LA famously plays host to the Oscars and the Lakers, to a massive, mouse-eared water tower and an even more massive Hollywood sign. It also holds some of the most architecturally innovative academic, cultural, commercial and entertainment spaces in the country. MATT Construction has been grateful to partner with leading design teams to bring some of these icons to life, from the conception of bold designs to shovel-in-dirt execution.

Photo credit: Raimund Koch

Petersen Automotive Museum

The Petersen Automotive Museum underwent a massive interior and exterior renovation, transforming from underutilized box to streamlined steel icon stocked with interactive exhibits and a tantalizing façade of sweeping silver ribbons overlaid on a racy red backdrop, all echoing and honoring one of the main drivers of human history, the automobile.

Photo credit: Iwan Baan

The Broad Museum

This brand new, three-story structure sets a bold standard in modern, sustainable design with its gleaming white façade. Now home to Eli and Edythe Broad’s world-famous collection of postwar and contemporary art, it provided 50,000 sf of gallery space and earned LEED Gold status for its innovative use of filtered natural daylight to brighten the museum while protecting priceless works of art.

Photo credit: Google images by: Connie Zhou

Google Spruce Goose

MATT partnered with ZGF Architects to transform an expansive aviation hangar once owned by Howard Hughes into a spacious, airy new office for Google, repurposing as much of the original wooden fabric as possible in the open plan, which is delineated into discrete zones for solo and team work, exercise, eating, meditation and even napping.

Photo credit: Nathaniel Riley

Hollywood Bowl

MATT shepherded a multi-phased series of upgrades to one of the nation’s busiest concert venues over the course of several narrow, off-season windows, including a major overhaul of the Bowl’s signature stage and shell, a complete update of the Alaskan yellow cedar benches, site lighting, a box office face-lift and a construction of a new popcorn stand and bar area.

LACMA

Over the span of a decade, MATT collaborated with LACMA to update, enhance and extend the museum’s available spaces as part of a multi-phased Transformation effort, which included construction of the new three-story, Italian Travertine BCAM building, the sleek, glass-paneled Ray’s Restaurant and Stark Bar, the red-trimmed Resnick Pavilion for special exhibitions and the visually illusory Levitated Mass hanging boulder sculpture by Michael Heizer.

Photo credit: Tom Bonner

Wilshire Boulevard Temple

This full exterior and interior restoration brought the 1929 steel-framed, 100-foot-diameter, 100-foot-tall concrete domed octagonal temple into the 21st century, transforming the sacred space into a beautiful hub for worship and gathering and earning the landmark site an LA Conservancy Presidential Award.

Photo Credit: Tom Bonner

Natural History Museum

The eight-year, 15-phase campaign involved a major restoration and update of the museum’s 1913 and 1920 buildings, construction of a three-and-a-half-acre learning garden and the opening up of existing gallery spaces to allow in abundant natural light, with the new entryway’s striking 60-foot-tall glimmering glass Otis Booth Pavilion welcoming guests into the space beneath a suspended fin whale skeleton.

USC Mudd Hall of Philosophy

MATT’s careful seismic repair and upgrade of the campus’s 1929 Romanesque building harvested historic plaster finishes and murals, preserving them for later re-installation to keep the spirit of the landmark facility alive, garnering the 2004 LA Conservancy Preservation Award.

Skirball

The Skirball Cultural Center commissioned MATT to tackle an ambitious, 20-year, four-phase development, blending architect Moshe Safdie’s as-cast architectural concrete vision fluidly into the surrounding Santa Monica mountainscape, culminating in the creation of a museum, the Ahmanson Hall multi-use facility with its signature vaulted, semi-circular auditorium, an archaeological discovery center, a permanent, interactive Noah’s Ark exhibit, a main reception and classroom facility, a massive banquet facility, a large outdoor courtyard, two multi-level parking garages, an amphitheater and an elegant outdoor gardenscape.

Rendering credit: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Exterior Rendering ©RenzoPiano BuildingWorkshop/©Academy Museum Foundation/Image from L’Autre Image

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

This cutting-edge museum space carves a sleek, curving silhouette against the LA skyline at Wilshire and Fairfax, featuring both a historical restoration of the original 1939 May Company building—now the Saban Building—and also new construction of a breathtaking, base-isolated glass and concrete dome that stands at six-and-a-half stories and houses a 1,000-seat theater and outdoor terraces.