Pasadena Museum of California Art – Pasadena, CA

This 30,000 SF privately funded public museum was created for the display of permanent and traveling collections of California art. The building consists of lobbies, galleries, a gift shop, a community room, parking, and a garden and terrace. The third floor garden and terrace afford views of the dome of City Hall to the west and the San Gabriel Mountains to the north. The parted “drapery folds” of the facade that reveal the automobile and pedestrian entry define a formal vocabulary that repeats and transforms in the manner of a fugue across the sequence of entry from street level up the main stair. The culmination of this progression is a second floor open-air lobby that places the visitor between the gallery entrance to the south and the large opening in the main facade framing the view of the mountains.