Academy Museum of Motion Pictures by RPBW
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Status: Completed

In the heart of Los Angeles, at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is the world’s premier movie museum.

Situated on the famed “Miracle Mile,” the museum preserves and breathes new life into the former 1939 May Company department store, now re-named the Saban Building. Celebrating its history and imagining new possibilities, the additions to the building that dates from 1946 have been removed and replaced with a spherical building that features the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater and the Dolby Family Terrace with views toward Hollywood.

The revitalized campus features more than 50,000 square feet of gallery space, two theaters, cutting-edge project spaces, an outdoor piazza, a rooftop terrace, an active education studio, a restaurant, and a store.

Renzo Piano said, “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 Moderne style, which preserves the way people envisioned the future in 1939.

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.”

Client: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
Design: Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Gensler (architect of record) and SPF:a.

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