A Cold War Research Institute in Hawthorne
George Nowak, brise-soleil for Hahn Building, 1965, Hawthorne, Calif. Photo: Wende Museum
The Architect's Newspaper reports on the Wende Museum's planned study and collection storage facility, the Wende Institute for Archival Research. It's an adaptive reuse of George Nowak's 1965 Hahn Building in Hawthorne. Welcome Projects and BoydDesign are overseeing the transformation, which will preserve Nowak's concrete brise-soleil. The site is about 9 miles down the 405 from the Wende's Culver City museum.
BoydDesign founder Michael Boyd has an impressive mid-century résumé, having restored Paul Rudolph's New York penthouse and Oscar Niemeyer's Strick House in Santa Monica. The refurbished Hahn Building will have 24,000 sf of storage for the Wende Museum's collection of over 250,000 Cold War artifacts, artworks, and archives. Construction is expected to be complete in 2028.
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| Rendering of Institute for Archival Research with Wende logo |
Comments
--- J. Garcin
archpaper. com:
Hahn Building was commissioned by shopping mall mogul Ernst Hahn... Hahn often collaborated with other star architects like William Pereira and Victor Gruen. [End quote]
After Richard Brown worked with Pereira in 1965 in LACMA's move from Expo Park to Wilshire Blvd, Earl Powell around 15-plus years later must have started coordinating plans with Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer. Before then, in 1983, Powell also oversaw a modest expansion in the museum's size.
Why Brown/Pereira, then Powell/HHP and now Govan/Zumthor always have to be second guessed is a "WTH?!" quirk of LACMA. As J Garcin puts it, maybe it's due to "rube."
However, similar shortcomings of cultural projects have also shadowed NYC and its Lincoln Center. First in the early 1960s and, most recently, a few years ago with its building also named for David Geffen.
"Rube" haunts both coasts. lol.
Los Angeles Times, November 1986:
…some consider the gala opening of the Robert O. Anderson Building and the Times Mirror Central Court the beginning of a new era in visual arts in Los Angeles.
Early Arrivals Robert O. Anderson...and wife Barbara arrived early for another look at the building that was named for him. Anderson is the chairman of the executive committee of Arco, and it was under his leadership that an Arco grant of $3.5 million was given to the museum for the building project.
The building's dimensions and cost are impressive: The four-level building has 115,000 square feet and it, plus the Central Court, were built for $35.3 million. Not all comments on the new Anderson building have been favorable; a critical piece in the New York Times blasted the architecture.
"The fact that it's controversial makes it an exciting building," said Earl A. (Rusty) Powell III, director of the museum. "It's a wonderfully complicated and interesting building to be in. There are going to be people who don't like it--there's no way of avoiding that."
Principal architect Norman Pfeiffer of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates had been through the building countless times, but this time admitted that the Central Court "feels much different. With so many people it becomes a small living room."
Pfeiffer said that working in Los Angeles he has noticed "an openness on the part of the people in terms of accepting new ideas." As soon as it (the museum) gets its footing it'll be incredible," said artist Billy Al Bengston…
Eavesdropping on conversations in the galleries, "fabulous" and "incredible" were used with abandon. "It's magnificent," Barbara Anderson said. "I love these panels," she said, meaning the porcelain-covered white curved blocks that make up the exterior. "I love the fact that they undulate, and that at different times of the day they take on a slight pink cast. The whole thing, the materials and the spaces, are wonderful. Though everybody must say the same thing."
"People didn't know we had so many of these works," said Stephanie Barron, curator of 20th-Century art. "They feel that finally we have a world-class institution for 20th-Century art."
Anderson called the wing an "architectural triumph" and added that the building was merely "a stop--a moment in its progress . . . This is a point of departure for an even greater period. It's an honor to have the Anderson name on that very beautiful building.” [End quote]
Inflation over the past 40 years in what's judged as both a lot of money and large square footage has changed a lot. And If Govan and his staff couldn't be second guessed, they'd realize donors of the past deserve no less acknowledgment in 2026 as they did in 1986.
They'd also know that inscribing on a wall the dollar amount contributed by a donor is about as bad as using black-metal wall brackets to hold up an ancient marble frieze.
Oh, well, we is rubes. Perhaps even more so than in Houston.
Their rubes in 2000 got better work out of Raphael Moneo than LACMA ever got out of William Pereira, HHP and, in certain ways, both Renzo Piano and now Peter Zumthor.
Again, oh, well. Or: History may not repeat but it rhymes.
As for over 60 years (since 1965!) of LACMA-caliber sophistication (or lack thereof), although the museum's campus is generally better in 2026 than it was in 1965, reviews of it are mixed. Which is what I imagine social media (if it existed years ago) right after the era of Expo Park would have been similar to.
Govan/Zumthor has more flaws than what a so-called world class place and experience should be like, just as Brown/Pereira was even more guilty of that too.
However, the installation in the Geffen can at least be upgraded, which wasn't done to the Pereira galleries until the early 1980s---north side extended and a bridge added. But even then, and a few years later, the Pereira/HHPA layout was still a mess and always gave the impression the museum's money had run out----which is what all the gray concrete of the Geffen in 2026 will give to various visitors. But not this visitor (he does end with the qualifier of "not to everyone's liking"---a comment that I'm fairly sure is heard way less after visiting one of the world's truly top-notch art museums):
roamwithaview, Instagram:
…checking out the new David Geffen Galleries superstructure. I was skeptical about the architecture being meh, but experiencing it first hand and just from the sheer scale of it, it was actually overwhelming. Never has holding off your skepticism and opinion until you’ve seen it first hand has been so true.
The chaos of the interior and mixing of artistic periods and style is actually refreshing and the extroverted showcasing of art against the expanse of LA cityscape landscape windows into the gallery space is quite unexpected from the usual introverted museum experience. Probably not to everyone’s liking, but I found it interesting indeed.