Zumthor Tweaks LACMA Design

When LACMA released Peter Zumthor's expansion design to the public one year ago, the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits was highly critical of it, since the floating, oil-spill-like form of the museum encroached on the tar pits. As reported today in the Los Angeles Times, Zumthor has taken their comments seriously in revisions for the $650 million project, modifying the undulating plan and bridging the building over Wilshire Boulevard in order to maintain a reasonable distance from the tar pits. The above site plan shows the 2013 scheme outlined in dashed lines, and with the just-released revision in solid lines.

Through the revisions LACMA has "gained preliminary support from city and county officials to extend the new building south so that it spans Wilshire Boulevard," per the LA Times article. Further, architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne says, "Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has backed the idea of spanning Wilshire," a bold move that "Zumthor has only begun to grapple with." There is still plenty of architectural refinement to come, but this revision takes the project one step closer to fruition.