Graduate Studio III - Architecture & Urbanism

Instructor - Nicholas De Monchaux

Collaborators - Lee Kuhn

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Los Angeles is most certainly an infrastructural city. Its operations are made possible by pulling the necessary resources from multiple states. With the task of imagining a "new" LACMA, it seemed proper to start with an examination of the reach one institution can have on its surrounding. By understanding the layers of operation in both the city and LACMA, it was apparent that approaching the project through systems expression was necessary. 

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Rather than bring the systems to the exterior, i.e. Renzo Piano's Pompidou, or let the systems serve spaces, the approach was to let the necessary systems make up the building itself. By layering the typical building services, program would begin to emerge and reveal new ways of understanding plan and section. 

“When your house contains so many services that the hardware could stand up by itself without any assistance from the house, why have a house to hold it up?” - Rayner Banham