The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, designed by Rezno Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) architects, in collaboration with Gensler and SPE:a, will be located at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles as a premier movie museum.
Situated on the famed “Miracle Mile,” the museum will preserve new life into the former 1939 May Company department store, now re-named the Saban Building. Celebrating its history, the additions to the building that date from 1946 have been removed and replaced with a spherical building that features the 1000-seat David Geffen Theater and the Dolby Family Terrace with views towards Hollywood. The campus will feature more than 4645 m2 (50,000 sf) of gallery space, two theaters, cutting-edge project spaces, an outdoor piazza, the rooftop terrace, an active education studio, a restaurant, and store.
“The Academy Museum gives us the opportunity to honor the past while creating a building for the future—in fact, for the possibility of many futures. The historic Saban Building is a wonderful example of Streamline Modern style, which preserves the way people envisioned the future in 1939,” says Renzo Piano. “The new structure, the Sphere Building, is a form that seems to lift off the ground into the perpetual, imaginary voyage through space and time that is moviegoing. By connecting these two experiences we create something that is itself like a movie. You go from sequence to sequence, from the exhibition galleries to the film theater and the terrace, with everything blending into one experience.”
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