Lucas Museum of Narrative Art San Francisco, Treasure Island Building Images, Chicago

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art San Francisco

SF Treasure Island Building, California, USA – initial design was by MAD Architects

May 7, 2017

Plans for Lucas Museum of Narrative Art San Francisco

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art now has a site.

After considering potential sites in Chicago and San Francisco the art collection and archives of superstar director George Lucas finally found a future home in Exposition Park:

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art San Francisco

Jul 8, 2016

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago News

Plans to Build Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago Abandonded

On Friday George Lucas announced that he had abandoned plans to build his Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago.

The museum’s director, Don Bacigalupi, says the Star Wars filmmaker is “engaged in due diligence on sites in San Francisco and Los Angeles”, reports the Architectural Record.

The decision to leave Chicago had been expected for weeks. George Lucas had hoped to build on a parking lot near Soldier Field, and in 2014 he released renderings of a mushroom-like building by Ma Yansong of Los Angeles- and Beijing-based MAD Architects (best known for a pair of sinuous condo towers near Toronto).

The structure was 400,000 sqft. But in late 2014 a group called Friends of the Parks filed suit, claiming the city had no right to convey waterfront land, held in a public trust, to the museum.

In September, the museum released a revised design, scaled down by about 25 percent. But the Friends of the Park group wasn’t mollified. In February, a federal judge declined to dismiss its suit, meaning the litigation might have dragged on for years. And when the city offered another site —McCormick Place East, a convention center designed by Mies van der Rohe protégé Gene Summers — Friends of the Parks stated its intent to block construction at that location too.

George Lucas lost patience with the Friends group:
“No one benefits from continuing their seemingly unending litigation to protect a parking lot,” he said in a statement Friday.

Whichever site is chosen, Ma Yansong of MAD Architects remains as the museum’s architect, according to Don Bacigalupi. The architect has already visited the Treasure Island site in San Francisco suggesting Los Angeles is out of the running.

20 May 2016

Lucas Museum in San Francisco

Chicago Design: Ma Yansong of MAD, Architects

Location: Treasure Island, San Francisco, California, USA

Lucas Museum may move to Treasure Island in San Francisco

A spokeswoman for San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin confirmed that the city and museum representatives are in early discussions about a site on Treasure Island, a destination in San Francisco Bay famous for a naval base.

The initial design was for a Chicago site by MAD Architects. Architect Frank Gehry and Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel both “voiced strong support for the project”.

However the design was criticsed by Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune who described the building as being “needlessly massive” and called for a “dose of restraint”.

The museum will house works by artists such as Howard Chandler Christy, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, and Norman Rockwell.

Los Angeles is also being considered, with Mayor Eric Garcetti saying that Lucas’ project would find a good home in the heart of the movie industry. —The L.A. Times

The lawsuit averse Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is openly courting other cities after Chicago’s Friends of the Park filed legal action to prevent the project from building on its chosen Chicago lakefront site, may wind up in San Francisco, although Los Angeles (and Waukegan, IL) have offered themselves up as well, reports archinect.

Rahm Emanuel, who was a vocal champion of the Museum’s proposed locale, recently suggested a compromise in the form of moving the museum to the Lake Michigan adjacent McCormick Place East, but no one is compromising as of yet.

It is also unclear if Lucas is actively considering L.A. as a home for the museum. In 2014, Garcetti reached out to Lucas in a letter expressing interest in bringing the museum to Southern California. Garcetti tentatively proposed the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, located near USC, where Lucas studied film in the 1960s.

The plan was to tear down the arena, which opened in 1959, and build the museum on the site. The location would have put the new venue close to Exposition Park, which contains the Natural History Museum and the California Science Center.

George Lucas, world-famous director of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, had previously considered locating the museum in either San Francisco or Los Angeles, close to his California home and the base of his company LucasFilm.

George selected Chicago in June 2014 – the director has described the Windy City as his “second home”. His wife is from Chicago and they married in the city.

In March 2015, U.S. District Judge John Darrah ruled the land intended for the museum is held in public trust. Thus, the Illinois General Assembly is the only body with the power to allow construction to proceed, under certain limitations

Website: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in San Francisco – LA Times article

Website: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Website: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art – Dezeen article re Chicago design / site

“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is a museum project originally planned to be located in Chicago near Burnham Harbor and was slated to have been completed in 2019-20. Endowed and built by film creator and director, George Lucas, it will hold paintings, photography, illustration, cinematic art and digital art.”
Website: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art – wikipedia

Location: Treasure Island, San Francisco, North California, USA

New Architecture in San Francisco

Contemporary San Francisco Architecture

San Francisco Architectural Designs – chronological list

San Francisco Architectural Walking Tours by e-architect

San Francisco Architecture Offices – architecture firm listings on e-architect

San Francisco Architecture

Academic Center at College of Marin, Kentfield
Design: TLCD Architecture + Mark Cavagnero Associates

photo : Tim Griffith
College of Marin Academic Center Building

Oceanwide Center San Francisco Building
Design: Foster + Partners

images courtesy of architects
Oceanwide Center San Francisco Building

Stanford University Medical Center Project Renewal
Design: Rafael Viñoly Architects
The New Stanford Hospital Building

Bing Concert Hall, Stanford, south of San Francisco
Design: Ennead Architects with Fisher Dachs Associates and Nagata Acoustics
Bing Concert Hall Stanford

Stanford University Law School Building, Palo Alto
Ennead Architects
Stanford University Building San Francisco