exterior view

ACCUMULATING DIFFERENCE

Withdrawn Interior

Los Angeles, California
Type: Museum
Instructor: Russell Thomsen
Partner: Artem Panchenko

The architecture of the museum has always served to organize and stage its contents. As an answer to the background of the ‘white cube’, we are exploring how the museum might itself be collection of interiors, a collection of difference much like its contents. A building is an accumulation of parts that make a whole, but in our case, the parts are not building elements but rather, entire interiors that make up worlds within a larger container. The withdrawn exterior remains intentionally mute, and offers little to suggest what happens on the interior, instead offering only an anonymous - urban presence. The act of organizing distinct interior worlds that maintain architectural interest beyond their contents suggests that the interior has become part of the collection itself - an accumulation of difference. The refusal to reveal the interior to the surrounding urbanism of DTLA serves to heighten a sense of other; the other world offered by exchange within the interior of the museum.

model photos

liner diagram

An idea of difference began to develop, that of a horizontal “plan world” vs. multiple but discrete tower like volumes primarily concerned with sectional space.Volumetric liners were inserted intoeach of these vertical volumes as a way to further individuate them, producing figures inside of figures. Appearing both single & multiple - not quite together, the towers jitter as each face addresses the context in its own way.

photo montage

Metropolis of Tomorrow by Hugh Ferriss

In contrast, the horizontal plan organization at the base of the building organizes one thing after another, allowing for multiple curatorial adventures. Just as Frank Ghery transformed a warehouse to into the Geffen, the existing building becomes a host to receive the new project. The legs allow the building to land gingerly in the existing Geffen - the new landing within the old. The Ghery becomes the plinth for the new building when the towers levitate over it, providing a buffer zone that allows light into the space. Preservation is no longer a retroactive idea, but rather a prospective one in pursuit of the formal promise of the existing geometry.

tectonic chunks

plan

The plan of the existing ground floor is altered to become more of a field space organization in order to contrast it with the ‘worlds’ that hover above in the multiple tower figures. The exteriors remain intentionally mute and distinct from the more withdrawn interior. Each of these volumes then becomes a different way to see different pieces in the collection, from smaller, serial objects to larger, more vertical ones.

section

crawling diagram

operational strategy

As opposed to a regular column grid, the ‘legs’ imply that the towerfigures are walking through the existing Geffen Contemporary. The transformation of the Geffen is intentional in the pursuit to generate multiple interior worlds.

south elevation

north elevation

The exterior form remains homogeneous and stable, while the interior tries to be more dynamic and multiple. It offers little to suggest what happens on the interior, instead offering only an anonymous, urban presence. Beyond a certain scale, the exterior of the building becomes independent of contexts; competing with the city for scale the museum is itself urban. The museum’s Bigness invites one to leave the urbanity of the city and dwell in the intense interiority of the building.

exterior view

elevation

Cole Kazuo Masuno

Cole Kazuo Masuno

ACCUMULATING DIFFERENCE