Iwan. The Braod museum’s lobby with escalator. N.D. Photograph. Accessed March 28, 2016 from . Image 6: N.N. Image courtesy of The Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro. August 31, 2015. Rendering. Accessed March 15, 2016 from .

Images 7 & 8: Gibson Shea. Untitlted. February 17, 2016. Photographs.

Image 9: N.N. Image courtesy of The Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro. August 31, 2015. Diagram. Accessed March 15, 2016 from .

Images 10-17: Gibson Shea. Untitlted. February 17, 2016. Photographs.

Images 18 -20: N.N. Image courtesy of The Broad and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Broad Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro. August 31, 2015. Plan Drawings. Accessed March 29, 2016 from .