Its the 8th January and after celebrating a brilliant Christmas and New Year in California I cannot wait to get stuck into my final Architectural Technology Project. So to get a head start I took an architectural tour of the Getty, the Getty was opened in 1974 and named after Paul Getty who donated $1.2 billion dollars in creating an art museum which is located in the hills of Los Angeles. The museum was designed by Richard Meier with various indoor and outdoor spaces and views across the city. With such a large budget inherited from Paul Getty there was a real opportunity to create a fantastic space for the community of Los Angeles and the tourists that visit.
The tour guide had taken us through the museum and explain to us the idea behind the design, both my partner and I described the feeling of how when entering the museum, it felt like walking into a completely different environment from what the city if Los Angeles gives, and it turns out that it was no accident!
The whole facade of the building, floor slabs and everything you can see from the outside space is completely in symmetry. All the materials are square, and the areas of those squares are factors of each other, meaning that all the material falls into the next simultaneously. This precise symmetry effect is used to give a feeling of relaxation which we could feel even before knowing that it was done on purpose!
If you look from the pictures all the trees and street furniture are purposely set out in equal dimensions apart, again this has been done purposely to add to the effect of symmetry. The final distinct attribute to the design was the framed views. Around the building are square frames that look out of place, but these are anything but out of place! They frame the view of the city as Richard Meier wanted visitors to feel they had a right to feel a part of the great city of Los Angeles.
As I have not been given our final Architectural Technology brief, I can only start to create my creative process to think how this design can be incorporated into the NSQ.
