The undulating perforated building envelope is difficult to pinpoint. A close-fitting, garment whose mesh is optimised to prevent direct daylight from entering the museum, it appears as if it were draped over a 1960s shopping mall - as opposed to the sensual curves of a Hollywood starlet, which would be more in line with contemporary style. What's more: while Gehry's neighbouring concert hall behaves like an eccentric movie star and, correspondingly, hones in on the deconstructivist Zeitgeist of the 1990s, this streamlined facade is at odds with the district's current urban-development trend: the metamorphosis of Grand Avenue from a thoroughfare dedicated exclusively to the automobile to a place that invites pedestrians to linger. A Champs-Élysées for Los Angeles. Co-initiator of this ambitious urban-design project is Eli Broad, who reports that he has also supported Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, Isozaki's Museum of Contemporary Art and Piano's addition to the LACMA. Eli and Edythe Broad's art collections and foundations are valued at 2.6 billion dollars. Since the 1980s their foundation has loaned its prestigious works to museums throughout the world. The Broad is now the home of their "worldwide lending library". The foundation's character is reflected in the schedule of rooms. It includes not only exhibition spaces, but also sufficient room for a depot where more than 80 % of the paintings and sculptures are stored. Diller Scofidio + Renfro don't hide it in some hidden basement space, but allow visitors to experience it visually by situating the archive as a "box" between the exhibition spaces on the ground floor and the second storey. They interpret the dialectic between exhibition and archive as "veil and vault". Indeed, a passer-by entering the foyer from Grand Avenue encounters an amorphous sculpted space. The escalator whisks visitors up to the 57 ≈ 57 m exhibition space. The veil seems to have settled on the roof: the exhibition space is bathed in bright, glare-free daylight. As luck would have it, in downtown LA the street grid is skewed nearly 45˚ with respect to the cardinal directions. Thus the superimposition of the diagonal north-facing sheds on a field of lines parallel to the walls produces diamond-shaped skylights that continue over to the facades. This can only be experienced at the main front on Grand Avenue; the remaining three wall surfaces are closed off. Although elevators are available, it's worth the effort to take the stair down, because from it one gets glimpses into the depot and views out to Grand Avenue.
The renderings of the design implied a skin of load-bearing fibre-reinforced concrete. After various delays, in the end a steel framework cloaked in fibre-reinforced concrete elements was realised – the process was accompanied by continual discord between the contractor and the client regarding technical feasibility, cost overruns and unmet deadlines. The surfaces of the “vault” are not of exposed concrete, either, but are hung from the orthogonal building carcass. In fact, these concessions to pragmatism make the ambitious project likeable. A stone’s throw from Hollywood, the street itself becomes a stage. If one interprets the project as nimble West Coast digitalism, recalling both Venturi’s notion of the “decorated shed” and the raised corner entrance of the Juilliard School by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the building can to a certain degree be considered contextual. The public loves it, and not just because entrance is free. Venturi stated that “Main Street is almost all right.” But Grand Avenue has already gone a step further: it is on its way to becoming an urban space.
