15 years after its last expansion, the MoMA has now completed its latest metamorphosis by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with the global giant Gensler. The new MoMA is smart, surgical, sprawling and slightly cold.

The expansion has spent $450 million during the current makeover to add more than 4,366 square meter (47,000 square feet) of gallery spaces for exhibiting art. Launched in 2014, the first phase of renovations on the east end was completed in 2017, and the second phase of expansion on the west end is now complete and ready to open to the public.
Its goal is to show more of the vast collection, partly to ease congestion by dispersing visitors around a bigger spaces and also seeks to better connect the Museum to the urban fabric of midtown Manhattan with the street-level galleries, free and open on the expanded ground floor, linking the Museum to New York and the streets of midtown Manhattan.
 
DS+R say, "The design optimized current spaces to be more flexible and technologically sophisticated, expanded and opened up the main lobby into a light-filled, double-height space that connects seamlessly between West 53rd and 54th Streets, and created a multitude of circulation routes with more areas for visitors to pause and reflect."

Up on the second-floor, Crown Creativity Lab for education was designed by Gensler will invite visitors to connect with art that explores new ideas about the present, past, and future.

The project faced criticism for the decision to demolish the American Folk Art Museum in order to make way for the new expansion. The team explained the design approach, saying that, "The architectural expression is a restrained conversation between the existing palette and new materials within The Museum of Modern Art. The design taps into the historic DNA of the building, relating disparate elements through a series of strategic interventions that reflect aspects of twentieth-century modernism: purity of material expression, abstraction of space, and thinness. Synthesis is achieved with a minimalist use of materials which correlates with the existing building fabric."

“This project has called on us to work across MoMA’s rich architectural history, incorporating the Museum’s existing building blocks into a comprehensible whole through careful and deliberate interventions into previous logics, as well as the construction of new logics that arise from MoMA’s current aspirations. This work has required the curiosity of an archeologist and the skill of a surgeon. The improvements will make the visitor experience more intuitive and will relieve congestion, while a new circulation network will knit together the expansion spaces with the lobbies, the theaters, and the Sculpture Garden to create a contiguous, free public realm that bridges street to street and art to city. The design integrates the various facets of the Museum’s architectural history, creating a distinct clear-glass façade on 53rd Street that complements the existing Goodwin and Stone, Johnson, and Taniguchi buildings and invites a more open dialogue between interior and exterior spaces.”

Elizabeth Diller, co-founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

The expanded MoMA campus will open to the public on October 21, 2019.
 

Project description by DS+R

Project Goals

The goals for the project are threefold: to increase gallery space and allow the Museum to exhibit significantly more of its diverse collection in deeper and more interdisciplinary ways, to provide visitors with a more welcoming and comfortable experience, and to better connect the Museum to the urban fabric of midtown Manhattan.

East End Renovation

The completed renovation of the east end includes the reconfiguration of 15,000 square feet to create two spacious galleries on the third floor that allow more flexibility for installing the collection and special exhibitions; the extension of the historic Bauhaus stair to the ground level to restore and enhance access to the second and third-floor galleries; and the addition of a new first-floor lounge facing The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. On the second floor, a new lounge and an espresso bar overlook the Sculpture Garden. The overall expansion will yield a net increase in MoMA’s gallery space of one third. The design optimizes current spaces to be more flexible and technologically sophisticated, and creates more areas for visitors to pause and reflect. It enlarges and opens up the main lobby into a light-filled, double-height space and creates intuitive circulation routes through the Museum, including a connector that seamlessly links the new galleries to the renovated east side of the building.

West End Expansion

The new western portion of the Museum will be dedicated almost entirely to the display of art. The expansion to the west end of the site will feature a stack of vertically interlocking galleries of varying heights. It will include engaging new street-level galleries comprised of a dedicated Projects Room and a gallery for contemporary design, a new fully customized studio space for media, performance, and film, and a sixth-floor lounge with an outdoor terrace facing 53rd Street.

