LA 166 Lecture Outline 2-5-07

 

 

The Getty Center, Los Angeles, California

 

Timeframe:  1990’s

 

European influence

            Classic and at the same time modern in its theories and approach to contemporary design.

 

Renaissance Humanist Theory

 

Architect: Richard Meier

 

Overall Design:

 

            Building and site integrated as one art form recalling the Renaissance spirit of design.

 

Plan of the complex encourages human interaction and both facilitates and contributes (as a work of art itself) to the Getty mission of serving the public in the understanding, enjoyment, and preservation of the world’s artistic and cultural heritage.

 

            The complex is informed by the natural context of its site.

 

Building Styles:

 

           Mediterranean tradition

 

           Modern variations

 

Gardens and Courtyards

 

           Gardens and courtyards designed to harmonize the various parts of the complex and to establish areas of human scale.

 

           Gardens inspired by Mediterranean tradition (Italian Renaissance Villa Gardens).

            Precedents:

relationships between buildings and surrounding landscape

the sequencing of outdoor spaces

scale and proportion

axial organization

the use of water – ornament, connections

the sensory response to materials

the ordering of nature


 

     Gardens and plazas informed by the built structures and respond to similar rules of proportion and geometry.

o               use of axis

o               the geometric layout of trees and shrubs

o               the combination of geometric and organic forms

 

 

The Olin Partnership, Philadelphia, Landscape Architects

 

            Design Elements:

                        Plazas

                        Plantings

                        Water

                        European Inventions / Constructions

 

 

Central Garden

            Robert Irwin, Artist

 

 

Getty’s connection to the city.