The Getty Villa in the Pacific Palisades escaped fire damage as blazes move into inland towards Brentwood, home of the Getty Center museum (AFP via Getty Images)。
The Getty’s architect, Richard Meier, built fire resistance into the billion-dollar complex, said Ron Hartwig, vice president of communications for the J. Paul Getty Trust. These hills are fire prone, but because of features like the 1.2 million square feet of thick travertine stone covering the outside walls, the crushed rock on the roofs and even the plants chosen for the brush-cleared grounds, “The safest place for the artwork to be is right here in the Getty Center,” he said.
Inside the Getty Center, the art galleries, library, and artwork storage areas are equally well-engineered, with state-of-the-art features that make them the safest possible place for art and archives during a fire.
The Getty’s architecture and landscaping were designed with fire prevention in mind. The buildings are made of highly fire-resistant stone, concrete, and protected steel. The Getty campus features wide-open travertine plazas with extensive open space around the buildings to slow down a fire, and the landscaping is well-irrigated throughout.
Fire-resistant landscaping spans the Getty campus and the surrounding land. This includes drought-resistant plants and oak trees, whose canopies are regularly pruned to prevent them from becoming fuel for fire. The ground underneath is also cleared regularly. The Getty’s Central Garden is the most-watered landscaping on the site and is surrounded by grass and an irrigation system that can be employed to create a buffer against a fire.
In the article, the museum noted that its buildings are made of fire-resistant stone, concrete and protected steel. Surrounding it are travertine plazas and well-irrigated landscaping designed to slow down the spread of fire. The roofs are covered with fire-resistant stone aggregate. Inside, the museum has walls of reinforced concrete or fire-protected steel and automatic fire doors that can trap fires in sealed-off areas. It has an air system designed to maintain a pressure flow to keep smoke from entering the building from outside. And there are sprinklers, but they are activated only as a last resort.
On March 13, 2018, The New York Times detailed allegations from women that Meier had sexually harassed or assaulted them. Meier responded by saying that he would take a leave of six months from his firm. In response to the allegations and Meier's apology, his alma mater Cornell University declined his intended endowment of a named chair and instituted a review of his previous donations. On April 6, 2018, an additional four women who formerly worked at Meier's architecture firm came forward with allegations against him. The most recent allegations dated to 2009. On October 9, 2018, the firm announced that his resignation was permanent.
是Meier，米兔运动中被辞退的建筑师。Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American abstract artist and architect, whose geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, Meier has designed several iconic buildings including the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and San Jose City Hall.
