Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

2012 – 2021

Daniel Hammerman – Senior Project Architect / Project Manager at Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Status: Completed
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Client: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Design: Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Gensler
Team: MATT Construction; Morley+Taslimi; Paratus Group; Buro Happold; Knippers Helbig; Jaffe Holden; Arup; Bob Irwin with Comstock Landscape Architecture and LRM; HKA; KPFF; SGH; C.S. Caulkins Co, Inc; Directional Logic, John Fidler Preservation Technology
Program: Museum, Theater, Education, Offices, Retail, Public and Event Spaces
Area: 300,000 sf

In the heart of Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will be the world’s premier movie museum when it opens to the public this year. The museum preserves and breathes new life into the former 1939 May Company department store with 300,000 sf of galleries, theaters, classrooms, laboratories, offices, café, retail, event spaces, and public spaces. Tethered to the historic edifice by glass bridges, the spherical extension floats on seismic base isolators above a public piazza, and houses the large theater and glass domed terrace with spectacular views towards Hollywood.

The project aspires to honor the past and build for many futures, spaces of perpetual possibility. Dramatic, exuberant architecture transports visitors to another world, much like the films projected within. Circulation sequence winds upwards through the museum in a cinematic journey between outside and inside, between galleries and theaters, between light and shadow, between compression and expansion, between art and science, between past, present and future, of architecture and film. The architectural design, and the programmatic content, both revel in magic, and the technical innovation enabling that magic.

Daniel Hammerman led the team as project architect for RPBW, from design through completion of construction, based in Genoa, Italy then Los Angeles, California. 

In the heart of Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will be the world’s premier movie museum when it opens to the public this year. The museum preserves and breathes new life into the former 1939 May Company department store with 300,000 sf of galleries, theaters, classrooms, laboratories, offices, café, retail, event spaces, and public spaces. Tethered to the historic edifice by glass bridges, the spherical extension floats on seismic base isolators above a public piazza, and houses the large theater and glass domed terrace with spectacular views towards Hollywood.

The project aspires to honor the past and build for many futures, spaces of perpetual possibility. Dramatic, exuberant architecture transports visitors to another world, much like the films projected within. Circulation sequence winds upwards through the museum in a cinematic journey between outside and inside, between galleries and theaters, between light and shadow, between compression and expansion, between art and science, between past, present and future, of architecture and film. The architectural design, and the programmatic content, both revel in magic, and the technical innovation enabling that magic.

Daniel Hammerman led the team as project architect for RPBW, from design through completion of construction, based in Genoa, Italy then Los Angeles, California.