According to a Getty Museum docent: "People come here with the idea that they're going to a museum with works of art on the inside, but they're really visiting a work of art with a museum inside." It's an interesting concept, the idea that an outdoor space can be a completely satisfying artistic experience, and we agree.
See It Now: If you'd like to get a preview of what the buildings at the Getty look like, click on over to our Getty Museum Photo Tour.
Getty Center architect Richard Meier has been called "the ultimate voice of twentieth century modernism." Meier took a few basic materials: metal, stone and glass, (and a billion dollar budget) and combined them to create a work of architecture that can excite visitors as much as the art collection inside.
The Getty Center site sits over 800 feet above sea level and the city of Los Angeles below, and a 3/4-mile-long tramway whisks visitors to the top, elevating them from everyday experience. At the top of the hill, four exhibit pavilions and a visitor center form the hub of an eleven-building complex.
For this project, Meier modified his signature smooth, starkly white surfaces, substituting more classical materials in keeping with the Getty collection's roots. Some reviewers say the north and east buildings particularly incorporate characteristics of Europe's 1920s Bauhaus movement, as well as twentieth-century Los Angeles buildings by Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler.
The entire complex is based on a 30-inch-square grid that runs from one building to the next without deviation. Curves, the occasional rectangle and other geometric elements form a public space that's one of Southern California's most inviting.
The building stone is travertine, from Bagni di Tivoli, Italy, the same source as the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain and St. Peter's Basilica colonnade. A guillotine cutting process exposed fossils long buried inside, their delicacy in contrast to the violence of the process that revealed them. The best twenty four of these are set as "feature" stones scattered about the site, waiting to delight those who find them. The Architecture and Gardens map shows the location of several, with one of the most fantastic located on the restaurant and cafe side of the arrival plaza wall.
Learning More About the Getty Center Architecture
Docents lead daily tours to learn more about Meier's architecture. This tour is a must for anyone who is even remotely interested in architecture, as it reveals the architect's techniques and ideas.
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