LACMA’s campus is undergoing a major expansion, including an ambitious array of new building projects as part of a ten-year program called the ‘Transformation’. Conceived as part of this transformation, the last phase of the LACMA’s growth, currently in development, is the creation of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Situated on the famed ‘Miracle Mile’, the museum will preserve and breathe new life into the existing 1938 May Company Department Store. The additions to the building that date from 1946 will be removed and replaced with a ‘bubble’, a 1,000-seat theater and a terrace with views towards Hollywood. The revitalized May Company building will feature more than 4.600 square meters of exhibition galleries and, together with the new theater, will serve as a lens through which to reveal the rich, interdisciplinary history of film. Visitors will climb through a new open circulation ‘spine’, weave through dynamic, interactive spaces in one of Los Angeles’ most iconic historic buildings and arrive – floating above the city on the ethereal terrace of the bubble. A dialogue between the existing building (‘gravitas’) and the extension (‘levitas’) will emerge and with it, a discourse between shadow and light.