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.
Project Credits
Project The Broad, Los Angeles
Client The Broad Art Foundation
Architect Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York—Elizabeth Diller (principal-in-charge); Ricardo Scofidio, AIA, Charles Renfro, AIA (principal designers); Kevin Rice (project director); Kumar Atre, Oskar Arnorsson, Gerardo Ciprian, Charles Curran, Robert Donnelly, Christopher Hillyard, Matthew Johnson, Patrick Ngo, Quang Truong, AIA (concept team); Ryan Botts, John Chow, Robert Condon, AIA, Zachary Cooley, Eliza Higgins, Michael Hundsnurscher, Robert Loken, AIA, Nkiru Mokwe, William Ngo, Matthew Ostrow, Haruka Saito, AIA, Daniel Sakai, AIA, Andrea Schelly, Anne-Rachel Schiffmann, AIA, Zoe Small, AIA (project team)
Executive Architect Gensler, Los Angeles—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 (project team)
Plaza Architect Adamson Associates Architects (executive architect); Diller Scofidio + Renfro (design architect)
Structural Engineer Leslie E. Robertson Associates; Nabih Youssef Associates
Civil Engineer KPFF Consulting Engineers
M/E/P/FP and Gallery Lighting Engineer Arup, I.S.Leng, Mininger
Lighting Design Tillotson Design Associates
Vertical Transportation Lerch Bates
Collection Storage Solomon + Bauer + Giambastiani Architects
Size 120,000 square feet
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