Project Details
- Project Name
- The Broad
- Location
-
CA ,United States
- Architect
- Diller Scofidio + Renfro
- Client/Owner
- The Broad Art Foundation
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 120,000 sq. feet
- Year Completed
- 2015
- Shared by
-
Architect,Hanley Wood
- Consultants
-
Structural Engineer: Leslie E. Robertson Associates; Nabih Youssef Associates,Civil Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers,Arup, I.S.Leng, Mininger,Lighting Designer: Tillotson Design Associates,Lerch Bates,Solomon + Bauer + Giambastiani Architects,Robert Jernigan, AIA (principal); David Pakshong (project director); Wendi Gilbert, AIA (project architect); Marty Borko, Assoc. AIA, Melanie McArtor, Jeffrey Anglada, AIA, Nora Gordon, AIA, Ricardo Moura, Yasushi Ishida, Brenda Wentworth, Robert Garlipp, Yupil Chon, Alexis Dennis, Greg Kromhout, Pavlina Williams, AIA,Adamson Associates Architects (executive architect); Diller Scofidio + Renfro (design architect)
- Project Status
- Built
From the June, 2018 issue of ARCHITECT:
“Simultaneously sedate and spectacular, it fits the context of the visually exuberant arts buildings in this neighborhood. The types of space created are unusual but engaging
and composed.” —Jury statement
Hotly anticipated by Angelenos, art-world heavies, and architecture watchers alike, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R)’s the Broad museum in Los Angeles, designed in association with Gensler, was among the most talked about new American buildings when it opened in 2015. Now, with the advantage of a little hindsight, it seems evident that the commotion was well-merited: Attracting immense crowds to its banner contemporary exhibitions, the museum is already a must-see on every L.A. tourist’s itinerary and a treasured local landmark at least as recognizable as Frank Gehry, FAIA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall next door. While it is in some ways a subdued riposte to the latter, the building’s all-over waffle cladding, composed of a unique concrete composite, gives it a brashness all its own, and makes it a big architectural billboard for the city’s newly resurgent downtown.
That sense of scale makes the building legible, as billboards in L.A. should be, from a moving car; but the building is also attuned to the visitor on foot, signaling its frontality with the great cyclopean eye on its façade, inviting visitors in with its glassed-in rez-de-chaussée, and then sending them up an escalator through the mysterious concrete “vault” (containing conservation and storage facilities) to the 50,000-square-foot open exhibition floor, which is suffused with light and allows for nearly infinite configurations of temporary walled-in galleries.
A design solution as beguiling and ambitious as the collection it houses, DS+R’s Broad is sui generis and impossible to sum up except as an act of performance. It is an experimental machine for mediating between the world of the city and the world of art.
Project Credits
Project: The Broad, Los Angeles
Design Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York . Elizabeth Diller (principal-in-charge); Ricardo Scofidio, AIA, Charles Renfro, AIA (principal designers); Kevin Rice, AIA (project director); Kumar Atre, Oskar Arnorsson, Ryan Botts, John Chow, Gerardo Ciprian, Robert Condon, Zachary Cooley, AIA, Charles Curran, Robert Donnelly, Eliza Higgins, Christopher Hillyard, aia, Michael Hundsnurscher, Matthew Johnson, Robert Loken, AIA, Nkiru Mokwe, William Ngo, Matthew Ostrow, Haruka Saito, Daniel Sakai, AIA, Andrea Schelly, Anne-Rachel Schiffmann, AIA, Zoe Small, AIA, Quang Truong, AIA (project team)
Executive Architect: Gensler, San Francisco . Rob Jernigan, FAIA (principal-in-charge); David Pakshong (project director); Wendi Gilbert, AIA (project architect); Brianna Seabron, Nora Gordon, AIA, Greg Kromhout, AIA, Yasushi Ishida, Assoc. AIA, Arpy Hatzikian, Marty Borko, Assoc. AIA, Philippe Paré, AIA, Robyn Bisbee, AIA, Melanie McArtor, Patrice Hironimus, Valentin Lieu, Yupil Chon, Brenda Wentworth, AIA, Jae Rodriguez, Robert Garlipp, Jay Hardin, Alexis Denis, Ricardo Moura, Lauren Gropper, Steven Hergert, AIA, Pavlina Williams, AIA, Evangelique Zhao, AIA, Sebastian Mittendorfer, Scott Carter, AIA (project team)
Client: The Broad Foundation
Construction: Matt Construction
Structural Engineer: Nabih Youssef Associates; LERA Consulting
Civil Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers
M/E/P/FP/Life Safety Engineer: Arup
Lighting Design: Arup (gallery); Tillotson Design Associates
Vertical Transportation: Lerch Bates
Collection Storage: Solomon+Bauer+Giambastiani Architects
Security Consultant: DVS, a division of Ross & Baruzzini
Waterproofing: Simpson Gumpertz & Heger
Graphic Design: 2x4; Keith & Co.
