Holy cow, LACMA and Metro are cooking up an extreme gamechanger on the Miracle Mile: a museum/hotel/condo tower, sited on top of a future Purple Line station at Wilshire and Orange Grove (across the street from LACMA) and potentially designed by Frank Gehry. "My dream is some beautiful piece of architecture with an architecture and design museum at the base," LACMA head Michael Govan tells the LA Times. He hopes Gehry will design the building (he says he's envious of New York's Gehry-designed 8 Spruce Street) and that it will house the architect's archives. Gehry says they've discussed it and "I'm open to it."
LACMA only owns about a third of the property (which it uses as a parking lot), and it's working with Metro on getting buy-in from all the other surrounding owners now. Govan won't say how tall he wants the tower to be, but does say he sees it as "a sort of flagship" for denser, more vertical development around LA's transit system.
LACMA is a little further along on plans for a low-rise, sprawling new museum building by starchitect Peter Zumthor; the latest designs have the blob, which will be about the same size as the LACMA buildings it will replace, stretching across Wilshire to a site at Spaulding Avenue.
Meanwhile, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is working on its movie museum in a building it's leasing from LACMA at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax. Govan sees the architecture and design gallery in the new tower as a complement to the movie museum and the neighboring Petersen Automotive Museum (which is also getting a big overhaul): "There's car culture in L.A. and it has a museum; there's movie culture in L.A. and it will have a museum. I think the obvious thing that's missing is architecture and design."
Coincidentally, the architecture-and-design-focused A+D Museum across the street from LACMA will be demolished to make way for the Purple Line. Govan says it's possible that he'd invite them into his new tower, but it sounds like he'd rather have LACMA create its own collection.
· LACMA, Metro discussing new museum tower on Wilshire Boulevard [LAT]
· Peter Zumthor's New Design For LACMA Winds Above Wilshire [Curbed LA]
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