CHRISTIAN DE PORTZAMPARC SELECTED TO DESIGN FILM MUSEUM IN HOLLYWOOD

At a board meeting on Tuesday night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose the architect Christian de Portzamparc and his Paris-based firm to design the grand movie museum it is planning for a site just south of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, reports Michael Cieply in the New York Times.

The project—which academy officials said several years ago would cost roughly two hundred million dollars—has been described as the most ambitious monument to the worldwide influence of film. It will also extend the revival of a district that was once a stomping ground for Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and D. W. Griffith but long ago lost its grip on a business that still bears its name. In a phone interview on Wednesday, Sidney Ganis, president of the academy, said the group found Portzamparc to be “an exciting and practical, and also not obvious, architect.” Ganis added, “This is a man who unequivocally loves film and has said many times that film has shaped his outlook on life.”