NHM Commons, a new wing and community hub under construction at The Natural History Museums (NHM) of Los Angeles County, was designed to be both a destination and a portal into the building and to the surrounding grounds.
Major elements of the addition include sustainable gardens, a 400-seat multi-purpose theater that will offer daytime and evening events, free admission to the Judith Perlstein Welcome Center, which will house Gnatalie, “the first real skeletal mount of a long-neck dinosaur on the West Coast,” and Barbara Carrasco’s mural L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective.
The Commons’ amenities include a cafe with indoor/outdoor seating, a retail space inside the airy Wallis Annenberg Lobby, and a spacious plaza intended as a communal gathering point for events and relaxation. The latter will also serve as the Museum’s “front porch” to the neighboring Exposition Park.
The $75 million NHM Commons expansion and renovation, designed by Frederick Fisher & Partners with landscape design by Studio-MLA, will create 75,000 sf of renovated space and new construction. The Native American Advisory Council, which represents native communities in Southern California including Gabrieleno-Tongva, Tataviam, Chumash, and Ajachmem, contributed to programming and provided design input for the project. The council focused on ways to build a sense of welcome, acknowledgment, respect for native people who enter the space, and on opportunities to remind, express to, and educate visitors that Los Angeles is on native land.
NHM Commons is part of a 10-year plan aimed at increasing access to research and collections that will provide more resources and amenities for neighboring communities and create integrated indoor-outdoor destinations at The Natural History Museums in Exposition Park and at La Brea Tar Pits in Hancock Park.
The reimagining of La Brea Tar Pits—the only active urban paleontological site in the world—has begun with the early stages of master planning by the architectural team of Weiss/Manfredi.
On the project team:
Owner and/or developer: County of Los Angeles, Fundraising and Project Implementation by the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum Foundation
Design architect: Frederick Fisher and Partners
Architect of record: Frederick Fisher and Partners
MEP engineer: BuroHappold
Structural engineer: John A. Martin & Associates
General contractor/construction manager: MATT Construction
Related Stories
| Nov 3, 2014
IIT names winners of inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize
Herzog & de Meuron's iconic 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage in Miami Beach, Fla., is one of two winners of the $50,000 architectural prize.
| Oct 29, 2014
Diller Scofidio + Renfro selected to design Olympic Museum in Colorado Springs
The museum is slated for an early 2018 completion, and will include a hall of fame, theater, retail space, and a 20,000-sf hall that will showcase the history of the Olympics and Paralympics.
| Oct 23, 2014
Prehistory museum's slanted roof mimics archaeological excavation [slideshow]
Mimicking the unearthing of archaeological sites, Henning Larsen Architects' recently opened Moesgaard Museum in Denmark has a planted roof that slopes upward out of the landscape.
| Oct 16, 2014
Perkins+Will white paper examines alternatives to flame retardant building materials
The white paper includes a list of 193 flame retardants, including 29 discovered in building and household products, 50 found in the indoor environment, and 33 in human blood, milk, and tissues.
| Oct 15, 2014
Harvard launches ‘design-centric’ center for green buildings and cities
The impetus behind Harvard's Center for Green Buildings and Cities is what the design school’s dean, Mohsen Mostafavi, describes as a “rapidly urbanizing global economy,” in which cities are building new structures “on a massive scale.”
| Oct 12, 2014
AIA 2030 commitment: Five years on, are we any closer to net-zero?
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the American Institute of Architects’ effort to have architecture firms voluntarily pledge net-zero energy design for all their buildings by 2030.
| Oct 10, 2014
A new memorial by Zaha Hadid in Cambodia departs from the expected
The project sees a departure from Hadid’s well-known use of concrete, fiberglass, and resin. Instead, the primary material will be timber, curved and symmetrical like the Angkor Wat and other Cambodian landmarks.
| Sep 25, 2014
Jean Nouvel unveils plans for National Art Museum of China
Of the design, Nouvel describes it as inspired by the simplicity of “a single brush stroke.”
| Sep 24, 2014
Architecture billings see continued strength, led by institutional sector
On the heels of recording its strongest pace of growth since 2007, there continues to be an increasing level of demand for design services signaled in the latest Architecture Billings Index.
| Sep 24, 2014
Frank Gehry's first building in Latin America will host grand opening on Oct. 2
Gehry's design for the Biomuseo, or Museum of Biodiversity, draws inspiration from the site's natural and cultural surroundings, including local Panamaian tin roofs.