#198: THE MOST COMPELLING BUILDINGS OF 2024

January 3, 2025

(photo by arch-exist)

2024 was a good year of good work. The ten buildings listed below are forceful architectural designs, hailing from Australia, Belgium, India, Mexico, Spain and the UAE. Four projects are from China, and unintentionally, none from the U.S. Perhaps my tastes for the “best of” lean towards international voices or maybe we American architects need to catch up. Nonetheless, here we go.

1: In Rizhao, China, architect Junya Ishigami offers the “gently gigantic” Zaishui Art Museum. Of this 0.6-mile long exhibition space, visitor center and shopping center, Ishigami explores, “How to bring environment and architecture as close as possible to each other…how to make nature the gentlest presence possible for us humans?” Daring and simple (not simplistic), the architect crafts 200,000 square feet into a linear form of air, water and white.

2: The Rajkumari Ratnavati Girl’s School, located in Salkha, Rajasthan, India, stands as both a heroic and modest gesture in the desert. For this school serving 400 girls, Diana Kellogg Architects present an elliptical masterpiece of hand-carved local Jaisalmer sandstone. To counter the 120-degree heat, the project employs ancient water harvesting techniques, a solar canopy that is also play equipment, and several passive cooling strategies.

3: Domain Architects connect two 1930s houses with a bridge-like corridor hovering over a pond. For Jiasing, China, the Lakeside Teahouse provides a resting spot for tourist, expressed as the collision of forms and time periods: the traditionalism of old structures with a sleek contemporary form of today.

4: With its sliding panels of wood slats, the façade of Paseo de Mallorca 15 is kinetic, expressing the many activities within. For this residential complex, architects OHLAB address the Mediterranean sun of Palm, Mallorca, Spain with straightforward means and methods. The result is a hand-crafted design countering the machine-fabricated architecture too often seen in apartment buildings.

5: With the Gran Acuario de Mazatlan in Mexico, Tatiana Bilbao creates a new kind of aquarium: the “flooded ruin.” 19 rooms within 186,000 square feet define an enigmatic, bunker-like composition. Intentionally heavy handed, raw, and gritty, the rose-tined concrete forms contrast the delicate spectacle of sea life. The fictional archeology might be accused of being theme-ish— perilously close to stage set design.

6: Together, architects Perkins & Will and Schmidt Hammer Lassen designed the monumental Beijing Performing Arts Centre for the historic port of Tongzhou, near Beijing, China. The ambitious program of an opera house, theater, concert hall, multipurpose hall and outdoor stage are expressed through metaphor—as both the sails of traditional canal boats and the parting of theatre curtains.

7: For the Melbourne Holocaust Museum in Elsternwick, Australia, Kerstin Thompson Architects expands the museum’s first home, an early 20th-century brick and timber building that had once been a pharmacy. The architects chose a “safe space” approach of informational exhibits, rather than the narrative experience at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. or the jarring architecture at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Behind a new façade of glass bricks and clay bricks—a patchwork of opacity, translucency and transparency constructed around the original museum—sit 20,000 historical artifacts within 43,000 square feet of educational and outreach spaces.

8: Giant, slender, mushroom-like columns—reminiscent of China’s ancient Ginkgo tree—become the signature of Snohetta’s Beijing Library in the Tongzhou District. Within today’s digital age, the architects argue for, “cultivation of human connections…” This sentiment generates the world’s largest conditioned reading room wrapped in the country’s largest load-bearing glazing system.

9: Building blocks stack like toys, generating the striking Atlantis The Royal in Palm Jumeirah Islan, Dubai, UAE. Architect KPF composes 2 million square feet of 795 hotel rooms and 231 residences, and occupies the skyline and context of the small surrounding homes. A play of positive and negative forms—presence and absence—creates terraces, private pools, gardens and prevailing breezes.

