Konrad Wachsmann

Konrad Wachsmann’s late-1960s project for a civic center in California City, which featured a strong, light fiberglass roof strung with high-tension cables between massive abutments, had a formal simplicity. The space below could be configured in almost unlimited variations. Rem Koolhaas also presented a proposal for a new Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) that united the museum’s encyclopedic collections under a scrimlike roof to create a more fluid floor plan that would force viewers to view art in a completely different way. Though it won a competition, it never garnered enough support, financial or otherwise, to move forward.