Firm Is On Getty Villa Team

Machado and Silvetti Associates, Inc. of Boston designed the Getty Villa's new amphitheater. The fledgling landscape architecture firm of Korn Randolph, Inc. designed adjacent landscape features.

The Pasadena landscape architecture firm Korn Randolph Inc., founded just a year ago, is working at the J. Paul Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif.

Formerly the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Malibu site is a recreation of the Villa of the Papyri, a Roman country home buried in the 79 AD eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The Malibu gardens are based on research by noted landscape architect Denis Kurutz in the early 1970s. Kurutz relied on multiple sources in producing the design, including the writings of Pliny the Younger, who kept detailed records on his own gardening projects. Kurutz died in February of 2003.

The villa opened in 1974. It attracted close to 400,000 visitors a year before it shut for renovation in 1997, the same year the new, much larger J. Paul Getty Museum opened in Brentwood, Calif.

At that time, the plan was to close the Malibu villa, add a restaurant, outdoor dining area, auditorium, more parking spaces and an open-air amphitheater. The amphitheater and other new structures were designed by the Boston firm of Machado and Silvetti Associates, Inc.

The Getty Villa is scheduled to reopen in the fall of 2005. It will showcase the Getty Museum's collection of ancient and classical art.

Korn Randolph Inc. has completed designs that will renovate some of the villa's existing features and add some new ones, partner Amy Korn told landscapearchitect.com.