Designed by Renzo Piano and the L.A. architect Zoltan Pali, it will remake the interior of the May Co. department store as a museum of Hollywood history.
It will also add a 1,000-seat dome-shaped theater, a structure Piano calls “the spaceship,” to the back of the 1939 landmark.
If Brougher and other academy leaders can compel the architects to reconcile the clear potential of the new wing’s interior spaces with its unconvincing, unwieldy exterior, they may be able to salvage the design before construction begins.
If not, they may well have an architectural flop on their hands when the museum opens in 2017 — not to mention the third disappointing Piano building within a quarter-mile radius.
Ross C Berman 