UNDER COSTRUCTION NOW The Broad is a new contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The museum, which is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will open to the public in late 2014. With its innovative “vault-and-veil” concept, the 120,000 square-foot, $140 million building will feature two floors of gallery space to showcase The Broad’s comprehensive collections and will be the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library.
Dubbed “the veil and the vault,” the museum’s design merges the two key components of the building: public exhibition space and the archive/storage that will support The Broad Art Foundation’s lending activities. Rather than relegate the archive/storage to secondary status, the “vault,” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit.
Its heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. Its carved underside shapes the lobby below, while its top surface is the floor of the exhibition space. The vault is enveloped on all sides by the “veil,” an airy, cellular exoskeleton structure that spans across the block-long gallery and provides filtered natural daylight.
“At street level, a gently undulating biomorphic room greets visitors in what will one day be the lobby. On the second floor, the walls that will surround the Broad's extensive archive have already materialized. And, on the top floor, a latticed web of pre-cast skylights—looking like a taut fishnet stocking—hangs over an acre of gallery space” says Carolina A. Miranda of Architect.
The public entry to the museum will be on Grand Avenue and will complement the landscaped plaza to the south that is part of the Grand Avenue Project’s master plan. The museum’s “veil” lifts at the corners, welcoming visitors into an active lobby with a bookshop and espresso bar.
Visitors will then journey upwards via an escalator, tunneling through the archive, arriving onto 40,000 square feet of column-free exhibition space bathed in diffuse light. This 24-foot-high space is fully flexible to be shaped into galleries, according to the curatorial needs of each installation or exhibition.
Visitors exit the exhibition space and descend back to the lobby through a winding stair through the vault via a winding stair that offers glimpses in to the vast holdings of the collection.
The Broad targets LEED Silver certification. With its electric car charging stations, bike parking spaces, rooftop drains routed to street level gardens that filter runoff, high-efficiency plumbing fixtures that help reduce water use by 40 percent, and its easy access to public transit including adjacency to the new Metro Regional Connector station at the corner of 2nd Street and Hope Street, The Broad aims to be in the top tier of eco-conscious and efficient museums.
Configuration. Lower levels Three-story parking garage; First Floor Two street-level entrances on Grand Avenue, public lobby, museum shop, gallery, multimedia space, archive storage, 105-foot escalator to third floor gallery; stairs to second and third floors; Second Floor Archive storage visible to museum visitors through windows in a stairway leading from the third-floor galleries down to the first-floor lobby, museum offices, conference rooms, lecture hall; Third Floor 35,000-square-foot, column-free exhibition space with filtered natural light from skylights and windows
Location: 221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. 90012, USA Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro Principal-in-Charge: Diller Scofidio+ Elizabeth Diller Leadership: Eli and Edythe Broad, Founders, Joanne Heyler, Founding Director Executive Architect Gensler Museum Total Cost $140 million Materials Concrete, steel, fiberglass reinforced concrete, fibreglass, reinforced gypsum Principal Designers: Kevin Rice Project Team: Kumar Atre, Oskar Arnorsson, Ryan Botts, John Chow, Gerardo Ciprian, Robert Condon, Zachary Cooley, Charles Curran, Robert Donnelly, Eliza Higgins, Christopher Hillyard, Michael Hundsnurscher, Matthew Johnson, Robert Loken, Nkiru Mokwe, William Ngo, Matthew Ostrow, Haruka Saito, Daniel Sakai, Andrea Schelly, Anne-Rachel Schiffmann, Zoe Small, Quang Truong Project Team Gensler: Rob Jernigan, Principal-in-Charge; David Pakshong, Project Director; Wendi Gilbert, Project Architect; Project Team: Brianna Seabron, Nora Gordon, Greg Kromhout, Yasushi Ishida, Arpy Hatzikian, Marty Borko, Philippe Pare, Robyn Bisbee, Melanie McArtor, Patrice Hironimus, Valentin Lieu, Yupil Chon, Brenda Wentworth, Jae Rodriguez, Robert Garlipp, Jay Hardin, Alexis Denis, Ricardo Moura, Lauren Gropper, Steven Hergert, Pavlina Williams, Evangelique Zhao Structural Engineer: Nabih Youssef & Associates, Leslie E. Robertson Associates, R.L.L.P. Civil Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers Mechanical, Electrical: ARUP Construction MATT Construction Lighting Engineers: ARUP Lighting Design: Tillotson Design Vertical: Lerch Bates, La Crescenta, Calif. Collection Storage: Solomon + Bauer, Watertown, Mass. Opening: Late 2014