Newport Harbor Design : Museum Plan May Stress Wave Images

Preliminary plans for the new Newport Harbor Art Museum indicate that the architect is considering a “wave-like” series of “six tubes, like sausages on their sides” connected by a “diagonal indoor street” that will lead down a gently sloping hillside in Corona del Mar, sources who have seen the drawings said this week.

“He seems to be giving what we wanted,” said one person close to the museum board. “A very simple, very direct, very strong approach.”

“If you take tubes and parallel them up a hill and then take a corridor that extends down through the tubes, you are seeing the image he has in mind,” the source said, discussing what is the most closely watched architectural project in the county.

“The tubes are like waves going down toward the ocean. It is a design that is very responsive to the environment, and trustees who have seen it are very excited and pleased.”

Actually, the plans have been seen by just a few trustees, those on the museum’s building committee. They’ve been shown neither to the full board nor to most museum staff members. Sources who discussed the concept requested anonymity, stressing that the designs are still evolving; they indicate a basic concept that may be modified.

The architect, Renzo Piano of Genoa, was in the county last week to discuss his ideas with board members and with members of local architectural and construction firms that will turn his concepts into the $20-million project. “So far, he is testing and experimenting . . . thinking out loud, but he is being encouraged to move ahead in the direction he is going,” a museum source said.

The structure is expected to be 75,000 to 150,000 square feet on the 10 1/2-acre site at the juncture of MacArthur Boulevard and East Coast Highway.

“The tubes would contain the galleries, and you’d see them on either side from that main artery as you walked through,” one source said.

“At the moment, the prospect is for six of them (the tubes), but the idea is that if they wanted to expand some more in the future, they could just add more tubes and extend the street”--thereby resolving one of the questions that had been facing Piano: how to allow for expansion that would not violate the 32-foot height limit imposed by zoning.

The design “is like sculpture in a landscape. . . . It is not just a museum, but an Orange County museum, an Orange County image of waves going toward the ocean . . . a wave that cascades down to MacArthur,” one source said.

“There are skylights in each of the tubes. . . . The spaces between (the tubes) will be used for activities like the restaurant, a sculpture garden and the landscaping,” the source said.

The top of the building would be an undulating series of curves “like air foils,” the source said.

Piano and Peter Rice, the British engineer working closely with him on the project, have decided against placing parking underground, an option they had said they were considering, the source said.

A key unresolved question is what materials will be used. In January, when he visited the site for the first time, Piano said he was “thinking of timber to the southside and glass to the north,” but that was before the current concept was worked out.

The final design is expected to be approved by the board and made public in September, museum officials said. Kevin Consey, director of the museum, declined to comment on specifics of the design.

“We’re not inclined to release information about conceptual plans,” Consey said. “They are not approved. They are not final. . . . Renzo Piano spent four days working with the museum’s building committee and with the president of the board, working on design developments. We resolved a number of issues and concepts and charged Piano with the responsibility for developing conceptual plans.”

The design of a new museum or concert hall acquires an importance beyond its aesthetic appeal and its functional quality, affecting the institution’s ability to effectively project its image into a community and attract private donations.

High hopes have been placed on Piano, whose previous museums have included the highly controversial Centre Pompidou in Paris and the highly praised Menil Collection Museum in Houston.

Whether the Newport building is a critical success or not, Piano’s reputation will probably bring it international attention.