10: Along the Belgian coast of the seaside town of Middelkerkel, ZJA cleverly integrates architecture with flood defense infrastructure. A barrier of 33,000 square feet of sheet piling and 1,000 vertical piles provides storm resilience. Simply named Silt, this casino and 76-room hotel is both a landmark of civic presence interweaving craft and strength, design and engineering, and aesthetics and pragmatics.

For past years’ “top ten,” visit 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Or see my all-time 15 favorite buildings. Check out my favorite projects in Los Angeles and around Los Angeles. Lastly, my favorite architects living and from the past.

#24: PETERSEN AUTOMOTIVE MUSEUM: ARCHITECTURE OF THE GROTESQUE

December 18, 2015

Petersen Automotive Museum, Los Angeles, California (photo by BP Miller on Unsplash)

I don’t mean ugly or gross. The Grotesque, an art movement, originated in 16th century Italy, and by the 18th century, the philosophy traveled to France, Germany and England. The Grotesque exists today in many forms of painting, sculpture, music, literature, architecture, and other arts.

Originally, the decorative style combined and distorted human, animal, and plant parts. Whether in its basic historical form or in contemporary explorations, adjectives for the Grotesque include the following: bizarre, uncomfortable, disgusting, weird, comical, twisted, and deformed.

Take the 1963 recording of Thelonious Monk’s Tea for Two. This territorializing rendition is often thought of as melodically disturbed, unharmonious, and rhythmic off balance. Some have even called Monk’s music perverse and violent. But the irony is this: the so called ugliness of his music is often considered pleasurable. In fact, Monk’s music is considered one of the most important and most enjoyed jazz of our time, by experts and mainstream

Three Studies of George Dyer, 1967, by Francis Bacon — Three Studies of George Dyer, by Francis Bacon, 1967

In Francis Bacon’s paintings, note how often viewers comment on the artwork’s beauty, even when Bacon represents tortured and deformed faces.

Dining scene from The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, 1989

Consider Peter Greenaway’s 1989 The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. The vivid and lush interiors with the decadent and abundant dishes of food open the film beautifully and hypnotically. Eventually the interiors and food transform into something else.

Towards the end of the movie, the excesses of the cinematic beauty become repulsive. It is not simply that beauty is overtaken by the perverse, but all the same properties that made the films’ beauty actually beautiful, reaches the limit to represent the expected qualities of beauty. The overwhelming proportion of beauty becomes horrific but still attractive: the Grotesque.

Whether with Monk, Bacon or Greenaway, the evolution from beauty to something undesirable to something pleasurable, supports Immanuel Kant’s belief that beauty is restful and that the sublime is movement. Kant argues that, “this movement may be compared to a vibration, i.e. to a quickly alternating attraction toward, and repulsion from, the same object.”

And so it is with the Petersen Automotive Museum, recently opened to the public in Los Angeles. Previously, I critiqued the Broad vs. the Petersen, two local museums under construction at that time. As I started to write an article about the now complete museums, I chose to not compare and contrast. Instead, I sought an academic framework to discuss the Petersen.

I have no idea if the architects of the Petersen, KPF from New York, were testing the philosophy of the Grotesque. Somehow, I doubt it. But I think contemplating the enormous racing red and chrome building in an intellectual context gives the design prowess and gravitas. If not for such an academic narrative, then all I can hear from every passerby is, “This Petersen is ugly.”

Upon arriving at the museum, do not avert your gaze. Do not simply call it unattractive. Perhaps you will be taken by Kant’s movement, where this new sculptural building will repulse you and eventually attract you. Hopefully.

Facade detail, Petersen Automotive Museum, Los Angeles, California (photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash)

#10: MUSEUM VS. MUSEUM

June 5, 2015

The Petersen Automotive Museum (rendering by KPF)

Late 2015, Los Angeles will welcome two new museums: the Petersen Automotive Museum and the art museum simply called, The Broad. Before discussing these civic structures, let’s step back to the architecture of museums in general.

