Portfolio | The Broad

When I was in Los Angeles last month, I was able to set up a hardhat tour of The Broad, the contemporary art museum, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, now under construction one block over from the Disney Concert Hall and across the street from MoCA. When completed, the museum will house the 2,000 works in Eli and Edythe Broad’s collections, with a select number on display in a top-floor gallery. The carapace of the building, called “The Veil” is made of a series of molded fiberglass-reinforced concrete panels, that come down to the ground and go over the top. The building’s floors, storage and circulation are housed in “The Vault,” a poured-concrete wedge that cantilevers up and over the lobby, and is pierced by a glass elevator, a theme-park escalator, and a cavernous staircase. Windows from that staircase will offer a glimpse into the paintings storage, and a sense of the depository physically and conceptually beneath the upstairs gallery. Even three-quarters finished, that room seemed to float.

The museum was originally supposed to open by the end of 2014 (and indeed, I could get a pretty good sense of the architecture and spaces on the tour). Construction delays and a lawsuit have put off the opening date. I suspect a big party this time next year. Despite not always being a fan of the work of DS+R, I’m excited to see how it turns out. As I walked around, I did not see the potato-chip lawns, drop-down windows and stair wedges that have cropped up a few too many times. Well, in the garden next door, there is a little dished green. But the outdoor stars are a set of 100-year-old olive trees that are sculptures unto themselves, and seem to correspond to the underground vocabulary of the concrete Vault. The visual references I scribbled in the margins of my notebook were divertingly various: Marcel Breuer, The Hobbit, Carsten Holler. It feels like they will avoid the most obvious critique of any architecture who tried to build next to a Gehry — that it looks like the box that the concert hall came in.

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