The news that New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro has finally, officially been named architect of the new Broad Collection museum in downtown Los Angeles proves a couple of things quite clearly. One is that in a design competition as constrained and carefully controlled as the one Eli Broad has been running, a few big conceptual ideas dramatically presented — rather than an inventive treatment of a building's shape — can go a long way. Another is that a little flattery never hurts.
Because Broad from the start gave the six firms vying for the museum job such tight parameters, the high-powered private competition — which also included Rem Koolhaas, Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and Tokyo firm SANAA — essentially produced six versions of a steel-framed box. (I was given exclusive access to the competition proposals a few weeks ago, before Broad made a final decision.) Each of the designs featured a rectangular museum building rising above a parking garage, open to the sidewalk along Grand Avenue and topped with skylit galleries.
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.
Read the whole story at Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic, by Christopher Hawthorne
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