Yoda meets Frida Kahlo: George Lucas’ $1 billion museum isn’t just for Star Wars fans

Ma Yansong, the architect behind the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, says he was inspired by ‘science fiction, and nature’ - (Hufton+Crow)

It’s hard to miss the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. The newly opened 300,000-square-foot building is a sleek, futuristic vision of sweeping polymer-clad concrete and glass that hovers beside the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles. “It’s the one that looks like a spaceship, right?” asks my taxi driver. Yes, this is the museum you’re looking for.

The ambitious architecture is certainly appropriate for an institution founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas and his wife, the high-flying business executive Mellody Hobson, and bankrolled to the tune of a reported $1 billion. If the Lucas name on the outside leads visitors to assume the inside is full of spaceships too, they’ll be half-right.