[CONSTRUCTION SOUNDS]
[DRILL NOISE]
[BACK-UP BEEPER SOUND]
[CONSTRUCTION SOUNDS]
SPEAKER 1: The Getty is part of a larger community which
is the city of Los Angeles.
The physical design, and it seems to me,
needs to relate to the grid of the city, the form of the city,
the structure of the city, which has
to do with its street pattern, highway
pattern, and the topography.
The strongest element in this location
and throughout Los Angeles, of course, is the freeway.
And as I spent time on the site, I
realized you have that San Diego freeway, this powerful element
running North-South.
And, there was a ridge which parallelled
the freeway and another one which parallelled
the freeway to the North.
And these vectors of topography, as well as a third ridge,
which more or less went this direction,
parallel to this one.
These vectors that seemed to me, of natural form of the earth
were the beginning of thinking about the site and building.
Somehow the buildings should rise out
of the ridges that were there.
So, the museum sector took its location here on the ridge,
on the city side, the downtown side, UCLA side, freeway side.
And the library, the Center for the History of art
took it's vector, as it were, from the ridge
on the private side.
And it's like two arms reaching out
creating a space in between them.
It seemed to me, that in between these two
major portions of the Getty Center should be a garden.
A garden that belongs to the museum,
a garden that belongs to the Center for the History of Art.
And it seemed quite logical that the places which belong both
to the museum as well as the Center, meaning the restaurant,
the cafeteria, the places of coming together for eating,
would be at the head of the central gardens.
And so, that semmed in a sense grow out of the Earth,
out of the topography, out of the place,
and also be related to the city of Los Angeles.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER 2: After five years of planning,
in 1987 crews broke ground for the new J. Paul Getty Center
on a mountaintop between the Los Angeles
neighborhoods of Bel-air, Brentwood,
and Pacific Palisades.
The building process was harder than anyone had imagined.
A construction worker explains why.
SPEAKER 3: It's been the most extremely difficult job
that any of us have ever encountered.
One road up, and one road down.
300,000 blocks of travertine and 40,000 aluminum panels
had to go up that road.
I don't think anybody understood the complexity of building
on top of a mountain.
I don't think the architects knew, the owners didn't know,
the contractor, the subcontractors, nobody knew.
It's like constructing a building on top of a pinhead.
SPEAKER 2: For almost a dozen years,
the city's residents watched and waited
for the center's completion.
Angelenos describe how they felt as they
watched the center being built.
SPEAKER 4: It's been great.
I drive up and down the 405 to work every day,
and I watch them take the mountaintop down,
load after load.
And I saw the tram line go up and the buildings
get bigger every day.
Well, a good part of my life was spent
watching the Getty get built, so I'm really looking forward
to seeing it from the inside.
SPEAKER 5: We're so used to seeing buildings go up
overnight, but I've been driving by this for years
and they're still building.
This feels really permanent, like the mountain itself did.
SPEAKER 6: They went to a lot of trouble
to show the world some art.
This shows that LA has some culture.
We have something to show people besides amusement parks
and beaches.
SPEAKER 3: The center opened to the public in December, 1997.
Chief Operating Officer and building
project manager, Steven Rountree.
STEVEN ROUNTREE: Building cultural buildings,
particularly building art museums,
is really tough, because there's just nowhere where
you can compromise.
The insides are just as important as the outsides.
And I think we've created a place where
people in their own ways find inspiration and energy out
of the experience.
[MUSIC PLAYING]