Marquee Projects

Matt Construction raises cultural bar in Los Angeles

By David Silva

Dan Stafford, vice president of operations for Santa Fe Springs-based Matt Construction, says he feels a personal sense of satisfaction over two high-profile downtown Los Angeles projects for which his company is general contractor.

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The $120 million expansion of the Colburn School and the $191 million Broad Contemporary Art Museum and BP Grand Entrance at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art "are probably our two most important projects," he says. "Not only are they very high-end, higher-level marquee projects for us, but in our opinion they're very important to the city of Los Angeles."

The Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the adjacent BP Grand Entrance represent the first phase of LACMA's massive six-year effort to modernize and expand the complex through 2010.

British Petroleum donated $25 million to have its name put on the Grand Entrance - a 15,500-sq-ft, glass-encased pavilion that forms the main Wilshire Boulevard entry point to the campus. Solar panels line the top of the structure -- a design innovation that BP officials say highlights the oil firm's commitment to protecting the environment, though some may disagree.

Far less controversial is the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a 60,000-sq-ft, three-story building located directly to the west of the Grand Entrance.

L.A. philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, who sit on LACMA's board of directors, donated $60 million, committed to loan the museum thousands of art pieces from their foundation and personal collection and set up a multi-million-dollar fund to acquire new works toward the endeavor.

Work began on the museum in January 2006 and on the Grand Entrance three months later. Both should be completed by February.

Matt Construction is also general contractor for a 500-space underground parking garage, which museum visitors will enter at Sixth Street and Ogden Drive.

Internationally renowned architect Renzo Piano of France designed the Grand Entrance and the Broad museum, as well as other key elements of the LACMA expansion. The Los Angeles office of Gensler is executive architect, coordinating the Paris-based Piano's design requirements with those of Matt Construction and its contractors.

"European designers have a certain way of working that's different from our way of working here in America in general and on the West Coast in particular," says Dean Geib, Gensler's project architect for the LACMA project. "Local conditions are what we bring to the table. We also have relationships with local contractors and city and state officials, with whom [European architects] are not familiar."

As envisioned by Piano, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum features two wings - each a mirror image of the other in terms of design - flanking a central area on the east and west. Each floor has high bay areas and plenty of tall, finely detailed walls to accommodate the artworks.

Visitors can take an exterior escalator to the top floor, then work their way down to the bottom.

"You step into the museum and go left or right into one of the galleries, and overhead there's a series of tube-steel trusses going east to west with a plane of glass suspended underneath, Geib says. "On the trusses are a series of sun-shading panels sloping north to south, so that the only light getting on to glass is north light. The ceiling, from inside, gives you this floating plane of lit glass overhead."

Creating a facility intended to house priceless inventory presented the architects with formidable challenges, says Geib. The air-conditioning system had to be designed to keep humidity and temperature levels constant around the clock. Fire-protection systems had to be designed to keep from dousing the art with water during a false alarm. Egresses had to be built to allow visitors to leave the premises quickly and without multi-million-dollar treasures under their arms.

And then there was the matter of the prehistoric bones and poisonous gases.

"The museum is adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits," Stafford says. "When we started excavating for the below-grade parking garage, we encountered all kinds of things. Mammoth bones, tortoise bones, you name it. Paleontologists were on site to monitor the excavation to make sure we didn't get rid of anything that was worth salvaging. We also came across gases like hydrogen sulfide, so we had people working in holes wearing self-contained breathing apparatuses. It was probably one of the slower excavations we've ever worked on."

Meanwhile, Matt Construction's progress on the Colburn School expansion project has been less eventful. The project calls for the creation of an entire school campus within a three-tower, , 326,000-sq-ft structure directly across from the existing Colburn School building at 200 S. Grand Ave. The Colburn School, located adjacent to the Museum of Contemporary Art, is a private music, dance, and drama school for all ages.

David Saviola of Pfeiffer Partners, the L.A.-based architect of record, says the campus will feature three towers rising from a single base and connected by glass structures that will serve as lobby areas. Seven of the floors are dedicated to residential housing - ranging from one to four bedrooms each -- for up to 145 students.

The project also calls for a 200-seat performance lab, 4,000-sq-ft rehearsal hall, 20 teaching studios, four classrooms, a percussion studio, 50 practice rooms, expanded library facilities, a student lounge and a cafeteria.

"We built the original Colburn building in 1988, and shortly thereafter, the school launched a conservatory program and really began to outgrow its space," says Saviola, who is principal in charge at Pfeiffer. "Our design is focused on the idea of integrating the original building with the new campus.

We wanted a focal point - a campus center with a plaza around which a lot of the amenities is organized around. Students will have the ability to move from one area to another fairly quickly."

Stafford says the Colburn campus is unique in that it contains "a little of everything. It has poured-in-place concrete slabs, below-grade parking, elements of a high-rise, school components, acoustical components, high-end theaters and a cafeteria."

Matt Construction broke ground on the project in September 2004 and expects to complete it by August.

Broad Contemporary Art Museum/BP Grand Entrance Project Team

Owner: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
General Contractor: Matt Construction, Santa Fe Springs
Architect: Renzo Piano of Paris, France; Gensler, Los Angeles
Architectural Steel Contractor: Plas-Tal Manufacturing Co., Santa Fe Springs

Colburn School Project Team

Owner: The Colburn School
General Contractor: Matt Construction, Santa Fe Springs
Architect: Pfeiffer Partners, Los Angeles
Mechanical Contractor: ACCO Engineering, Glendale
Electrical Contractor: Dynalectric, Los Angeles

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