COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin The Research Institute at
the Getty Center overlooks the Central Garden. At the bottom of the
Central Garden, water gushes over a stepped stone wall into a pool
with a maze of 400 azaleas.
By Laura Morgan
Daily Bruin Contributor
Architecture is art. Yet, in the case of museums, architecture
houses art as well.
Therefore when it comes time to redesign a museum’s
central piece of art, questions undoubtedly arise about what the
architecture conveys.
Whether it be the J. Paul Getty Museum atop the Santa Monica
Mountains, the UCLA Hammer Museum on Wilshire Boulevard or the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, a museum’s architecture is the
biggest and most obvious artwork the museum has to offer.
“The architecture represents a set of values that are the
most fundamental ideas of the way museums see themselves. It makes
permanent those values.” said Thom Mayne, a UCLA architecture
and urban design professor, in a phone interview.
With the growing number of visitors and expanding collections,
however, museums such as the Getty Center, Hammer Museum and LACMA
have all undertaken the task of redesigning. The process is not an
easy one as many factors must be considered and many needs must be
met.
 COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin UCLA Hammer Museum
An artist’s rendering shows the South Courtyard of the
UCLA Hammer Museum as it will be after the 2002 redesign.
When the Getty Center began planning the construction on their
new site in 1982, its board had to choose a location and an
architect. Richard Meier, the architect in charge, was chosen
through a design contest, from a pool of applicants.
The Center was moving from its Pacific Palisades location, which
is currently being renovated. The center will have two branches
when that site reopens in 2004.
The board chose the new location based on the natural beauty of
the hilltop locale, and after 12 years of construction, the center
opened in 1994.
LACMA is going through a similar process now, the difference
being that they are not changing locations.
 COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin The entrance of the Getty
Center features a cylindrical space which recalls the soaring
rotundas of many great buildings of the past.
“We started with a very detailed needs assessment of
LACMA,” said Keith McKeown, a LACMA spokesperson. “That
pointed out not only (that) we need a capacity to grow our space to
be able to deal with our growing permanent collection, but it also
pointed out to us that the way the building is configured now can
be very confusing to the visitor, in terms of finding their way
around from one gallery to the next.”
Once they created a list of needs, LACMA needed to find an
architect who could fulfill them. They originally selected 40
architects, then after further study narrowed the list to 10.
“We sought from many different sources, a list of
world-class architects who would be appropriate for this kind of
facility,” McKeown said.
 Photos by COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin The 120-foot
linear fountain is located at the museum courtyard. It is bordered
on one side by a row of Mexican cypress trees. From there, the
members of the committee and other key staff visited these
architects’ previous projects and their studio, cutting the
list in half to five architects. These were then invited to submit
designs, given LACMA’s need assessment.
Mayne was one of the architects invited to submit plans. He
believes that a museum’s architecture plays a crucial role in
its collection.
“I tried to make the design interact with the
museum’s collection,” Mayne said in a phone interview
from his office. “The collection is comprehensive. We were
interested in the scope of the work and the differentiations of
collections.”
The idea of linking architecture and collections is not
exclusive to LACMA. Architect Michael Maltzan, who redesigned the
Hammer Museum, said he also believes the architecture of a museum
and its exhibits interact to enhance a visitor’s
experience.
 The Central Garden features a pool with a maze of 400
azaleas. Surrounding the pool is an assortment of colorful
specialty gardens.
Because the museum has both permanent and changing exhibitions,
what we’ve tried to do is make both the permanent and
changing exhibitions not only more accessible, but also more
accessible between the two, and in doing that we tried to connect
the different collections and exhibitions,” Maltzan said of
his design, set to be built in early 2002.
In addition to making sure the architecture and collections
complement one another, redesigners must address the underlying
issue that the architecture not only convey artistry, but also
practicality.
In many ways I think you can look at the building as having many
functions, not only those of artistry and practicality,”
Maltzan said. “It has to certainly show the art very well,
and we are doing that by creating a series of additional gallery
spaces in which a portion scale and light are really the major
considerations. But technically the museum has the function of
propelling an exciting place to be for the public, not just in
seeing art but also participating in a much wider range of possible
programs.”
 The museum entrance features a contrast between the
rough-hewn travertine and the flue look of glass and metal panels
as it welcomes visitors to the Getty Center. And in order to
prepare for these programs, the Hammer Museum is adding a new
theater for the UCLA Film and Television Archives, a new restaurant
and an extended bookstore.
Yet with the growing number of needs and the addition of new
programs and facilities, the cost of a museum’s redesign can
easily begin to accumulate.
 The view atop this building features the Garden Terrace
Cafe below and the Los Angeles landscape in the distance.
For instance, the Getty Center construction cost $1 billion,
while the Hammer Museum’s project, which is scheduled to
begin in early 2002, will cost $25 million. As for LACMA, the
redesign’s final cost cannot be determined until an architect
is chosen, although McKeown could cite a working estimate.
“We need to raise approximately $300 million for any new
facilities, for money that will maintain the facility, and provide
us with the ability to program in the facility. Now that is a
number that is not firm, because until we get much further along,
we won’t have an absolute cost for what we are going to
do,” he said.
The highly predicted cost has affected the way in which redesign
plans will be carried out.
“We asked the architects to give us plans that could be
done in phases, so that if we have the money to do one phase of an
overall redesign, whatever it is we were to build in Phase One
would be a complete and useful facility in and of itself,”
McKeown said.
Even though these changes will require enormous resources,
representatives for both the Hammer Museum and LACMA feel that the
existing structures have not served the functional as well as
identity needs of the museum.
“A lot of the work that we are doing is primarily focused
on trying to create a building that will greatly enhance the
visitors’ experience,” Maltzan said about the Hammer
project.
Each museum says it is trying to provide a memorable and
educational experience for the community, both through the
collection and the architecture.
“What we’ve tried to convey is an institution that
is really a center for culture, and a center for culture that is
accessible to both UCLA and the surrounding Los Angeles community,
as well as having a broader international presence,” Maltzan
said.