The building will be located on Grand Avenue, next to the Frank Gehry Disney Concert Hall and across the street from the Arata Isozaki Museum of Contemporary Art. A little further on the same highway are the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels by Raphael Moneo and the art school N 9 "Coop Himmelb (l) ay". Such a neighborhood demanded prudence from the architects: one could neither imitate nor try to add their own discordant note to this "ensemble". On the other hand, philanthropist and contemporary art collector Eli Broad, on the other hand, is known for his architectural practicality (along with his love of big names), and observers have expressed the opinion that the project's surprising restraint is due to its influence.
The new facility will have three above-ground levels and three floors of an underground car park. The lobby will be located at ground level, outwardly marked by a beveled corner of the building's volume (a solution similar to the Alice Tully Hall of the New York Lincoln Center of the same Diller Scofidio + Renfro). Also on the ground floor there will be an auditorium for 200 people and a small exhibition space. From there, visitors will enter through the second tier into the main hall on the top floor with an area of 3,716 m2 and a height of 7.3 m, completely devoid of supports. Exhibitions will be held there, for which curators will be able to completely change the configuration of the space. The supporting structure of the building will be an "exoskeleton" - a "lattice" with diamond-shaped cells, completely covering it from the outside.
The second floor with impenetrable walls deserves special mention. There will be a storehouse, research center and offices of the Broad Arts Foundation, which manages the Eli and Edith Broad collection: since 1984, the foundation has given works for exhibitions and for long-term exposition in almost 500 museums around the world, contributing to the popularization of contemporary art while acting as a kind of library with a subscription”. Now the foundation will organize exhibitions in its building, especially since there will be enough work for this: the collection contains more than 2,000 works by leading artists of the 20th - early 21st centuries, including Joseph Beuys, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst (more than 200 artists in total).
As visitors to The Broad descend from the exhibition hall on the third floor down the spiral staircase, they will be able to see the repository of works on the second tier through specially made openings.
It should be noted that Eli Broad is actively involved in charity work: among his projects are the Eli and Edith Broad Art Training Center at the University of California at Los Angeles (built by Richard Mayer in 2006), the Zaha Hadid Museum of Art at the University of Michigan (built started last year) and Broad Museum of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art by Renzo Piano (2008). The management of the latter institution hoped that the Broad couple would donate at least part of the collection to him, but Eli Broad timed the opening of the building with a statement that he would build his own museum (which will become The Broad) for his collection. At the same time, negotiations began on the choice of a site for construction, which eventually became the prestigious Grand Avenue. Apart from Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Rem Koolhaas (he also made it to the final), SANAA, Herzog & de Meuron, Christian de Portzamparc and FOA took part in the closed architectural competition for The Broad project.
