How could a museum be made differently?  Typically, a museum is comprised of  flexible space that is able to conform and accommodate any exhibit and any shape, medium, or type of art.  Therefore, the museum is all too often an artful shell that contains art;   a white box that is disconnected from its contents.  Much like a person, a building needs to be itself; it needs to be honest to its character in order to be meaningful and have true purpose. 

The idea of an honest architecture is encompassed in the new building for LACMA by Peter Zumthor - a project that I have had the honor of working extensively on.    From the inside, it is a building that creates a silent, yet not surrendering sort of atmosphere; that establishes a symbiotic and complementary relationship with the art.  Light and shadow perform a slow dance throughout the day, swaying in the buildings volumes.  In turn, the striated soft spaces give structure to the light.

In order to give the art an uncompromised canvas, much of the non-art spaces have been stripped away from the main mass of the building.  Offices, storage, and other spaces usually off-limits to the public have been shed. The outcome of this is an exhibitionary space without boundaries; it is free to be explored, much like a playhouse.  The combination of an uninhibited space capable of being explored and re-explored with one that cooperates with its content without losing itself, allows the building to be alive; to have a soul.

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