en.Wedoany.com Reported - The David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will officially open on April 19. This $720 million public building has finally been completed after 20 years of controversy, redesigns, protests, and pandemic delays. Spanning Wilshire Boulevard, the structure was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and marks his first completed work in the United States.
The public building features ten towers supporting a 900-foot-long gallery, with its horizontal datum spanning the entire campus and cantilevering up to 80 feet in certain locations. The building's concrete serves as both structure and finish, executed by Largo Concrete of Clark Construction Group with over 100 different concrete pours. The ten towers rest on 40 seismic base isolators, with each larger isolator weighing approximately 40,000 pounds, allowing the building to move up to 5 feet in any direction during an earthquake. The project used over 85,000 cubic yards of concrete, employing various custom mixes and replacing Portland cement with alternative materials such as those from coal-fired power plants to reduce embodied carbon.
The public building's architect of record and structural engineer is Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who collaborated closely for a decade to advance the design from sketches to construction documents. The structure utilizes post-tensioning techniques, incorporating 360 miles of cable for structural control. The exterior façade features brass window walls manufactured by seele, with the largest glass panels measuring 28 feet high and 10 feet wide. The curtain wall's top transom penetrates the concrete structure and is connected to the concrete roof top chord via spring dampers to accommodate potential deflection of the gallery ceiling during seismic events.
The public building is designed to be 20% more energy efficient than the ASHRAE museum baseline. Its cantilevered design reduces solar heat gain, and the concrete acts as thermal mass to moderate interior temperatures. The building employs a limited material palette, including raw concrete, weathered brass window frames, and large, continuous glass panels that allow for bi-directional views. Peter Zumthor will participate in a conversation with the museum director on April 22.
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