Place Category: Museum
The Getty Center was designed by architect Richard Meier, who became the youngest architect to ever win the Pritzker Architecture Prize shortly before receiving the commission to work on this complex. One of Meier's goals with the Getty was to create a harmonious blend of landscape and building. To that end, he took advantage of two naturally-occurring ridges in the California hillside and laid two grids along these axes, along which the entire complex can be navigated – the galleries line up along one axis and the administrative buildings along the other. These axes are offset by 22.5 degrees, the same angle of divergence reflected in the ridges that surround the center.