Getty Centre

Yesterday, in the afternoon of a very clear day I went to visit the Getty Centre, In Brentwood, LA, not very distant from Santa Monica. The centre takes its name after J. Paul Getty, the oil industrialist and author of the famous book "How to be rich". Although I had look at it in the internet, I was flabbergasted already at my arrival, 7 floor underground carpark and internal tram system to take you to the centre. What an opportunity for an architect in this case Meier to be playing without hardly constraint of budget....

The dimension of the project and of its realization are beyond scale, more the legacy of an emperor than that of an industrialist in a democratic society, the center stands like the works of those roman emperors that built an aqueduct or a temple, or a Pope, like Pius II and his Pienza.

It is built in white, with a stone quite familiar to Italians, travertine from Rome, but instead of being polished the squared block are left with a rough surface that conferrers more natural grandiosity to the complex. The sections built in white painted steel are instead flat.

It contains a series of terraces, roof gardens, gardens, fountains, statues, few pavilions for the art collections and a research centre where they gave me a two years long reader status with badge for not paying the carpark. In the library all the stacks have an "earthquake bar" to keep the book from falling during an earthquake.

The day was clear thus I visited only one of the exhibitions and spent quite a long time looking at LA from the terraces. I am amazed how green it looks, . with hills and trees everywhere. Travelling on the freeway you often feel you are crossing the countryside. What you see in the photo is freeways 405 that goes south, the Getty is just off the 405, and Century City, the only other area of LA, besides downtown, with skyscrapers.

This is instead a picture of the 405, heading north one can see the traffic of the afternoon. I had to remain in the area until 8 pm before heading back east and home.