Italian architect Renzo Piano unveiled Thursday his latest creation - the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in Los Angeles.
Part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) complex, the new building will house the contemporary art collection of American billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad.
Piano shipped travertine marble from Italy to build the new rectangular museum, which is topped by a vast skylight and holds around 60,000 square feet of gallery space.
An external escalator gives visitors stunning views over the city and the Hollywood Hills.
Piano said he had taken his inspiration for the building from the Californian surroundings.
''Every place has its own particular light, and in Los Angeles it's particularly strong and unique,'' he said.
The architect also collaborated with American artists such as John Baldessari and Chris Burden to create a park surrounding the museum filled with Los Angeles's trademark palm trees.
''I wanted to create a little oasis, a sort of Central Park in miniature,'' he said.
Piano described the execution of the whole project - which will include the addition of another, lower building to the museum complex in two year's time - as ''a miracle''.
''I had to get a road taken off the Los Angeles street map and demolish a car park,'' he said.
''In this city that's like pulling down the Colosseum in Rome.''
Among the artists with works on display on the two upper floors of the museum are Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Cindy Sherman.
The ground floor is dedicated to the labyrinthine sculpture of American artist Richard Serra.
''It's difficult to say where the art finishes and the architecture begins in a museum, but that's the beauty of it,'' Piano said.
The Genoese master architect has designed a host of major buildings around the world including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, built in collaboration with English architect Richard Rogers in the 1970s, and the New York Times Building that opened in New York last year.
He also collaborated on the redesign of the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.
Piano will return to LACMA next Sunday to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles Italian Cultural Institute, which recognises Italian excellence in the world.
