Add another cultural institution to the insanely fast-growing scene in the Arts District: the A+D Architecture and Design Museum is on its way. The museum's present home on Miracle Mile is one of a group of buildings on the block set to be razed to make way for the Wilshire/Fairfax station on the Purple Line subway extension, so rather than sit around and wait to maaaybe be included in a still-very-sketchy LACMA tower, the museum's taking the initiative and locking down a two-year lease in a squat brick building at Fourth and Colyton, in the thick of what could arguably be called Downtown's most booming 'hood, the Downtown News reports.
The museum's future home features a good deal of external graffiti that the museum's executive director calls "beautiful" and hopes to preserve; inside, there are bow-truss ceilings and brick walls. The museum is going to use 6,000 feet of the space for themselves, then rent the remaining space out for retail, ideally a cafe or bookstore. Architecture firms Gensler and RTKL will be handling the building's transformation.
The A+D Museum expects to be into their new space by summer 2015. Once their two-year lease is up, the museum's executive director says they hope to stay Downtown.
A few years ago, there were rumblings that the Los Angeles chapter of the AIA was working on setting up an architecture center somewhere in Downtown that would house the A+D Museum. Whether or not A+D's short lease in the Arts District has anything to do with the status of that project is unclear. We've reached out to the AIA/LA for comment and have yet to hear back.
· Architecture and Design Museum Headed to Arts District [DN]
· AIA/LA Working on Plans For a Center for Architecture and Urban Design Los Angeles [Curbed LA]
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