Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth is the Los Angeles location of the international gallery devoted to contemporary art and modern masters. A new destination in the heart of the burgeoning Downtown Arts District, it occupies the restored Globe Mills complex, a collection of interconnected late 19th and early 20th century buildings and internal outdoor spaces. Here visitors discover museum-caliber exhibitions as well as public programs and educational activities that contextualize the art on view for diverse audiences.

For the first phase, Studio-MLA planted a minimalist desert garden along 3rd Street as a modern complement to the gallery’s curatorial strategy and the building’s architecture. Each plant was hand-selected to create a cohesive and rare collection for the gallery owners. A curation in and of itself, the garden boasts Opuntias, Aloes, Pachycereus and assorted palms that are displayed as art objects among large boulders on a backdrop of dark grey gravel.

In phase two, Studio-MLA created the “City Garden”, a courtyard dining space and kitchen garden for Manuela, the acclaimed restaurant at Hauser & Wirth. The kitchen garden provides the restaurant with seasonal herbs, fruits and vegetables and features a beautifully designed chicken coop for the restaurant’s 12 rare-breed chickens that supply the kitchen with fresh eggs for the breakfast menu.

The Courtyard garden is the project’s final phase. A carefully curated California Garden with unique and quintessential California plant specimens. The garden, accessible only visually, extends itself beyond the ground plane by jumping onto the roof creating an urban forest backdrop that adds texture and color to the Arts District skyline.