Plans Unveiled for Addition to La Jolla Museum

Unveiling his design for an $11-million addition to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, noted Post-Modern architect Robert Venturi said Wednesday that he plans to expose some of the museum’s original Irving Gill architecture--now hidden.

Speaking at a news conference here, Venturi praised the work of Gill, who designed the Ellen Browning Scripps house that in the 1940s became the museum.

“It was very, very ahead of its time,” Venturi said. “It was so abstract in its form. The combinations and proportions make it a building that has zing.”

Venturi said he hoped his external design of graceful pergolas will harmonize with Gill’s original conception and with the surrounding neighborhood buildings, also designed by Gill.

Venturi is considered a major 20th-Century architect, although he has been both praised and vilified. Venturi’s 1966 book, “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,” is considered a milestone in architectural theory.

Among other projects, he is working on a commission to design a wing for England’s National Gallery.

Venturi’s 30,000-square-foot La Jolla museum addition includes four galleries, which will double the museum’s exhibition space. It will also expand the museum’s educational, storage, bookstore and restaurant facilities.

“I think some of the museums being designed lately are a little too exciting architecturally,” Venturi said, underscoring his intention that the architecture serve as a background for the art.

Previous expansions of the La Jolla museum obscured the original house designed by Gill, an innovative turn-of-the-century Southern California architect.

Venturi called that 1916 house “one of the truly great houses of this century--of this world” and praised Scripps’ vision in commissioning it.

Scripps, a newspaper heiress, was born in 1836.