The solid exterior walls of the UCLA/Hammer Museum will be giving way to wide expanses of glass and light to make transparent and inviting to the outside world a vibrant cultural center that too often has seemed inaccessible, if not invisible.

A museum virtually glowing with energy is the tantalizing vision that an international team of design experts laid out May 15 before 130 invited guests gathered in the central open-air courtyard where the museum's metamorphosis will be most apparent and dramatic.

Using a palette that blends architectural design, graphics, landscaping and lighting, the team will create an identity and presence for the decade-old museum that it lacks today. Gone will be the layout that bewildered visitors. Instead, the team of Los Angeles architect Michael Maltzan, Toronto graphic designer Bruce Mau and landscape and interior designer Petra Blaisse of Amsterdam has set out to give the Hammer transparency, connectivity among the diverse experiences that will occur there and a sense of change and possibility.

The $25-million, yearlong construction project, to be funded through a multi-year capital campaign, is slated to begin in early 2002. One prominent feature will be a 288-seat theater that has been half-built and hidden behind a courtyard wall since the museum opened in 1990. It will serve as the screening room of the UCLA Film and Television Archive and a venue for poetry readings, lectures, concerts and conferences. New and expanded galleries will be added, as well as an enlarged, relocated bookstore, a restaurant and café offering courtyard dining, and a great hall for receptions and public events.

"This marks an important point in the institution's history," said Ann Philbin, director of the museum, "as we present the plans for realizing the original vision of the museum's founder and benefactor, Dr. Armand Hammer, to create a vital arts and cultural center in the very heart of Westwood."

"The Hammer Museum is a premier example of UCLA's presence in Westwood," said Chancellor Albert Carnesale, reflecting on the arts as a critical link between the university and the broader community. "This project will make the Hammer an even more spectacular and welcoming facility."

From Lindbrook Drive, where the Hammer's main entrance will be relocated, passersby will be able to look across the entire expanse of open courtyard to glimpse people lining up for a film, enjoying dinner, shopping at the bookstore and climbing the grand staircase that leads to the upper-level galleries. A bridge crossing over the courtyard will connect the galleries.

"Arriving at the courtyard will be the most important experience at the Hammer," said Maltzan, who has worked on several high-profile projects, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall. "The courtyard is the very real center, we believe, of the museum. It is the cultural crossroads that the Hammer can actually begin to provide."

On hand for the unveiling was Los Angeles art patron, philanthropist and alumna Eileen Harris Norton, who, through the Peter Norton Family Foundation, named after her husband, has donated $2 million for a new contemporary art gallery. The new art space will be named the Eileen Harris Norton Family Gallery.

"Eileen Norton's support of the Hammer's plans for the future is a tremendous vote of confidence," said School of the Arts and Architecture Dean Daniel Neuman.

The museum's transformation is one of several major capital projects that are under way as part of an arts renaissance at UCLA, Neuman said, including the Glorya Kaufman Hall and the Broad Art Center. "Their completion will provide environments where artistic innovations will be incubated and promulgated, further enhancing the artistic and cultural life at UCLA."