#208: ZUMTHOR IN PROGRESS AT LACMA

July 4, 2025

(photo by Anthony Poon)

In June, LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) invited select visitors to marvel at their nearly finished $750 million museum. Of this project by Pritzker-honored, Swiss architect, Peter Zumthor, celebration and applause accompanied uneasiness and doubt.

Named the David Geffen Galleries, Zumthor’s new museum exploits minimalism to various extremes. Only two materials—concrete and glass—define the entirety of this 347,500-square-foot structure, of which 110,000 square feet comprise the exhibition area. Contrasting the perimeter of floor-to-ceiling windows set in brass frames, every other surface is concrete—as in concrete walls, concrete floors, concrete roof, concrete ceiling, concrete stairs, and so on.

Critics pondered: How do you hang art on concrete walls or from concrete ceilings?

LACMA’s CEO, Michael Govan, defended, “You can just drill right into the walls.” He claimed that with each new exhibit, curators can patch up the holes and drill more where needed. “It’s supposed to be like a good pair of old blue jeans that gets better with time.” Sentiments of patina referenced wabi-sabi. I predict that the future of these concrete surfaces will have some kind of hanging display system, hopefully in matching brass.

Critics continued: With so much glass, isn’t sunlight bad for viewing art and the preservation of it? In earlier presentations, Zumthor stated his fascination with horizontal light striking sculptures. Also, light-controlled galleries placed away from the windows will address UV light and radiant heat

Curiosity revolved around this museum conceived as a massive one-floor, curving form, as compared to a traditional boxy building of multiple floors, hierarchical departments, and chronological galleries.

LACMA responded, “The horizontal, single-level layout eliminates traditional cultural hierarchies, placing all works on the same plane…” Of the “non-hierarchical” architecture, Govan exclaimed democratically, “I don’t want anyone in the front.”

The project’s progress is a milestone in a journey over two decades. It started with an international design competition in 2001, won by Rem Koolhaas with a glass roof design—not convincingly buildable. Zumthor entered the scene in 2009, impressing architects, as he usually does, with ideas of incredible genius. The original design comprised an all-black building supposedly inspired by the amoebic shapes at the nearby La Brea Tar Pits. To accommodate Zumthor’s vision, called by many as “The Blob,” he required the demolition of four major buildings on the museum campus.

At LACMA, one can see the strengths apparent in Zumthor’s portfolio. His work exudes an authority through elemental minimalism. His architecture edits and curates moves of simplicity and singularity. His uncompromising details may be attributed to his cabinet maker father. Investigating basic materials like concrete, stone, and wood, Zumthor’s structures are sensuously tactile—a palpable spirituality.

But expectations can be so high, maybe too high. There are disappointments here. In 2014, the design was forced, due to budget, to be smaller and in conventional gray concrete, no longer an enigmatic black. The building maintains the heroic minimalism, but loses the elegance and exquisite beauty seen in the architect’s other works. The poetry coming from simplicity still persists, but many of the compromises are severe, particularly for an architect considered to be uncompromising. One of the most unfortunate changes from the original scheme is the straightening of curving floors and windows, seen most impotent under a roof where the bold sweeping edge remains.

With such concessions, the architect has distanced himself, “saying he had repeatedly been forced to ‘reduce’ his design, and that the experience had convinced him to never again work in the US,” reported The Guardian. Adding insult to injury, several advocacy groups had banned to stop the project. Even alternative designs were proposed pro-bono from many architects.

LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries and its 142,000 works of art are targeted to open in spring 2026—and the final judgment is TBD. Stay tuned.

#204: TADAO ANDO | MUSEUM MINUS THE ROOF

April 11, 2025

(photo by Anthony Poon)

In a world of architectural iteration and imitation—where ideas are too prevalent through the influential forces of media—it is rare to find a project that is the exception to the rule. In Kyoto, Japan, the Garden of Fine Arts is a unique museum simply for one reason: It has no roof.

Self-taught architect, Tadao Ando, born 1941, started his career as a professional boxer—of all things. It is said that his visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tokyo Imperial Hotel inspired the young boxer to switch from fighting others with his fists to fighting creative ideas with pencil and paper. Running an architectural studio in Osaka, the 1995 Pritzker Prize-recipient offers Zen-like, minimal, austere designs. Wikipedia states, “Ando’s architectural style is said to create a ‘haiku’ effect, emphasizing nothingness and empty space to represent the beauty of simplicity.”

