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New Museum of Contemporary Art
Bringing New Architecture to the
Bowery in New York City
by Amy S. Choi
The Bowery is known better for its appliance stores and graffiti
than for its architecture.
Things are about to change.
Amid the garages, bars and apartment buildings will soon
be the New Museum of Contemporary Art, downtown Manhattan's
first major art museum. Designed by Tokyo-based Kazyuo Sejima
and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA Ltd., the building will bring
the cutting edge of architecture to the cutting edge of downtown.
The 7-story building will stand 160 ft. high and is part of
the museum's $35 million capital project.
"We wanted a site, a location and an architect which
were all consistent with our mission, which is to break new
ground in art and ideas, take risks and do the unexpected
thing," said Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum.
"The Bowery is a kind of frontier in the heart of the
historic creative community of New York. We will be a major
force in changing the face of the Bowery. Our board was unanimously
enthusiastic."
The design of the new museum, which will break ground in
spring 2005, is certainly unexpected. The museum's galleries
are stacked on top of each other in an organic, shifting tower
with a number of setbacks, overhangs and balconies to ensure
that each floor, even though it is a vertical museum, accesses
the neighborhood, the light and the city.
The exterior is silvery galvanized, zinc-plated steel with
windows and skylights, which allows for the maximum amount
of light to enter the building and create a feeling of movement,
instead of a static, imposing structure. Its shifting frame
and numerous windows also open up the building to the city
as a whole, creating an additional level of accessibility.
"We're excited to work on it for its architectural uniqueness,"
said Mark Pankoff, senior project manager from FJ Sciame Construction
Co., the construction managers. "I don't think I'll ever
build another one like this. It's just fascinating architecturally."
The New Museum is the first vertical museum for SANAA, which
was selected in May 2003 to design the building. The company
beat out Abalos & Herreros, Adjaye Associates, Gigon/Guyer
and Reiser + Umemoto RUR Architecture, PC.
To create a stacked museum with open space on the site -
which is currently a parking lot sandwiched in between low-rise
buildings - the architects first had to reduce the number
of square feet that the New Museum originally asked them to
include.
Once that was done, the design team had increased flexibility
to play with the space.
"The Bowery is a very characteristic street with its
roughness and trucks coming from the Manhattan Bridge, so
this is a tough environment to make a public building that
communicates to the neighborhood and has an open relationship
with its surroundings," said Florian Idenburg, the project
architect and head of the U.S. operations for SANAA.
"Our first fear in designing the space was that it would
stand out too much on the block, but by breaking up the volume
and shifting the floors, the box itself starts to have similar
scales as the surrounding buildings."
Even though the structure will be larger than any of its
immediate neighbors, the architects are proposing a metal
cladding for the superstructure that keeps the building light.
"We didn't want a heavy building because this is to
be a building of now, very contemporary," Idenburg said.
"It should survive on the street."
The building also invites the street in. It features a clear
plate glass lobby, which helps incorporate the outside community
into the activity inside the museum. The lobby also serves
as a 1,100-sq.-ft. exhibition space lighted by skylights and
connected to the underground levels, which contain a 200-seat
black-box theater, 2,100-sq.-ft. media lounge, a small bar
and the infrastructure.
The gallery space is simple and neutral compared to the overall
exterior design. It does, however, carry the idea of fluidity,
flexibility and openness that the setbacks and balconies give
to the exterior.
Given that the contents of the museum will constantly be
in transition, the floors will be finished concrete and the
walls will be easy to remake for drilling and building installations.
Artists will have 14-ft.-high ceilings with exposed beams
to hang art from, as well as column-free space that will not
disrupt installation exhibits. The seventh floor combines
both inner and outer space, with a 1,700-sq.-ft. multiuse
exhibition space with wraparound outdoor terraces.
And as much as the interiors of the space can be easily manipulated
to highlight the art, the building itself is also art on display.
The museum will be on a lot that deadends Prince Street, which
creates a long vista to the building and makes it visible
from SoHo, the East Village, the Lower East Side and Chinatown.
"The art we show provides a lot of drama, and we didn't
want the building to compete with that," Phillips said.
"But in the grittiness of the Bowery, this building will
be a kind of beacon for the neighborhood as a whole."
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