Swiss architect Peter Zumthor's Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has unanimously been approved by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, following the approval of the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR). 

Zumthor released the revised version of plans last month and the new plans were including the reduce of buildings sizes and footprint. The plans are reduced from 36,500 square meters to 32,500 square meters, while the building's hight is shortened from 26 meter to 18.2 meter.

The new building will be a major milestone in LACMA’s effort to replace four aging structures with the new Peter Zumthor-designed building. 

By the time Zumthor's new building opens and joins the Bruce Goff-designed Pavilion for Japanese Art and Renzo Piano-designed BCAM and Resnick Pavilion, LACMA will have grown over 15 years from 130,000 to 220,000 square feet of gallery space and added 3.5 acres of park and open outdoor space to offer visitors new and innovative ways to experience LACMA’s vast and diverse art collections. 

Zumthor designed a sinuous building composed of seven semi-transparent concrete and glass pavilions that support an elevated, organically shaped, and transparent main exhibition level with a floor-to-ceiling glass facade.

With its amorphous form and sand-colored structure, the building will branch over Wilshire Boulevard and its main exhibition level is extended over Wilshire Boulevard to the Spaulding lot on the southeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Spaulding Avenue. 

The project design includes new outdoor landscaped plazas, public programming, educational spaces, sculpture gardens, and native and drought-tolerant vegetation integrated with the museum building, LACMA's West Campus, and existing uses of Hancock Park.

The project will open up approximately 3.5 acres of new public outdoor space (2.5 acres in Hancock Park and 1 acre on the Spaulding lot). A new 260-space parking facility would be built southwest of the intersection of Ogden Drive and Wilshire Boulevard to relocate the 260 spaces currently on the Spaulding lot.

The $650-million new campus design will make LACMA a more transparent and integrated experience. Demolition and construction is planned to begin in late 2019, completed in the end of 2023, as the new Metro Purple Line subway opening will coincide with the opening of the museum.

Image courtesy of LACMA

All images Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partners / The Boundary unless otherwise stated.

> via LACMA