A new custom entry canopy welcomes visitors into a double height space from 53rd street with an uninterrupted view between 53rd and 54th street, liberated by re-configuring ticketing and coat check off this central axis. The open lobby is equipped to host installations of art, on a ground floor free and open to all.

The Flagship Museum Store will be lowered one level, making it a new double-height space, allowing for the reconfigured lobby to be visually connected to the street and directly woven into the fabric of midtown Manhattan. Museum visitors can look down into the store from the Night Entry, West Connector Lounge, and Blade Stair in passing. There is a dedicated street entrance, bridge, glass elevator and stair enabling shoppers to bypass museum patrons if desired.

The blade stair marks the threshold to the new expansion of the museum and acts as a palette cleanser. The stair is a vibrant urban sculpture, combining a monumental physical presence with intangible structural lightness. This stair’s minimal expression was achieved through a number of structural innovations – a six-inch thin vertical spine hangs from the roof structure to structurally support the stairs and landings, leaving the structure free of any lateral bracing. Glass balustrades on the seven-foot wide risers are cantilevered and held in place with pins to express the intersection of the two materials, a detail and dimension that echoes the renovated Bauhaus stair where the stair is embedded into the terrazzo.

The overall expansion yields a net increase in MoMA’s gallery space of one third, to approximately 165,000 square feet, allowing the Museum to exhibit significantly more art in new and interdisciplinary ways. The expansion to the west end of the site will feature a stack of vertically interlocking galleries of varying heights, which will enable MoMA to realize a long-held aspiration: to present significantly more of its collection through a series of fluid, interconnected narratives of modern and contemporary art across all mediums. The expansion will engage new street-level galleries comprised of a dedicated Projects Gallery and a gallery for contemporary design, which will be free and open to all, a new fully customized studio space for media, performance, and film, and a sixth-floor lounge with an outdoor terrace facing 53rd Street.

Read more
Read less

More information

Label
Architects
Text
Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. Partner-in-charge.- Elizabeth Diller. Partners.- Charles Renfro,Ricardo Scofidio,and Benjamin Gilmartin. Project Directors.- Alberto Cavallero,Zoë Small,Kevin Rice,and Chris Andreacola. Project Architects.- Andrea Schelly and Michael Hundsnurscher. Lead Designers.- Chris Kupski,Daniel Markiewicz,Jess Austin,and Mario Bastianelli.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Project Team
Text
Lilian Fitch,David Mayner,Jonathan Parker,Sean Rowe,Heng-Choong Leong,Charles Blanchard,Fareez Giga,Sanny Ng,Derrick Benson,Ben Johnson,Roy Peer,Jason Buccheit,Chris Hall,Amber Foo,Jack Solomon,Michael Robitz,Barry Beagen,and Alice Colverd
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Collaborators
Text
Director, Real Estate Expansion, MoMA.- Jean Savitsky. Construction manager.- Turner Construction Company. Retail consultant.- Lumsden Design. Lighting designer— public spaces.- Tillotson Design Associates. Lighting designer— gallery spaces.- Renfro Design Group. MEP/FP/IT.- Jaros Baum & Bolles (JB&B).
Structural.- Severud Associates. Façade.- Heintges Consulting Architects & Engineers P.C. Sustainability.- Atelier Ten. Security.- DVS Security. Acoustics/Audio-Visual.- Cerami Associates. Vertical Transportation.- Van Deusen Associates (VDA). Theater Planning & Design.- Fisher Dachs Associates (FDA). Theater Audiovisual.- Boyce Nemec Designs. Waterproofing.- Vidaris.
Foodservice.- Cini-Little International, Inc. Signage/Wayfinding.- Gensler/Wkshps. Steel Fabricator—blade stair.- Dante Tisi, DAMTSA. Steel Fabricator—retail stair, counters.- M Cohen. Steel Fabricator—canopy.- Frener+Reifer, Germany. Millwork.- MillerBlaker.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Client
Text
MoMA
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Dates
Text
GroundbreakingFebruary 2016. First Phase Complete.- 1st June 2017. Completed.- 2019
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Renovation and Construction Cost
Text
$50 million for renovation and $400 million for expansion/new construction.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Location
Text
11 West 53 Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. NYC, USA
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Photography
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro Studio. Founded in 1981, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) is a design studio whose practice spans the fields of architecture, urban design, installation art, multi-media performance, digital media, and print. With a focus on cultural and civic projects, DS+R’s work addresses the changing role of institutions and the future of cities. The studio is based in New York and is comprised of over 100 architects, designers, artists and researchers, led by four partners--Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro and Benjamin Gilmartin.

