Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens in Los Angeles after eight years of construction and a $1bn build cost
The 300,000 sq ft Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened in Los Angeles on 22 September 2026, delivered by Hathaway Dinwiddie after an eight-year build costing around $1bn.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened to the public in Los Angeles' Exposition Park on 22 September 2026, completing an eight-year construction programme that cost George Lucas and co-founder Mellody Hobson around $1bn of private money[1]. Hathaway Dinwiddie served as lead contractor on the 300,000 sq ft, five-storey building, with MAD Architects' Ma Yansong as design architect and Stantec as executive architect[1].
A project that moved cities before it broke ground
Construction broke ground in 2018, but the museum had been in development for more than a decade before that. Lucas first proposed the institution in San Francisco in 2010; plans then shifted to Chicago before both sites were abandoned[1]. Exposition Park - formerly surface parking adjacent to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum - was confirmed as the final location after those two false starts. The opening date itself slipped repeatedly: an original 2021 target was pushed back by the pandemic and then by supply-chain disruption, with the date revised to 2023, then 2025, before the 22 September 2026 date held firm.
Engineering a building with no straight lines
The structure presented the project team with a set of interlocking technical constraints unusual even by Los Angeles standards. Key figures from the delivery:
- 1,200 uniquely shaped fiberglass-reinforced polymer (GFRP) panels clad the exterior, each individually fabricated by Kreysler & Associates using robotics and hand-finishing[1]
- 281 seismic base isolators - six-foot-diameter concave steel bowls with ball bearings - allow the building to move up to 42 inches laterally during an earthquake; the choice of lightweight GFRP over heavier glass fiber-reinforced concrete was driven directly by the weight budget the isolation system imposed
- 714 geothermal wells, each drilled to 365 ft (111 m), feed a cooling system connected to a waterfall feature on the northwest corner of the campus
- 24,000 sq ft of rooftop photovoltaics sit alongside a green roof section on the curving roofline
- A multidisciplinary team of more than 150 architects, engineers, and designers developed the fabrication and construction methods required to assemble the building
Structural engineer Leslie E. Robertson Associates (LERA) and facade consultant Walter P Moore worked alongside Stantec on the envelope solution. AlfaTech handled MEP engineering; ENGEO provided geotechnical services; JLL acted as project manager and construction manager.
Programme and public realm
The completed building contains 100,000 sq ft of exhibition space across 30 galleries, two 299-seat theatres, a free public research library, educational studios, and the Skywalker Grill restaurant[1]. Landscape architect Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA delivered 11 acres of new public green space on what was previously a surface car park, including an amphitheatre, hanging garden, and pedestrian bridge.
The state of California granted the museum a 99-year lease on the Exposition Park site at $30 per year, with the city of Los Angeles facilitating additional land agreements. No public money was used for construction or financing.
The museum is targeting LEED Gold certification. With the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics approaching, the Exposition Park precinct - which also includes the Natural History Museum and the California Science Center - will face significantly elevated visitor volumes; how the new public realm performs under that pressure will be an early test of the landscape design.
Written by Construction Trade News's automated desk from the sources above and reviewed before publication. How we work.
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