When I lived in Los Angeles, I loved to visit the Getty Center, partly of course because of the most incredible collection of art. But also because the buildings and the grounds themselves inspired, for me, at once both excitement and serenity. The Getty Center is in Brentwood, California, part of Los Angeles. Still featuring free admission, the Getty stages almost 20 major exhibitions a year.
(Above image is Irises by Vincent Van Gogh, one of the great works at the Getty. The Getty maintains a program for downloading full size non-copyrighted images for unlimited personal use.)
Designed by Pritzker Award winning architect Richard Meier, the Getty Center is clad in 16,000 tons of Italian travertine from Bagni di Tivoli, Italy, 15 miles east of Rome. (I also cheated on this image; it’s from Meier’s site.)
I especially liked the grounds and gardens of the Genter Center. The images below probably include more of the grounds and gardens than anything else. The main gardens were designed by MacArthur Award winning designer, Robert Irwin.
(I’ve cheated on this image; I didn’t shoot it. It’s from the Getty website.)
Architecture 1: Grace Farms, and Architecture 2: The Getty Center, are the first two posts in a series exploring favorite sites and their architecture and design.
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