Renzo Piano's Academy Museum of Motion Pictures gets go-ahead
Renzo Piano’s designs for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures are to be realised, after Los Angeles City Council gave the final stamp of approval for the US$300m (€263.5m, £190.4m) development.
With planning permission now granted, museum representatives hope to open the facility to the public by 2017. The council voted unanimously 13-0 in the development’s favour, with construction potentially starting by the of this summer.
The Academy Museum's architectural team is led by Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Gensler as executive architect. Morley Builders and Taslimi Construction Company are the general contractors, and the building developer is Paratus Group.
The museum will cover 290,000sq ft (26,940sq m) and will feature six floors of exhibition galleries, a movie theatre, education studios, special events spaces, conservation areas and a café and store. In addition, a spherical bolt-on to the building will include a 1,000-seat theatre and a rooftop terrace, while an outdoor plaza will feature a large Oscar statuette.
"Los Angeles is gaining another architectural and cultural icon," said the city’s mayor, Eric Garcetti. "My office of economic development has worked directly with the museum's development team to ensure that the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will create jobs, support tourism, and pay homage to the industry that helped define our identity as the creative capital of the world."
Kerry Brougher, who previously served as interim director, deputy director and chief curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C, has been named as museum director. The museum predicts a total of 860,000 visitors on an annual basis, with 150 permanent jobs created.
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