Studiotipo

Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro Location: 221 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012, USA Executive Architects: Gensler

From the architect. The Broad is a new contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The museum, which was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will soon be open. The museum will be home to the nearly 2,000 works of art in The Broad Art Foundation and the Broads’ personal collections, which are among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide. With its innovative “veil-and- vault” concept, the 120,000-square-foot, $140-million building will feature two floors of gallery space to showcase The Broad’s comprehensive collections and will be the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library. The Broad is also building a 24,000-square-foot public plaza adjacent to the museum to add another parcel of critical green space to Grand Avenue.

LEED

The Broad targets LEED Silver certification. With its electric car charging stations, bike parking spaces, rooftop drains routed to street level gardens that filter runoff, high-efficiency plumbing fixtures that help reduce water use by 40 percent, and its easy access to public transit including adjacency to the new Metro Regional Connector station at the corner of 2nd Street and Hope Street, The Broad aims to be in the top tier of eco-conscious and efficient museums.

PRINCIPAL FEATURES

Dubbed “the veil and the vault,” the museum’s design merges the two key programs of the building: public exhibition space and the storage that will support The Broad Art Foundation’s extensive lending activities. Rather than relegate the storage to secondary status, “the vault” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. Its heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. Its carved underside shapes the lobby below and public circulation routes. Its top surface is the floor of the third floor galleries.

GANCHO: A COLLECTION OF GEOMETRIC WALL HANGERS

Avoid boring wall hooks and knobs with Madrid-based designer Octavio Asensio’s geometric wall hangers. Besides being functional, the Gancho collection adds a fun twist to your wall decor.

Whether you use just one or design a composition, they’ll fill out your empty surfaces with a bit of 3D, geometric-looking wall jewelry.

A fiber-reinforced plastic matrix acts as scaffolding that can be paired with conventional building materials to expand envelope design possibilities.

Additive manufacturing in architecture is in a race to the top—building bigger and better under tighter deadlines and with increasingly complex materials. But the technology is proving to be valuable in design and construction. Some architects are using it to push the boundaries of scale and form, while others are harnessing its precise nature to create component parts or accessories.

Chattanooga, Tenn.–based architect Platt Boyd, AIA, is working somewhere in between. He is the founder and CEO of a four-person startup, Branch Technology, that is developing a modular wall system pairing a free-form, 3D-printed open matrix core with conventional building materials. Branch Technology recently came out of stealth mode with the debut of a large-scale 3D printer that will be used to create wall modules. The printer has a 12.5-foot-long robotic arm on a 33-foot-long rail that together offer a print area of 25 feet wide by 58 feet long, allowing the team to build their modules larger and more efficiently.

Award: Bar Raval Through custom toolpaths and real-time trouble-shooting, Partisans realizes a Toronto bar that looks better in real life than on the screen.

Renowned Toronto chef Grant van Gameren and his partners envisioned their pintxos and tapas bar styled in a modern interpretation of Spanish Art Nouveau. Local firm Partisans responded with a design that covered the 1,500-square-foot restaurant's bar, walls, and ceiling with sinuous, voluptuous wood panels. The “desire [was] to create a full experience, like a work of art, and to bring the experience of socializing, eating, drinking, and architecture all into one ... composition,” says Partisans co-founder Alexander Josephson.