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November 19, 2004
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Images Courtesy Museum of Modern
Art |
Perhaps the most significant museum redesign
in recent memory, architect Yoshio Taniguchi's $425 million
rebuilding of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, opens
tomorrow.
The new Museum nearly doubles the capacity
of the former building, and encompasses approximately 630,000
square feet of new and renovated space on six floors. The
Museum’s total exhibition space has increased from 85,000
to 125,000 square feet , with galleries clustered around a
soaring 110-foot-tall, 12,400-square-foot atrium that diffuses
natural light throughout the building.
Among the notable features of the new
design are monumental windows and curtain walls throughout
the Museum that often flood spaces with warm, natural light
and afford views and connection to The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Sculpture Garden and the city beyond. Meanwhile, throughout
the interior Tanguichi has created voids that extend upward
through several floors to the sky; the intent is to draw light
into lower levels of pedestrian circulation space. These voids
contort as they move upward, though, moving around core systems
and creating a canyon-like effect and significant architectural
surprise. Taniguchi also provides intimately scaled galleries,
often full of dynamic interconnection and natural light.
On the exterior, Taniguchi used what
he describes a "tensity" (i.e., tautness) in the
facade by using window glass that is etched with very fine
horizontal lines. When gazing out of these windows, the effect
is like looking through a veil of gauze or a scrim. Particularly
on the 54th Street side, Taniguichi wanted this tensity to
unify the varied architecture of MoMA's several expansions
over the years.
Record’s January issue will feature
extensive coverage of the museum both in print and on the
web.
Sam Lubell
and James Murdock
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