A few weeks ago, LA Times critic Christopher Hawthorne was invited to look at all six Grand Ave museum design submissions. Lucky bastard. All the architects, a group that included Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron, "essentially produced six versions of a steel-framed box," according to the Times. (You'll remember that the parking lot will be placed on Hope St., and rise to meet the museum along Grand Ave.) And here's some description of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's winning design: "The most dramatic element of the firm's proposal — its wow moment — is a lobby space that will bring pedestrians entering the museum from Grand Avenue face to face, through glass, with drivers on their way down to the museum's parking garage." Are we talking about a car aquarium? Because that would be pretty fabulous. And more: "The title that the firm gave to its official presentation to Broad, "The Veil and the Vault," suggests how central those themes are to its design, which would place a private archive and storage area — the vault — at the core of the building, with a layer of more transparent and open structure — the veil — on the outside.
The veil would be lifted up at two corners, with a particularly large opening at the corner of 2nd and Grand, where the museum comes nearest Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall. The architects see that gesture, in part, as a flirtatious one in the direction of the concert hall."
· Critic's Notebook: Eli Broad and the Diller Scofidio + Renfro museum design [LAT]
· Breaking: Broad Picks Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Downtown for His Museum [Curbed LA]
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