Italian architect Renzo Piano has unveiled a new wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art during the weekend, a project he said makes maximum use of the “amazing light” of a city prone to “crazy ideas”.
Architect Piano is the mastermind behind the City Gate project which is underway in Valletta.
The renowned master planner’s latest creation is the glass and stone Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, which will expand the museum’s exhibition space by 4,200 square metres.
Financed by American business tycoons Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the new building – a supremely minimalist rectangle of glass and stone with a zigzagging roof that filters a generous amount of light – is an entirely open space.
“This building has a radical and exaggerated flair to it... But Los Angeles is all about exaggeration,” said Mr Piano, 73.
“The idea of only having one floor, one plan, illuminated entirely by natural light would be dismissed as crazy anywhere but in Los Angeles. I could never have done this in Paris, London or New York.”
The Resnick Pavilion “is not a building, it’s a place. A happy, luminous place; not intimidating, very urban – which really is magical to find in Los Angeles,” he said.
Mr Piano appreciates the Californian megapolis, considered by some as an urban monstrosity, because “it’s all about an amazing light first”.
“An architect never comes to a city as a tourist because you go beyond the surface of things. You need to know the city’s most profound rituals, understand it, really penetrate it,” he said.
“You have to know a city to like it. And you start to like it when you discover its secrets. At first look, Los Angeles can seem a little superficial, too rushed. But who ever said speed was a bad thing?”
The 1998 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate said he “melts” into a city where he plans a new project.
“In Berlin, I become a Berliner. In Rome, I become Roman. In Los Angeles, I become an Angeleno,” he said.
A parking lot once occupied the space where the Resnick Pavilion now stands.
“It’s just perfect! The world over, people destroy buildings to build parking lots. In Los Angeles, the city where the car is king, we are destroying a parking lot to replace it with a museum,” said Mr Piano.
And, in another unusual twist, workers found oil when they dug to lay the pavilion’s foundations, he said.
“Usually, when we lay the foundations of a building in Europe, we find historic ruins or relics. Here, we found oil!”
Keen on experimenting, as with the high-tech Centre Georges Pompidou museum complex in Paris, Mr Piano said this time he pushed even further with how he played with light.
“If you took a sectional look at the building, you would notice that the roof is designed to cut the southern light and soak in the northern light,” he said.
“Light is what allows you to be rather extreme or radical when you are creating a space for art, without fearing competition with the artwork because light is always good for art.”
The architect luminary was quick to recognise his ideas are sometimes considered unorthodox, especially in the eyes of builders and master builders.
“I know how to say ‘no’ in all languages. It’s the word I know best!” he joked. “(Intellectual) laziness is a bad thing. It’s universally wrong.”