{"id":403068,"date":"2026-04-17T08:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/403068\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T08:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:05:10","slug":"like-a-concrete-aircraft-carrier-was-las-giant-new-724m-gallery-really-worth-all-the-carbon-emissions-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/403068\/","title":{"rendered":"Like a concrete aircraft carrier: was LA\u2019s giant new $724m gallery really worth all the carbon emissions? | Architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driving down the palm-lined strip of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, a striking new crossing heaves into view. A ribbon of glass leaps over the road, sandwiched between two gigantic planes of concrete. As you get closer, the bridge swells out in sinuous arcs, swooping back on itself to inscribe an amoebic, shape-shifting blob, spreading out like an inkblot. From some angles it has a retro-futuristic air, recalling a Jetsons airport terminal, or one of California\u2019s \u201cGoogie\u201d style gas stations<\/a>. From others, the curving roof looks like a great big tongue, flaring out to give the neighbours a raspy lick.<\/p>\n

This concrete colossus is home to the new David Geffen Galleries<\/a> of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), a $724m mothership designed by the fabled Swiss architect Peter Zumthor<\/a>. It is less a museum than a mighty piece of infrastructure, a 110,000 sq ft warehouse-cum-bridge, jacked up nine metres in the air and looming above the street with a brooding, muscular heft. Two decades in the making, and subject to tortuous years of delays, controversies and cost escalations \u2013 building on a tar swamp in a seismic zone is not straightforward \u2013 it finally opens this weekend.<\/p>\n

double quotation markIf concrete lasts 500 years, it\u2019s very environmentally friendly!<\/p>\n

The Fitzcarraldian feat is the brainchild of Michael Govan, who became Lacma\u2019s director in 2006 with an ambition to build a museum like no other, using the promise of a dazzling structure to lure donations of artworks and dollars ($125m came from LA county, the rest was fundraised). Govan cut his teeth at the Guggenheim, and on Frank Gehry\u2019s Bilbao outpost, where he clearly got a taste for the transformative fairy dust of signature architecture. He later moved to Dia:Beacon, in New York\u2019s Hudson Valley, where he commissioned Zumthor for a project that was ultimately unrealised<\/a>. At Lacma, he was determined to make a monument for posterity, at any cost.<\/p>\n

Dark walls and dimmed lighting \u2026 one of the galleries at Lacma. Photograph: Lacma\/Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

\u201cMy brief to the architect was to have everything on one floor,\u201d says Govan. \u201cAnd I wanted transparency, no hierarchy, no facade.\u201d He is standing in the lofty gallery, surrounded by an open field of disparate objects, framed by concrete overhead, polished concrete underfoot, and concrete-walled rooms all around us. \u201cI also asked for concrete,\u201d he adds. \u201cPeople say concrete is not the most environmentally friendly medium, but if it lasts 500 years it\u2019s very friendly!\u201d He chuckles with a winning smile, showing the easy charisma of someone used to extracting large sums from billionaires.<\/p>\n

Eschewing the usual design competition, Govan turned straight to Zumthor, architecture\u2019s most venerated sculptor of liquid stone. The reclusive Pritzker prize-winning 82-year-old has transformed the humble mix of cement and sand into everything from a bewitching charred chapel<\/a> in a field in Germany \u2013 made by pouring it over a pyramidal pyre, before setting the woody innards alight \u2013 to a cave-like holiday home in Devon<\/a>, built by ramming crumbly concrete in sedimentary layers. But Zumthor\u2019s small mountain atelier had never done anything remotely on the scale of Lacma. Even though he was aided by executive architects SOM, it was like asking a dinghy-maker to build an aircraft carrier.<\/p>\n

In some ways, it shows. Arriving at Lacma\u2019s park-like campus \u2013 which, sadly, is segregated from the sidewalk by an off-putting steel palisade fence \u2013 visitors are greeted by a barren concrete plaza. They are ushered up a long outdoor staircase, or into an elevator, housed in one of the eight pavilions that hold the building up, like the chunky legs of a concrete elephant. This public space currently feels like loitering beneath a highway overpass, but there is hope it will be activated by throngs of tourists and events. A very LA touch of public life is provided in one leg by a branch of Erewhon, a high-end grocery store and byword for bougie, known for its $20 smoothies<\/a>. Govan promises a \u201cspecial Lacma mix\u201d is in the works \u2013 a concrete-hued charcoal blend with black sesame granola aggregate, perhaps?<\/p>\n

\u2018Old masters set against walls stained a rusty red\u2019 \u2026 galleries have a Corten feel. Photograph: Lacma\/Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

Once you have made the ascent upstairs, things improve. Drifting around the galleries, which vary in size, mood and colour, is a delight. Some are tiny, chapel-like spaces, reserved for a single item \u2013 such as a Qing dynasty court robe, dramatically spotlit against inky blue walls. Others are larger and feature furniture and old masters set against walls stained a rusty red, like Corten steel. Sometimes the moody theatrics get a bit much. It might work for a mountain spa, like Zumthor\u2019s famous Therme Vals<\/a>, but with all the dark walls and dim lighting, there is a tendency for the galleries to feel a bit sepulchral, a shadowy columbarium for 6,000 years of dead stuff.<\/p>\n

