The Broad, with its honeycomb exterior and that big eye or “oculus” overlooking Grand Avenue in Downtown LA, is breaking ground today on an expansion that will add 55,000 square feet — offering more galleries, programming space, and open-air patios. Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the architects behind the current building, designed this addition. It comes as the museum celebrates its 10th anniversary, showcasing works of post-war artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and more contemporary ones like Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker.
Culture critic Carolina Miranda explains that when the building had its grand opening in 2015, staff expected 250,000 visitors per year, and now they’ve been getting over 900,000.
“Often there are significant lines to get in. So an expansion is probably not a bad idea. I mean, does anyone really need a museum expansion? That's a whole other question,” she says.
The original building was a concrete core containing storage for Eli Broad’s art collection, covered by a fiberglass-reinforced concrete honeycomb pattern that was described as a veil and more affectionately known as “the cheese grater,” she explains.
Now the architects are inverting that idea for the extension, which will be done in smooth, polished concrete, and be located at the rear of the building. The view will be a “spaghetti of roads that lead from Hope [St.] to Figueroa [St.], and the Metro station is right there.”
Miranda says she’s ambivalent about the design.
“I dig that cavernous concrete lobby, which is probably not going to make me popular with a lot of architecture critics, but there's just something about that geologic sensation that you get when you walk in there that I like, along with the long escalator ride up that tube that then births you onto the third floor galleries. I think that experience is pretty terrific.”
She continues, “But I think the facade … has always felt a little awkward. And when it rains, it gets streaky and gross. And I also think that there's issues internally with the layout of the galleries that could definitely use some work.”