Construction on George Lucas' otherworldly museum in Los Angeles nears completion, offering a glimpse into its upcoming unveiling.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a five-story, 300,000 sq ft building, is set to grace Los Angeles' Exposition Park. Co-founded by George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson, the museum's mission is to explore how visual stories reflect and shape society.
The museum's design, inspired by natural topographies, aims to provide openness, imagination, and peace, with the soft, sculptural form inviting reflection and the pathways and thresholds encouraging movement and discovery. Ma Yansong, the architect of the museum, hopes his architecture evokes emotion, aiming to create a sense of wonder, possibility, and connection to something larger than oneself.
The building's design, executed by Ma Yansong of Beijing studio MAD Architects and Stantec as executive architect, incorporates a variety of sustainability features. These features are designed to integrate the building with its natural surroundings and minimize environmental impact.
One such feature is the super-insulated building envelope, which enhances energy efficiency by minimizing heat loss or gain, helping maintain comfortable indoor temperatures with less energy usage. The building also boasts a geothermal system that provides efficient heating and cooling by using the earth's stable underground temperature.
The museum's rooftop, spanning nearly 1.5 acres, is being designed as a verdant, immersive environment by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. The roof will feature undulating landforms, 200 trees, hundreds of native and drought-tolerant plantings, a hanging garden, amphitheatre, meadow, and a waterfall. These elements contribute to passive cooling strategies, helping the museum blend into the park’s topography.
The museum's rooftop photovoltaics, covering 24,000 sq ft, generate renewable energy on-site, helping to reduce the building’s carbon footprint. Rainwater harvesting is another sustainability feature, collecting and reusing rainwater to reduce reliance on municipal water and support irrigation and other needs.
The museum's design also includes a seismic isolation system engineered to withstand 42 inches of ground movement in any direction, ensuring durability and longevity.
At the center of the building, the museum's plaza will be covered by an elliptical oculus that marks a gateway to the larger park. The museum's surrounding landscape, designed by Mia Lehrer, aims to transform a former parking lot into a park that connects the museum to the surrounding landscape and streetscape.
The museum will house much of Lucas' art collection and artifacts from the Lucasfilm archives, including props, costumes, and storyboards from Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Despite initial projections of opening in 2021, the museum has seen delays due to the pandemic and other setbacks. However, the team has used this time to refine their thinking around sustainability, materials, and public space.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, with its blend of architecture, landscape, and the surrounding city and natural environment, aims to be part of a living system, fostering social interaction and enhancing urban ecology.
[1] Los Angeles Times - Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Exposition Park will feature native plants, waterfall and amphitheater
[2] Architectural Digest - The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles Is a Masterpiece in the Making
[1] The rooftop of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, located in Los Angeles' Exposition Park, will be transformed into a verdant, immersive home-and-garden environment, featuring undulating landforms, 200 trees, native and drought-tolerant plantings, a hanging garden, amphitheatre, meadow, waterfall, and more.
[2] Promising to blend seamlessly with its natural surroundings, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, currently under construction in Los Angeles, aims to foster social interaction and enhance urban ecology, becoming part of a living system that reflects the museum's mission to explore how visual stories reflect and shape society, extending this concept to the museum's lifestyle and design.
