Piano to Show Final Museum Plan in March

Italian architect Renzo Piano will unveil his final design for the Newport Harbor Art Museum’s new building on March 28 during a lecture at UC Irvine, the last in a four-part series of evening talks about museum design by internationally prominent architects. “Artworks or Containers: Issues in Contemporary Museum Architecture” is being jointly sponsored by Newport Harbor and the Architecture Foundation of Orange County.

The series will open Thursday with a talk by Richard Meier of Richard Meier & Partners, which has offices in New York and Los Angeles. Meier has said that he tries “to clarify and redefine a sense of order within society.” His buildings are known for their simplicity and their crisp white surfaces, careful distinctions between solids and open spaces, and the lack of applied ornament.

In addition to numerous residences, medical facilities and commercial buildings, Meier’s firm has designed the Museum for Decorative Arts in Frankfurt, West Germany; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Museum of Modern Art in Florence. More recently, Meier has been working on the design of the new J. Paul Getty Center headquarters in Los Angeles.

On Thursday, Feb. 23, the speaker will be Ricardo Legorreta of Legorreta Arquitectos, Mexico City. Legorreta is celebrated for his return to the “wall culture” of his Mexican heritage, with its accent on solids rather than open spaces, its emphasis on privacy and the use of vibrant color.

Legorreta’s firm, which competed against Piano’s for the Newport Harbor design commission, has designed the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose as well as numerous hotels and offices in Mexico, actor Ricardo Montalban’s house in Los Angeles and the Tustin Market Place (where his controversial bright purple walls were repainted after a flurry of complaints last December).

On Thursday, March 9, the speaker will be Wolf Prix of Coop Himmelblau Firm, which has offices in Vienna and Los Angeles. Prix’s firm (founded in 1968, when the young principals were caught up in the fever of student uprisings in Europe) is something of a curiosity in architectural circles because of its improvisatory working habits, similar to those of experimental musicians in rock clubs.

“We try to catch the psychic qualities of the space,” Prix recently told an interviewer. Coop Himmelblau makes use of surrealist-inspired “automatic writing” (“We close our eyes and let the pencil record our feelings,” Prix said) and creates designs through silent consensus (“We discuss issues but never the design itself”).

Coop Himmelblau’s varied projects include a theater renovation, offices, a school, a bar, a town plan and a private residence called Open House in Malibu--which they dreamed up before even trying to find a client who would understand and accept it. The firm has yet to design a museum, however.

Finally on March 28, Piano--designer of the Menil Collection Museum in Houston and co-designer of the Georges Pompidou Cultural Center in Paris--will speak about his working process.

Piano, of Genoa, is noted for his flexibility in dealing with vastly different client needs. He has said that he attempts to “apply the pleasure of discovery in the specific design and detail of each part of the buildings” he creates.

All lectures will be in the Main Lecture Hall, Nelson Research Building, UC Irvine, at 7:30 p.m. Admission: $15 per lecture. Reservations suggested. Information: (714) 557-7769.