Size: 120,000 square feet
Earlier Coverage:
Check out Joseph Giovannini's review of the Broad, "Inside Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Broad Museum," which ran online in September and then in our October 2015 issue.
Previously, the project received a 2014 P/A Awards Citation (in the 2014 Progressive Architecture Awards in our February 2014 issue):
Set in the cultural district along the City of Angels’ Grand Avenue, just south of Gehry Partners’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, the building accommodates two programs of the Broad Art Foundation. Its two-fold function—public exhibition space and an art archive supporting its lending activities—is manifested in a “veil and vault” design concept. The vault is an opaque mass hovering in the heart of the block-long structure; the veil is a cellular exoskeleton enveloping the surrounding volume, lifted at two corners to welcome the public. From the lobby, visitors are funneled upward on an escalator to an acre-sized, column-free gallery lit by diffuse light from the skylight-pierced roof. The return to the lobby is down a twisting stair that offers views into the vault’s holdings. A “pucker” on the avenue front draws a portion of the cellular envelope inward to the foundation’s conference room. Juror Nataly Gattegno cited the “interesting material explorations” of that envelope, which is constructed principally of glass-fiber-reinforced concrete. —John Morris Dixon, FAIA
Project Description
FROM THE AIA:
With its innovative “veil-and-vault” concept, The Broad showcases the comprehensive collection of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library. The “vault” storage holding shapes the museum experience for visitors who enter the lobby below its carved underside, shoot through it in the elevator, stand above it in the galleries, and peer in through viewing windows. The vault is enveloped by the “veil,” an airy, honeycomb-like structure that filters daylight into public galleries. Since opening in 2015, The Broad has welcomed more than 1.5 million visitors and has been heralded as a catalyst for urbanizing downtown Los Angeles.
FROM THE 2018 AIA INSTITUTE HONOR AWARDS FOR ARCHITECTURE JURY:
Simultaneously sedate and spectacular. It fits the context of the visually exuberant arts buildings in this neighborhood. More than holding its own as a figure, it also engages and takes the user in. The dark body-like, shapely vault is a beautiful counterpoint to the bright, thick, patterned light veil. The design intention is clear and carried through at every scale. The types of space created are unusual but engaging and composed.
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
Dubbed "the veil and the vault," the museum's design merges the two key programs 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 and public circulation routes. 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. The museum’s "veil" lifts at the corners, welcoming visitors into an active lobby with a bookshop and espresso bar. The public is then drawn upwards via escalator, tunneling through the archive, arriving onto an acre of column-free exhibition space bathed in diffuse light. This 24' high space is fully flexible to be shaped into galleries according to curatorial needs. Departure from the exhibition space is a return trip through the vault via a winding stair that offers glimpses into the vast holdings of the collection.
Jan. 8, 2013—New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro celebrates the topping off of The Broad in Los Angeles, with local officials and workers signing a ceremonial beam, which will be lifted to the top of the structure on downtown’s Grand Avenue. The 120,000-square-foot building will serve as public museum, private storage of the Broad archive, and headquarters to the Broad Art Foundation. To combine these various programs, the team at Diller Scofidio + Renfro—working with Gensler as executive architect—designed a light-controlled vault covered by a permeable, custom-formed GFRC veil. Visitors to the museum will enter beneath the veil, passing through the storage vault via escalator to 50,000 square feet of column-free, public galleries above. The museum will include a 200-seat lecture hall, as well as research spaces for visiting scholars.