Pritzker winner Arata Isozaki’s MOCA to be revamped, with water feature

The Pritzker Prize for 2019 has been awarded to Arata Isozaki, the 87-year-old Japanese architect with a career ranging from brutalist libraries to an inflatable purple concert hall. His most famous building is LA’s MOCA, or Museum of Contemporary Art, on Grand Avenue. However, the 1986 structure atop Bunker Hill, a collage of geometric forms buried mostly underground, has never been a huge hit with the public. But MOCA’s new director Klaus Biesenbach sees poetry in the design -- likening the complex to a “sunken pool” -- and promises to restore its “luminosity” and bring greenery to its arid plaza. He even hopes to incorporate a reflective water feature into the basement entry area, thereby making his sunken pool metaphor real.Frances Anderton talks to KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis about it, on DnA on ATC.