Getty Hires Architects for Renovation of Malibu Facility : Art: A Boston-based firm will oversee the conversion of the 20-year-old Roman-style villa into a museum and study center for classical antiquities.

The J. Paul Getty Trust has hired the Boston-based firm of Machado and Silvetti Associates Inc. as master planners for the renovation of the Roman-style villa in Malibu that has housed the Getty Museum since 1974. The project will convert the facility into a museum and study center for classical antiquities.

Construction will begin in 1997, after the opening of the Getty Center, a sprawling complex that is currently rising on a Brentwood hilltop overlooking the San Diego Freeway. The center will include a new museum for all of the Getty’s collections except Greek and Roman antiquities.

A mission statement for the villa calls for a building and environment that will “promote a broader understanding of, and critical appreciation for, classical antiquity and other cultures in relation to it.” Devoting the Malibu villa to antiquities will allow the museum to display much more than the 10% of its ancient treasures that can be accommodated under current conditions, press officer Lori Starr said.

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The renovated villa will be more than a public museum, according to Getty Trust President Harold M. Williams. It will also serve as a site where the trust’s other programs can pool their talents and work on projects related to antiquity, he said.

Machado and Silvetti was selected from a group of 20 companies that expressed interest in the project. A search committee, consisting of Getty officials and prominent architectural figures, narrowed the field to six finalists who were asked to develop sketchbooks of their ideas for the project.

Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti are both 52-year-old natives of Argentina who teach at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. They did graduate studies at UC Berkeley and have practiced architecture and urban design in the United States for the past 20 years. Their current projects include a monumental gateway on the Hudson River at New York’s Battery Park and a master plan for Princeton University’s campus.