"The museum's first purpose-built home looked like a factory for manufacturing dreams, a tough and exuberant stack of metal-clad boxes so intent on artistic labor that it didn't even have the time to straighten itself out. Squeezed into a tight lot, it delighted in the drama of verticality. The galleries got smaller and the ceilings loftier as you climbed, so the 27-foot-high fourth-floor gallery felt grand but constrained, as if it had outgrown its container."
"A long, narrow stairway at the back connected galleries and passed a secret sculpture niche - a rejection of the usual grand lobbies and ceremonial staircases. It was, rather, the institutional equivalent of a speakeasy: Psst, come see some art."
"Now the museum has expanded sideways, growing a separate but connected neighbor. OMA's addition has a split personality: a crystal shard on the street, seamlessly sturdy galleries at the back. As you walk east down Prince Street where it dead-ends at Bowery, the new structure appears to be leaning against the off-kilter tower."
The New Museum on Bowery, originally designed by Sanaa architects in 2007, required expansion after less than a decade due to space constraints. Following a two-year closure, the museum reopens with a redesign by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture that honors the original building's distinctive characteristics while enabling growth. Sanaa's initial design featured stacked metal-clad boxes with ascending galleries that decreased in size and increased in ceiling height, creating dramatic verticality and an unconventional institutional experience. OMA's addition expands the museum horizontally by creating a connected neighboring structure with a crystalline street-facing facade and sturdy gallery spaces, allowing the original tower to maintain its architectural integrity while the new construction provides necessary capacity.
Read at Curbed
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]