David Geffen Galleries by Peter Zumthor at LACMA – All photos are by Iwan Baan.
Architecture. LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is preparing for the April 2026 grand opening of the David Geffen Galleries, a landmark expansion designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Peter Zumthor. The new building unfolds in a fluid, undulating form along the museum’s eastern edge, spanning Wilshire Boulevard and redefining the institution’s relationship with the city.
At park level, seven pavilions accommodate education and public programmes, a theatre, retail spaces and restaurants, with interiors seamlessly integrated into the surrounding landscape. Shaded by the gallery level above, the open areas between and around the pavilions are conceived as generous settings for public art and programming, reinforcing LACMA’s civic role.
Two sculptural outdoor concrete staircases and elevators rise from the ground-level plaza, leading visitors up to the exhibition floor above. Here, LACMA gains a flexible landscape of rooms with varied scales and configurations. A continuous ribbon of glazing encircles the upper level, while generous floor-to-ceiling windows extend along the public pavilions, opening them fully to light and landscape.
“The building’s single-level, horizontal layout deliberately dissolves traditional cultural hierarchies, placing all artworks on equal footing,” explains LACMA. No gallery is permanently assigned to a specific department, allowing displays to evolve in response to scholarship, collection growth and public interest. “No single path through the rooms is prescribed by the architecture.” Instead, the design invites new selections, narratives and inclusive readings, empowering curators to rethink art-historical storytelling.
Construction of the David Geffen Galleries also delivers 3.5 acres of new outdoor public space, including landscaped plazas and sculpture gardens planted with native, drought-resistant species.
Designed to achieve LEED Gold certification, the project replaces inefficient structures with low-carbon concrete, radiant heating and cooling, natural ventilation, and long-term resource-conservation strategies.
All photos of the David Geffen Galleries at LACMA are by Iwaan Baan.