In between the concrete tombs, sunny respite is brought by panoramic views back outside, to the lush park and busy street, veiled by shimmering metallic curtains. It\u2019s a treat to sit and watch the world go by from this elevated perch, and Bruce Goff\u2019s eccentric pavilion for Japanese art<\/a> has never looked so wondrously life-giving next to all the grey concrete. The curtains, by textile designer Reiko Sudo, help to filter the LA sunshine, and they bring an unusually domestic air.<\/p>\n

Along with the comfy leather benches, the drapes can make it feel as if you are exploring the gargantuan villa of a movie-mogul art collector in the Hollywood Hills. There are distinct echoes of John Lautner\u2019s midcentury homes<\/a> in the curved concrete slabs and seamless expanses of glazing, and you sense that Zumthor\u2019s underlying ambition was to build a supersized Case Study house<\/a>. Raised aloft, safely sequestered behind the tall fence, the whole place oozes exclusive compound vibes (a sense amplified in the gift shop, where $150 tote bags, made from the shiny curtain fabric, are for sale alongside $215 Lacma-branded sweaters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An unusually domestic air \u2026 Reiko Sudo\u2019s shimmering metallic curtains. Photograph: Oliver Wainwright<\/p>\n

Govan has come under fire for his decision to ditch the usual chronological hang in favour of thematic clusters, but for the most part it works. One moment you are marvelling at Do Ho Suh\u2019s gossamer recreation of a palace in Seoul, the next you are confronted by Hindu deities and Islamic textiles, or a room about plastic in art. It somehow feels very LA, where Koreatown jostles with Little Armenia, Historic Filipinotown, Little Ethiopia and Tehrangeles in an endless sprawling suburb.<\/p>\n

The open areas in between the rooms also make for good day-lit display spaces, including one zone fittingly devoted to car culture. You can admire the fibreglass body of Raymond Loewy\u2019s sleek 1961 Studebaker Avanti<\/a>, while looking out on its bloated gas-guzzling descendants growling along Wilshire down below. Zumthor says he wanted the visitor experience to \u201cfeel like walking through a forest\u201d, with open clearings and sheltered bowers \u2013 and, just like a forest, it can be disorienting. I found myself doing circuitous laps of the concrete maze to ensure I had seen everything. Bringing a ball of wool may be advisable.<\/p>\n

Back in the gift shop, there\u2019s a poignant reminder of what once stood here. A $5 postcard of Ed Ruscha\u2019s painting<\/a> Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire, 1965-68, depicts the original complex that was crushed to make way for Zumthor\u2019s Goliath. Designed in the 1960s by William Pereira, architect of the space-age theme building at LAX airport<\/a>, and later expanded, it was a handsome hotchpotch, but one that Govan claims was beyond repair. \u201cPeople called it \u2018Leakma\u2019,\u201d he says. \u201cI had so many people who would not donate their collections to the old buildings, because they were in such bad condition.\u201d Nor, he thinks, would patrons have been quite so eager to lavish their largesse on a renovation project (philanthropy needs to catch up).<\/p>\n

\u2018I wanted transparency, no hierarchy, no facade\u2019 \u2026 another space in the new museum. Photograph: Lacma\/Iwan Baan<\/p>\n

Zumthor\u2019s daring building might have brought in the collections and the funds, but it comes with an unspoken cost. Lifting the whole thing off the ground and spanning the road \u2013 a piece of structural theatrics more than a necessity \u2013 required 15,000 tonnes of steel reinforcement, twice as much as all the metal in the entire Eiffel Tower. The concrete bill is equally eye-watering. For every sq metre of floor area in Zumthor\u2019s building, there are two cubic metres of solid concrete supporting it \u2013 compared to an average of 0.3 to 0.6 cubic metres for a typical large concrete building. In total, 65,000 cubic metres of concrete were poured, almost double the amount in LA\u2019s Sixth Street Viaduct <\/a>, a huge bridge that stretches for more than a kilometre across roads, railways and a river. Perhaps the carbon footprint is fitting, given whose name is on the building. In a 2021 ranking by The Conversation<\/a>, the project\u2019s lead donor, David Geffen, was listed as the most polluting individual American, due to his use of yachts and private jets.<\/p>\n

I put the carbon question to Zumthor. Do the ends justify the means? Was it worth the extraordinary environmental impact to create this audacious structure, which ultimately has less gallery floor space than the buildings it replaces? \u201cThe horizon of \u2018concrete uses too much carbon\u2019,\u201d he says, putting on a whiny complaining voice, \u201cthis is a very small horizon. This building will still be there when people are talking about other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The window behind him frames a view of La Brea Tar Pits<\/a> , an archaeological research park where the fossils of ice age animals have been discovered, preserved in bubbling pools of tar. Below Zumthor\u2019s flaring concrete cantilevers, a model of a woolly mammoth drowns in a lake of crude oil, as a mother and baby mammoth look on helplessly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Driving down the palm-lined strip of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, a striking new crossing heaves into view.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-403068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}