The Broad is designed by world-renowned architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. With its innovative “veil-and-vault” concept, the 120,000-square-foot, $140 million building features two floors of gallery space to showcase the Broad’s comprehensive collection and is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library.

Dubbed “the veil and the vault,” the museum’s design merges the two key components of the building: public exhibition space and collection storage. Rather than relegate the storage to secondary status, the “vault,” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. Its heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. Its carved underside shapes the lobby below, while its top surface is the floor plate of the exhibition space. The vault stores the portions of the collection not on display in the galleries or on loan, but DS+R provided viewing windows so visitors can get a sense of the intensive depth of the collection and peer right into the storage holding. The vault is enveloped on all sides by the “veil,” an airy, honeycomb-like structure that spans across the block-long gallery and provides filtered natural daylight.