On Sunday, April 19, the David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opens to museum members. The project is the result of a decade-long collaboration with Atelier Peter Zumthor to realize his first building in the United States. Floating over Wilshire Boulevard, the new Galleries create a daring new landmark for the city while offering a transformative museum experience: a single, horizontal expanse enabling LACMA to present its permanent collection on a single level without hierarchy or set sequence.
The building marks a shift in the city’s architectural identity. Writing in The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman notes that the galleries “alter the cultural and civic weather of Los Angeles and reassert the city’s role as an American petri dish for experimental design and derring-do.”
As Collaborating Architect and Structural Engineer, SOM’s role was to turn that “derring-do” into a resilient reality. The building’s 110,000 square feet of gallery space sits 30 feet above the ground, supported by an innovative system of post-tensioned cables that support cantilevers up to 80 feet, which shade the plaza below. To secure the collection against seismic activity, SOM placed the entire structure on 40 base isolators, allowing the museum to shift up to five feet in any direction.
The construction process had to be carefully designed; the monolithic concrete form required more than 100 distinct pours. Structural Partner Eric Long describes the effort as a balance of raw materials and precision engineering. “The building seems simple—it’s just concrete, brass, and glass,” Long says. “But what’s behind it is beautifully complex.”
The galleries act as structural cores, scattered across the 900-foot-long length of the museum, offering panoramic views of the city outward, connecting the museum’s encyclopedic collection to the Los Angeles skyline. At street level, the project adds 3.5 acres of new park space and outdoor gardens, integrating the museum into Hancock Park and the surrounding Miracle Mile neighborhood.
The David Geffen Galleries are the latest landmark project in SOM’s record of transformative civic and cultural projects, extending as far back as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and Lincoln Center Library & Museum of the Performing Arts in New York City. SOM is continuing this momentum as Architect of Record for the Las Vegas Museum of Art, another pivotal project that will reshape the cultural landscape of the Southwest.
Public opening for the David Geffen Galleries follows the member preview period on May 4.
