Architecture Design

Lucas Museum by MAD Architects

New Updates on MAD Architects’ Plans for Lucas Museum in LA Revealed

Courtesy of Los Angeles Department of City Planning

The Los Angeles Department of City Planning has revealed new renderings of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, designed by MAD Architects to be home for the vast collection of art and artifacts owned by the Star Wars franchise creator, George Lucas. The renderings were unveiled during a presentation to the LA city planning commission.

The latest images show a bit more compacted version of MAD’s original design, with more parts, of the museum’s program, moved to the ground floor. They, also, reveal other facilities which will be included in the 5-storey building, apart from the museum’s exhibition spaces, like offices, educational zones with classrooms, a library, a restaurant, a café, a museum shop, and a rooftop garden for the public. Finally, there is the new addition of cove-like space with a waterfall in the park surrounding the museum.

The Lucas Museum is planned to be built on two existing parking lots owned by the city, and it will cost a total of $1 billion. The construction works are scheduled to begin in January 2018 and it is expected to be complete by 2021.

Architecture architecture design contemporary architecture MAD Architects Museum Urban Design

Mad architects unveils slimmed down design lucas museum chicago

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The team led by MAD Architects has presented revised designs for the proposed George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art along Chicago's lakefront. The controversial project's square footage has been reduced by 25 percent to 300,000-square-feet (27,870 square metres) and its footprint has been cut by 40 percent.

Mad architects lucas museum of narrative art

The Situated between McCormick Place and Soldier Field, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will expand public access to green space on Monroe Harbor. The architectural concept for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art explores the relationship between nature and the urban environment.

Inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, the design integrates the natural beauty of the park and Lake Michigan with the powerful man-made architecture of Chicago. The design furthers the Museum’s mission to be a place of education, culture, and inspiration. The Lucas Museum design is both futuristic and timeless. Its continuous undulating organic surface blurs the line between structure and landscape.

As the harbor rises up to the land, it merges with stone surfaces that reach up to the sky and ultimately crescendos into a “floating” disc. The Museum is not an isolated object, but a spatial experience that is defined by the people who occupy and interact with it. Its uninterrupted stone surfaces are as primitive as it is futuristic, evoking the great achievements of architectural history.

Mad architects site plan of lucas museum

It is a place to discover and explore, to communicate and contemplate. More than a building, it is an urban vista for social interaction, bringing people closer to each other and to nature. The tallest points of the Lucas Museum will feature an observation deck with 360º views, providing visitors with stunning panoramas of both Chicago and Lake Michigan.

Mad architects night view of lucas museum

Inside, three levels of exhibition space in infinite loops will inspire the imagination to ponder endless possibilities, both in content and design. The design for the Lucas Museum mirrors the objective of the artwork inside: It tells a story. The narrative ushers in the future of architectural design, exploring the relationship between man and nature. Its iconic design aspires to join the ranks of Chicago’s many cherished landmarks.

The team includes local firm Studio Gang as urban designer and New York-based SCAPE as landscape architect. It would be built on what are currently surface parking lots, and plans include a large underground garage to replace those spaces.

lucas museum of narrative art public space

The revised design adds an additional 4.5-acres (1.82-hectares) of open space, which Studio Gang and SCAPE's Kate Orff are developing into a series of dunes with a filigree of paths and trails running through it. "It's almost like an outside museum. It will be unlike anything in North America now," said Kate Orff, according to Crain's. "We're trying to blur the line between the building and the ground."

lucas museum of narrative art additional windows

The new design also includes additional windows for views out to the city, Lake Michigan, and surrounding parks. The museum's exterior cladding has yet to be specified, but the architects indicated it will likely be sheathed in stone or concrete.

lucas museum of narrative by mad architects

Architecture architecture design contemporary architecture Harbin Opera House INSPIRATION MAD Architects Urban Design

Harbin Opera House / MAD Architects

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When it comes to build something visually striking and unique for the architectural community to observe as well as for the public audience, then we find MAD architects, along with very few others, comes on the top of the list ! The Chines based firm designs always keep their usual fluid movement language intact, by creating dynamic forms and

incorporating sleek lines and soft curves to showcase a beautiful flowing appearance. Here, the case is Harbin Opera House, where the enchantingly fluid curves span the interior of the building and resemble a breathtaking structure that has been formed by the natural forces of Harbin Cultural Island.

The opera house was designed in response to the location’s natural elements of the northern city’s untamed wilderness and frigid climate, “We envision Harbin Opera House as a cultural center of the future – a tremendous performance venue, as well as a dramatic public space that embodies the integration of human, art and the city identity, while synergistically blending with the surrounding nature,” said Ma Yansong, founding principal, MAD Architects.

Beijing studio MAD has completed an opera house in the Chinese city of Harbin, featuring an undulating form that wraps two concert halls and a huge public plaza.

The Harbin Opera House is the first and largest building that MAD has designed as part of Harbin Cultural Island, a major new arts complex among the wetlands of the Songhua River.

The 79,000-square-metre building features a three-petalled plan. One houses a grand theatre with space for up to 1,600 visitors, while the other is a more intimate performance space for an audience of 400.

Harbin Opera House exterior curvilinear façade

The exterior curvilinear façade is composed of smooth white aluminum panels, as a mirror of the sinuous curves of the marsh landscape. The smooth exterior sculptural quality continues with the interiors cladding, where a large entrance lobby features a combination of glass and timber and a latticed ceiling that is located beneath the sculptural glass roof.

These contrast with the rooftops, where a textured surface of ice-inspired glass pyramids allows light in from above.

Harbin Opera House contrast with the rooftops

According to MAD, the building is designed "in response to the force and spirit of the northern city's untamed wilderness and frigid climate".

Harbin Opera House The smooth surfaces interior

Harbin Opera House The smooth surfaces of theatre

MAD has designed several cultural buildings, Curved surfaces are a recurring theme through them all, picking up Ma's ambition for a new style of architecture, referencing the landscapes of traditional Chinese paintings. "We envision Harbin Opera House as a cultural center of the future – a tremendous performance venue, as well as a dramatic public space that embodies the integration of human, art and the city identity, while synergistically blending with the surrounding nature," said studio founder Ma Yansong.

Harbin Opera House The smooth surfaces balconies

The smooth surfaces of the opera house's exterior continue inside, where a large entrance lobby features arched windows and a latticed ceiling that is located beneath the sculptural glass roof.

At one end, a large block of Manchurian Ash wood encloses the grand theatre, with balconies and staircases wrapping around the outside. MAD describes is as "emulating a wooden block that has been gently eroded away".

MAD Architects Harbin Opera House interior view

The second theatre offers more of a connection to the exterior, as its backdrop is a soundproof glass wall. Its walls look more like a pair of weatherbeaten stone cliffs.