The architectural elements of the Garden of Fine Arts make up an economic mixture: overlapping walls, ramps and water. The open-air museum starts at street level, then ramps visitors down and further down—a design that retains views to the Botanical Gardens nearby and Higashiyama mountains beyond.

Completed in 1994, the building—a kind of anti-building—delivers the art world of Europe to a historical capital city of Japan. The spiritual journey within the museum presents eight classic masterpieces reproduced on ceramic porcelain panels/plates, to name a few:

da Vinci’s Last Supper,
Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment,
Monet’s Water Lilies, and
Renoir’s On the Terrace.

Throughout the project, Ando uses his signature material, poured-in-place concrete. It is not applied in a commonplace manner. Rather, his concrete possesses a luxurious quality akin to natural stone. There is no industrial rawness here. Instead, the architect achieves lightness, even silkiness. Concrete is rarely used in Japanese architecture, whether traditional or contemporary. The country’s design vernacular looks towards wood, stone and paper, yet nearly all of Ando’s works are entirely concrete, cast in place.

An additional design material—if you can call it that—is used throughout, an unexpected medium—that of sound. The building engages the museum-goer aurally, as one hears: footsteps reverberate on concrete; breezes wrap around corners; voices echoe from behind walls; and waterfalls crash into shallow reflecting pools.

And with no roof, the design relies heavily on the walls. Such walls: present art; loosely imply rooms; guide one’s path into the earth; frame views and vistas; and slice through space. Tadao Ando has proclaimed, “At times walls manifest a power that borders on the violent. They have the power to divide space, transfigure place, and create new domains. Walls are the most basic elements of architecture, but they can also be the most enriching.”

(from architectureassociate.blogspot.com)

#161: AUTHENTICITY AND DISHONESTY IN MATERIALS

November 18, 2022

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, by Louis Kahn (photo by Abhishek Donda on Unsplash)

”If you think of Brick, you say to Brick, ‘What do you want, Brick?’

“And Brick says to you, ‘I like an Arch.’

“And if you say to Brick, ‘Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel over you. What do you think of that, Brick?’

“Brick says, ‘I like an Arch.’

“And it’s important, you see, that you honor the material that you use. You can only do it if you honor the brick and glorify the brick instead of shortchanging it.” So proclaimed Louis Kahn.

Louis Kahn,1901-1974 (photo from architectural-review.com)

When classical composers wrote music, the work was specific to the instruments selected. No one would ever imagine Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto featuring a clarinet, rather than the virtuoso 88 keys of a piano. That would not only be outrageous to consider, but blasphemous.

But when J.S. Bach composed his world-famous violin concertos, he also recommended that the lead part need not be a violin, but could be a piano or even an oboe—or what have you. This nonchalance argues that there is nothing authentic or integral in what he has written—that the music can be sacrilegious to the instrument. Is the piano and the oboe dishonest to the violin?

J.S. Bach, 1685-1750 (photo from oae.co.uk)

If one thinks of music as a physical building material, then Bach’s approach is unfaithful to the inherent qualities of a material. Architecturally speaking, Bach would suggest that a wood structure could also be made of glass or a glass building successful in brick. But what would I.M. Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre be if not sleek glass and delicate steel? What would it be as brick?

Pyramid at the Louvre Museum, Paris, France, I.M. Pei (photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash)

Building materials have essential qualities, both within the laws of physics as well as emotional perception. For example, concrete has the capacity to bear weight, hence its use in foundations and structural walls. Concrete also has an innate personality of strength and durability. But steel, which can also takes on the role of muscularity, can be used with sinuous subtlety.

Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California, by Louis Kahn (photo by Sam Li on Unsplash)

Historically, glass serves as a window, a view through a solid wall in which to look out and let in light. Transparency was inherent to glass. But in contemporary architecture, glass is not necessarily clear. Glass can be a construction material that solidly wraps a building, similar to stone, wood, or plaster. With opaque glazing, such as spandrel glass, one is not expected to see through the material at all, but now something you look at.

132 Rosetti, Basel, Switzerland, Herzog and de Meuron (photo by Margherita Spiluttini)

Whether respecting the intrinsic nature of materials—or of classical instruments—or whether the approach is one of contemporary interpretation or even irony, materials have integral truths, righteous morality even, as Kahn might suggest. Bach often implied: Know the rules before you decide to break them.

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