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FRED FISHER & PARTNERS

L.A. Louver Gallery

Venice

L.A. Louver Gallery is an 8,000 square foot, three story contemporary art gallery. An infill site was obtained on a mixed-use block with apartments, restaurants, parking and stores, adjacent to Venice beach. The project covers two lots on one side of the street for the gallery and four levels on the opposite side for a four-level parking structure. The facade of the parking structure and the gallery are formally integrated and articulated to respect the scale of existing buildings.

The team sought a balance between highly flexible museum quality public gallery spaces, semi-private spaces for art viewing, storage and research, and private administration and preparation facilities.

The gallery's program is densely packed into the buildable envelope of setbacks, height limits and view corridors from the adjacent apartments. To coincide in scale with the single lot buildings on the street, two elements of the gallery project to the sidewalk, separated by a courtyard that is used for events and and installations. The foreground elements are a wing with two stacked galleries on one side and a stair tower on the other. The lower gallery is made of split-faced concrete block and supports the slightly smaller upper gallery of smooth white plaster. These two rooms are intimate, isolated and hermetic. The overall composition of minimal forms and neutral colors renders the building clearly as a backdrop for its art program. This program is gradually revealed by sequential settings for artwork. The entry court can be opened in varying degrees to the street with a large steel gate. The large and small ground floor galleries are pure volumes that invite site specific installations as well as conventional exhibitions. The second floor gallery, visible from the street through a large window is less formal, opening to office, library and art storage areas. A roofless "skyroom" provides another installation/exhibition setting, continuously by the sunlight and sky colors. The sequence ends with a skylit private showing gallery adjacent to the gallery's art storage. Skylight and selected views are also introduced intermittently to maintain connections to the natural and built context. The building's central axis is defined by an alignment of windows, skylight and stairway that penetrates all three levels from streetfront, through the second floor gallery, the office penthouse and to the sky again.