DS+R completed two of the largest architecture and planning initiatives in New York City’s recent history: the adaptive reuse of an obsolete, industrial rail infrastructure into the High Line, a 1.5 mile-long public park, and the transformation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ half-century-old campus. The studio is currently engaged in two more projects significant to New York, scheduled to open in 2019: The Shed, the first multi-arts center designed to commission, produce, and present all types of performing arts, visual arts, and popular culture, and the renovation and expansion of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Most recently, the studio was also selected to design: Adelaide Contemporary, a new gallery and public sculpture park in South Australia; the Centre for Music, which will be a permanent home for the London Symphony Orchestra; and a new collection and research centre for the V&A in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Recent projects include the 35-acre Zaryadye Park adjacent to the Kremlin in Moscow; the Museum of Image & Sound on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro; The Broad, a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley; the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center at Columbia University in New York; and The Juilliard School in Tianjin, China.

DS+R’s independent work includes the Blur Building, a pavilion made of fog on Lake Neuchâtel for the Swiss Expo; Exit, an immersive data-driven installation about human migration at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Charles James: Beyond Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Arbores Laetae, an animated micro-park for the Liverpool Biennial; Musings on a Glass Box at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris; and Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design at the Jewish Museum in New York. A major retrospective of DS+R’s work was mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Most recently, the studio designed two site-specific installations at the 2018 Venice Biennale and the Costume Institute’s Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. DS+R also directed and produced The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o’clock, a free, choral performance featuring 1,000 singers atop the High Line, co-created with David Lang.

DS+R has authored several books: The High Line (Phaidon Press, 2015), Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account (Damiani, 2013), Flesh: Architectural Probes (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), Blur: The Making of Nothing (Harry N. Abrams, 2002), and Back to the Front: Tourisms of War (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).

DS+R has been distinguished with the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture, Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential" list, the Smithsonian Institution's 2005 National Design Award, the Medal of Honor and the President's Award from AIA New York, and Wall Street Journal Magazine's 2017 Architecture Innovator of the Year Award. Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller are fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and are International Fellows at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
Read more
Gensler is a global architecture, design, and planning firm with 46 locations and more than 5,000 professionals networked across Asia, Europe, Australia, the Middle East and the Americas. Founded in 1965, the firm serves more than 3,500 active clients in virtually every industry. Gensler designers strive to make the places people live, work and play more inspiring, more resilient, and more impactful.

Arthur Gensler Jr., FAIA, FIIDA, RIBA (1935—2021) founded the firm in 1965 together with his wife Drue and their colleague James Follet. He is widely credited with elevating the practice of interior design to professional standing. He was a Fellow of both the American Institute of Architects and the International Interior Design Association, and a professional member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Art graduated from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning and was a member of its Advisory Council. A charter member of Interior Design magazine’s Hall of Fame and a recipient of IIDA’s Star Award, he also received Ernst & Young LLP’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In 2015, he wrote Art’s Principles to offer entrepreneurs the business insights he wishes someone had given him when he was starting out.

Arthur Gensler is recognized as an industry icon and an astute businessman who propelled a small practice into the largest and most admired firm in the industry over the course of his 65-year career.
Read more
Published on: October 17, 2019
Cite: "Museum of Modern Art Renovation and Expansion by Diller Scofidio + Renfro Set to Open" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/museum-modern-art-renovation-and-expansion-diller-scofidio-renfro-set-open> ISSN 1139-6415
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...