Exploring Los Angeles - A Visit to the Getty Centre and Museum

getty-by-mrmrobinson-1

I was just thinking yesterday about how it great it must be to travel the world and capture different types of architecture. I do it in a vocational sense, when I'm travelling I end up being attracted to different pieces of modern architecture, but I think as a job must be really interesting. Maybe a little stressful as you need to capture the right angles and convey the sense of the building. So when I was in Los Angeles the Getty Centre was an obvious location that I needed to visit. I remembered seeing this building when I was a design student and was in awe of the clean lines and views from the top looking over Los Angeles, it's almost like a castle in the sky.

This museum was started at J. Paul Getty's house in 1954. J.Paul Getty was one of the richest living Americans and was worth more than $6 billion dollars at his death in 1976. He was said to be very frugal but always made exceptions for art and antiques, hence expanding his house to better accommodate the collection. The collection soon outgrew the property and the Getty Trust looked for a new location, choosing this campus of 24 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The architecture was designed by Richard Meier, both abstract artist and architect, who wanted to use geometric gradients of the colour white all across this property. He did this by creating two grids that acted as axises that meant open views from each side of the build. I reccomend you read up on this property and there are so many intricacies architecturally, if you get a chance to visit you can take a free tour of the architecture itself with a guide. It's very interesting.

Here are a few photos I took on my film camera that day. I tend to be selective when I take a film camera with me but here there were so many unique angles and details that I used two rolls or more on this building alone. I hope you like them.

getty-by-mrmrobinson-4