Among the chorus of critics and celebrities who have reacted publicly to LACMA’s revised plans for its campus, one voice has been conspicuously absent. The designer of the project, the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, has been largely silent—until now.
Last week, Zumthor spoke about the project for the first time since museum officials presented a new plan in April. In an interview in the Zurich newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung first spotted by art writer William Poundstone, journalist Sabine von Fischer asked Zumthor about the controversy surrounding the museum’s proposal, and why the design has endured so many major changes.
According to the interview, which is in German, Zumthor’s early experimentations within the grid-like limitations of the existing site left him unable to “establish a meaningful relationship with the various architectural and urban elements” on the LACMA and the La Brea Tar Pits campuses. The “Black Flower,” Zumthor’s name for the original amoeba-like design, solved the problem, he said. “When I began to respond to it with a free building form, we made the breakthrough.”
As for why the original form was scrapped when the museum was redesigned to cross Wilshire Boulevard, Zumthor said it takes a “greater linear tension to cross the big boulevard,” but “towards the park... the freely curved forms have remained.” He doesn’t discuss why the color of the museum shifted from black to beige.
Several Twitter users criticized Zumthor’s description of the museum as Asyl für heimatlose Objekte, which Google Translate translated as an “asylum for homeless objects.” However, multiple German speakers told Curbed this is a mistranslation of Zumthor’s original wording. The comment was made in reference to the new building’s goal to create an encyclopedic museum for the county, but appeared insensitive amidst LA’s worsening homelessness crisis. As architecture writer Eva Hagberg noted on Twitter, and two other German speakers confirmed to Curbed, a better English translation for heimatlose would be “displaced” or “out of context.” And asyl is a term more closely translated to political asylum than to a physical asylum. (The other quotes selected for this story were accurately translated by Google, according to the two German speakers Curbed consulted.)
Zumthor also dismissed an ongoing concern from art and architectural critics that the location and scale of the museum—it will be his largest project as well as his first major project in the U.S.—will mean many structural decisions and operational details will end up falling to SOM, the firm that’s serving as the local architect. “I not only participate in the execution plans of the SOM architects, I also look at all the workshop drawings of the executing craftsmen,” he told von Fischer.
“So far, I see no difficulties,” he said.
Although a majority of the speakers at an April LA County Board of Supervisors meeting spoke in favor of LACMA’s plan, including actors Brad Pitt and Diane Keaton, public records obtained in May by Esotouric’s Richard Schave and Kim Cooper showed that 83 percent of the emails sent to county supervisors about LACMA preceding the vote were opposed to the project. Only 48 emails received by the county regarding LACMA were in favor of Zumthor’s design, with 226 emails against. The county supervisors voted unanimously in favor of the project.
Schave and Cooper have since formed a group to officially oppose Zumthor’s design, largely on the grounds that the county should not be allocating $117.5 million to demolish the museum’s 1960s structures designed by William Pereira and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer. The group has launched a petition asking the county supervisors to reconsider their vote. (A separate coalition of neighborhood associations have filed a lawsuit against LACMA that claims the new proposal would not provide enough parking.)
In June, LACMA hosted a symposium on 1960s architecture where LACMA director Michael Govan spoke about the museum’s desire to continue discussing these issues, says architect and historian Alan Hess, who gave a talk on Pereira’s work at the event.
“The symposium was a valuable first step in bringing attention to the enormous contributions of Pereira, [Welton] Becket, [Albert C.] Martin, DMJM, and others in shaping Los Angeles in the 20th century,” Hess says. “We need to pay attention to conserving their buildings and planning.”
That includes more dialogue around the LACMA plans, says Hess. “Great public buildings that find a place in the heart of citizens—like the LAX Theme Building, Music Center, City Hall, Central Library, Union Station, Disney Hall—always demand a sensitive interaction with that city’s people and culture,” he tells Curbed.
Zumthor told von Fischer he has personally managed to avoid reading much of the controversy around his own project. When asked if Zumthor had seen any of the criticism surrounding the new design, including commentary about the county meeting, he said he hadn’t. “Michael Govan said it was unnecessary for me to read [it],” he said. “You make the design, and I’ll do the rest, he said.”
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