California Aerospace Museum
Los Angeles, California · 1984
Photo · Photo by Michael Moran
A key precedent for Deconstructivist architecture, demonstrating how disparate geometric volumes and a mounted artifact can be collaged to express a museum's technological theme.
- What we like about this project
- A real fighter jet is suspended diagonally from a structural bracket on the building's exterior wall.
Materials
- stucco
- sheet-metal
- glass
- concrete
Visual identifiers
- mounted-fighter-jet
- sloped-walls
- collaged-volumes
- twilight-lighting
Style tags
- deconstructivist
- postmodern
- sculptural
Visual tags
- deconstructivism
- sculptural-massing
- museum
- exhibition-architecture
- los-angeles
- Geometry
- A collage of contrasting geometric volumes, including a large sloped polygonal mass on the left, a central glazed atrium, and a blocky tower on the right supporting an angled fighter jet.
- Facade system
- Stucco-clad solid walls combined with a sloped metal-framed curtain wall system.
- Structural guess
- Steel frame with concrete shear walls to support the cantilevered aircraft mount.
- Spatial scale
- Large-scale public museum building, dramatized by the full-scale fighter jet mounted to the facade.
- Lighting
- Twilight illumination with artificial uplighting casting cool green-blue tones on the stucco and warm yellow light glowing from the interior glazing.
- Atmosphere
- Dramatic and theatrical, with the mounted jet and contrasting colored lights evoking the excitement of flight.
- Environmental context
- Urban setting in Los Angeles with low-rise structures in the foreground and a clear dusk sky.
- Spatial experience
- The building reads as a dramatic, sculptural assemblage of distinct programmatic containers, creating a sense of dynamic movement and technological exhibition from the exterior approach.
- Composition rhythm
- Asymmetrical and fragmented composition balanced by the central glazed void and the diagonal thrust of the aircraft.
- Style reading
- Early Deconstructivism
- Program
- Aerospace museum
- Perspective
- Exterior Facade
- Discipline
- architecture
- Materials
- stucco, sheet-metal, glass, concrete
- Visual identifiers
- mounted-fighter-jet, sloped-walls, collaged-volumes, twilight-lighting
- Style tags
- deconstructivist, postmodern, sculptural
- Visual tags
- deconstructivism, sculptural-massing, museum, exhibition-architecture, los-angeles
- Geometry
- A collage of contrasting geometric volumes, including a large sloped polygonal mass on the left, a central glazed atrium, and a blocky tower on the right supporting an angled fighter jet.
- Facade system
- Stucco-clad solid walls combined with a sloped metal-framed curtain wall system.
- Structural guess
- Steel frame with concrete shear walls to support the cantilevered aircraft mount.
- Spatial scale
- Large-scale public museum building, dramatized by the full-scale fighter jet mounted to the facade.
- Lighting
- Twilight illumination with artificial uplighting casting cool green-blue tones on the stucco and warm yellow light glowing from the interior glazing.
- Atmosphere
- Dramatic and theatrical, with the mounted jet and contrasting colored lights evoking the excitement of flight.
- Environmental context
- Urban setting in Los Angeles with low-rise structures in the foreground and a clear dusk sky.
- Spatial experience
- The building reads as a dramatic, sculptural assemblage of distinct programmatic containers, creating a sense of dynamic movement and technological exhibition from the exterior approach.
- Composition rhythm
- Asymmetrical and fragmented composition balanced by the central glazed void and the diagonal thrust of the aircraft.
- Style reading
- Early Deconstructivism
- Program
- Aerospace museum
- Perspective
- Exterior Facade
- Discipline
- architecture