Traditionally, museums are empty vessels that come to life when artwork is inserted. This museum architecture is a neutral backdrop.

In opposition to this premise, architect Frank Gehry’s 1997 Guggenheim Museum is a work of art itself, and symbiotically co-exists with the art and sculptural installations. Considered one of the most influential living architects, Gehry created for Bilbao in Spain a design that counters the classical muted environment for art. By doing so, this museum has been hailed as one of the greatest buildings in current history.

top: Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain, by Frank Gehry (photo by David Vives from Pexelsl); Guggenheim, New York, New York, by Frank Lloyd Wright (photo by David Vives from Pexels)

In yet another approach, when Frank Lloyd Wright completed his Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 1959, visitors were stunned. No defined galleries existed, but rather, a continuous sloping floor of exhibits spiraled up six stories.

Complaints from curators were immediate. If they were to hang art parallel to the ground as one typically does, then it would be crooked to the sloping floor of the museum. But if the curators were to hang art parallel to the sloping floor, then the art would be at an angle—a warped viewing for visitors.

When Wright was questioned, he responded with indifference: the curators’ concerns were insignificant. The architect proclaimed that visitors have come to see art. And here, the art is his architecture, the building itself. Not the negligible objects within.

Back to the present. The soon-to-arrive Petersen museum, at a price tag of $125 million for 300,000 square feet, is designed by New York-based, corporate giant Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. The new Broad museum, $140 million for 120,000 square feet, is designed by New York-based creative studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

(I will not deliberate on the obvious question and necessary outcry: why are these two Los Angeles museums created by New York architects?)

For both the Petersen and the Broad, the large buildings present an aggressive exterior. Both facades are radical and alluring.

The Broad exterior detail (photo by Christian Acosta on Unsplash)

With a muscular honeycomb skin of precast concrete, the Broad is an enigmatic and commanding building. Called the “veil” by the architects, this elusive skin looks to the future, with an unintentional throwback to the 60’s office buildings that also employed modular concrete exteriors.

At the Petersen, a bizarre facade of seductive stainless steel ribbons wraps a bright red building. According to the architects, this design “evokes the imagery of speed and the organic curves of a coach-built automobile.” Though appropriate as a design theme for a museum of cars, I frankly don’t see it. It appears to be like an uncomfortable extra-terrestrial armor, instead of the sophisticated lines of a Citroen or Alfa Romeo.

Here’s one big thing that separates the two exteriors. The sculptural outside of the Broad is a beautifully patterned concrete fabric that is integral to the structure of the building. Also, this “veil” cleverly diffuses sunlight into the museum, providing bright and stimulating gathering spaces.

The endless ribbons of the Petersen are merely tacked on, superficially applied like mascara. Not even a part of the building’s structure, the zippy ribbons have no impact on the actual journey through the museum, other than the initial impact of a billboard that you see, read, and pass by.

The Petersen exterior detail (photo by Nikhil Mistry on Unsplash)

When the two museums are unveiled to the public, the quality of the interiors, the scale and character of the galleries, and the voyage from one exhibit to the next will all be judged.

Today’s vote of confidence is for The Broad. I see the pioneering vision that architects DS+R have created in their other outstanding works of civic architecture, such as the impressive High Line, a one-and-a-half-mile long, outdoor recreational space and social connector, hovering over the streets of Manhattan.

KPF’s Petersen museum tries hard with their automobile metaphor, and perhaps too hard. This design is a dangerous one-move dance number. At first glance, I am impressed with the self-assurance of form and color. Later, I am already fatigued by the architecture’s brashness, wishing there was some subtlety and depth.

For both projects, I enjoy the qualities of strength. Both architecture companies possess courage. Though some critics are tired of “statement” architecture—the headline grabbing designs—a museum needs to be exactly this. Museums are one of those rare city structures that speaks to the broadest community. Standing for generations, these buildings house the great minds of our artistic present and past.

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