Peter Zumthor’s David Geffen Galleries at LACMA: Redefining Museum Space in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) occupies a historically significant site at the edge of Hancock Park, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits, one of the world’s most important Ice Age fossil deposits. Since the 1920s, the area has served both scientific and cultural purposes, though often in tension rather than in harmony. When LACMA opened its original campus in 1965, the Pereira-designed pavilions were celebrated for asserting Los Angeles’s cultural aspirations. Yet the buildings were soon criticized for their poor spatial organization, disconnection from Wilshire Boulevard, and failure to engage meaningfully with the surrounding parkland.

David Geffen Galleries at LACMA Technical Information

• Architects^1-17: Peter Zumthor
• Collaborating Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill 
• Location: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, USA
• Site Area: Approximately 3.5 acres
• Total Floor Area: 220,000 sq ft | 20,438 m²
• Project Years: 2009 – 2026
• Photographs: © Iwan Baan

Architecture is not about form, it is about many other things. The light and the use and the structure. It is the soul of a place.

– Peter Zumthor

David Geffen Galleries at LACMA Photographs

Revisiting the Site: Context

Over the decades, multiple architectural interventions attempted to rectify these shortcomings. Additions by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer and Bruce Goff expanded LACMA’s footprint without resolving the lack of architectural coherence. Rem Koolhaas’s 2001 proposal to demolish and consolidate the campus was radical but unbuilt, while Renzo Piano’s more restrained master plan introduced improvements without fundamentally altering the fragmented condition.

Peter Zumthor’s intervention builds upon this history, not by layering yet another architectural language onto the site, but by proposing an entirely new spatial framework. His design does not attempt to repair the campus through incremental gestures. Instead, it rethinks the museum typology and its relationship with the city, the park, and the idea of permanence.

Design Intent: Typology, Circulation, and Spatial Experience

Zumthor’s proposal for the David Geffen Galleries abandons the traditional multi-winged museum layout in favor of a continuous, single-story structure elevated on concrete pavilions. This hovering gallery spans Wilshire Boulevard, connecting the north and south sides of the campus both visually and functionally. By raising the gallery above the city, Zumthor introduces a threshold between urban noise and contemplative interiority.

The design eliminates hierarchies within the collection. All departments share a unified exhibition level, removing the historical divisions between disciplines. Instead of a singular grand entrance, the building introduces eight thematic cores at the plaza level, each with independent access points, vertical circulation, and ancillary programs. These cores are conceived as open-storage spaces and study centers, visible from the exterior through large glass panels. Visitors are invited to enter through any of the cores and ascend to the exhibition level, which surrounds a central void and offers access to six distinct gallery areas.

Circulation is structured through the Veranda Gallery, a glazed perimeter corridor that wraps the entire elevated plan. This continuous path serves as both a promenade and an orienting device. It offers framed views of the city while allowing visitors to move freely across the museum without a prescribed route. This spatial openness reflects a rejection of didactic exhibition narratives in favor of visitor-driven experiences.

Materiality, Environmental Strategy, and Construction Approach

Materially, the project is marked by a restrained yet powerful palette. The use of low-carbon concrete in the structural pavilions and floor plates speaks to both durability and environmental responsibility. These concrete volumes serve as tectonic anchors, containing not only vertical circulation but also restaurants, educational facilities, and mechanical infrastructure.

The structural system separates the expressive curvilinear form of the gallery level from its supporting base. This formal disjunction reinforces the conceptual separation between everyday functions and the elevated world of art. The roofline, continuous yet varied, responds to programmatic needs and views, creating a dynamic spatial ceiling that is both felt and seen.

The glass perimeter and translucent wall systems contribute to natural illumination while maintaining environmental control. The project integrates radiant heating and cooling, along with strategies for natural ventilation, to achieve LEED Gold standards. The architecture is performative in its environmental response, without overtly aestheticizing its sustainability.

Cultural Positioning: Public Space, Temporality, and Institutional Identity

Zumthor’s design asserts a new model for museum architecture, one that privileges openness, flexibility, and site-specific integration over monumentality. The David Geffen Galleries do not impose a formal order on the city. Instead, they create a suspended field of cultural activity, open to reinterpretation and reoccupation over time.

The outdoor plaza level is programmed with amenities and public artworks, fostering a permeability between the museum and its civic context. Installations by Mariana Castillo Deball, Sarah Rosalena, and Tony Smith, among others, anchor the landscape as an extension of the museum experience. These interventions mark the return of art to the exterior realm, accessible even when the galleries are closed.

The phased opening strategy, beginning in 2025 with public activation and culminating in a full launch in 2026, reflects the museum’s evolving identity. Rather than presenting a finished object, Zumthor offers an architectural framework that accommodates growth, transformation, and temporal layering.

David Geffen Galleries at LACMA Plans

Image Gallery

About Peter Zumthor

Peter Zumthor is a Swiss architect renowned for his minimalist yet atmospheric buildings, which emphasize materiality, sensory experience, and contextual sensitivity. Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2009, Zumthor has built a small but influential body of work, including the Therme Vals in Switzerland and the Kunsthaus Bregenz, characterized by careful craftsmanship and a deep engagement with place. His architecture often explores silence, slowness, and the emotional resonance of space.

Credits and Additional Notes

1. Client: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

2. Previous LACMA Gallery Space: 130,000 sq ft (12,077 m²)

3. Structure: Single-story elevated gallery supported by seven concrete pavilions

4. Building Height: Exhibition level elevated ~30 feet (9.1 meters) above grade

5. Structural Materials: Low-carbon concrete, glass

6. Facade: Continuous glazed perimeter at upper level

7. Environmental Certification Goal: LEED Gold

8. Sustainability Features: Radiant heating/cooling, natural ventilation, low-carbon materials

9. Key Public Features: Veranda Gallery, East West Bank Commons, Steve Tisch Theater, W.M. Keck Education Center

10. Key Donors: David Geffen ($150 million), Elaine Wynn ($50 million), Ann Colgin, Joe Wender, Ryan Seacrest, Ashley and Marc Merrill

11. Design Start: Initial studies began in 2009

12. First Design Revealed: 2013

13. Major Redesign: 2014 (to avoid intrusion into La Brea Tar Pits)

14. Demolition of Previous Structures: 2020

15. Construction Completion: End of 2024

16. Phased Public Activation: Begins Summer 2025

17. Official Opening: April 2026

18. This statement, made when Zumthor accepted the commission originally intended only for a single building, captures his holistic design philosophy and his refusal to treat the LACMA campus as a fragmented collection of structures. Instead, it signals his ambition to reimagine the museum’s architecture as a unified spatial and experiential system, integrating building, site, and city into a coherent whole.