David Geffen Galleries

The building is easiest to understand from underneath. Before the galleries, before the ticketing, there is a slab of concrete held above Wilshire Boulevard, and the shade it throws is the first room anyone enters.

We met at ten in the morning, when the plaza still belonged to people crossing it rather than people visiting it. A stone face rests against the western wall, and the light coming off the pavement makes it look, briefly, like it is turning to watch the traffic.

You do not look at this building. You walk under it and notice that the street has changed temperature.

Inside, the conversation moved the way the floor plan does — laterally, without hierarchy, doubling back. We talked about which galleries will feel wrong in ten years and which ones already feel like they have always been there.

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By noon the shade had moved about a meter east and the plaza had filled. The building had done the only thing a civic building must do, which is give people a reason to stand still together.