Huntington's new visitor center strikes studiously neutral pose
Then there's the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, which on Wednesday will open the first phase of its $68-million education and visitor center, named for outgoing President Steven S. Koblik.
Designed by Architectural Resources Group (ARG), which worked on the 2008 restoration of the Art Gallery with Pasadena's Earl Corp., the new visitor center replaces Whitney Smith's 1980 entry pavilion on the eastern side of the Huntington's 207-acre campus. The facilities opening Wednesday include space for ticketing and membership services as well as a coffee shop and an expanded museum store.
After moving from the parking lot through an arrival court lined with pepper trees, visitors to the new complex will pass ticket windows and the cafe and enter a courtyard anchored by a fountain and four mature podocarpus trees. (The landscape architect is Office of Cheryl Barton.) The 5,000-square-foot museum store, with a mannered interior by Miroglio Architecture and Design, faces the courtyard on the east.
The three buildings are linked by loggias and cedar trellises that sit on slim white columns. There are touches of the Mission style in the red-tiled roofs, as well as hints of resort and estate architecture.
The second phase, opening in April, will add a 400-seat auditorium and a restaurant along with classrooms and meeting rooms, a large domed garden court and 42,000 square feet of underground storage space for the Huntington's varied collections. Newly landscaped gardens covering nearly 7 acres will be anchored by a long allée of olive trees pointing the way to the rest of the Huntington campus.
Across the allée, the second-phase buildings face the 2004 Munger Research Center, a bulky, expedient design by Earl Corp. that might be the Huntington's least popular piece of architecture.