www.ambiente.us MARCH | MARZO 2010
New Museum | 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
The New Museum, designed by Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue
Nishizawa/SANAA with Gensler, New York, serving as Executive Architect, is a
seven-story, structure located at 235 Bowery between Stanton and Rivington
Streets, at the origin of Prince Street in New York City. The first art museum ever
constructed from the ground up in downtown Manhattan, the New Museum
opened to the public on December 1, 2007, coinciding with the institution’s 30th
anniversary.
The New Museum building is a home for contemporary art and an incubator for
new ideas, as well as an architectural contribution to New York’s urban
landscape. Sejima and Nishizawa, who received the commission in 2002, have
described the building as their response to the history and powerful personalities
of both the New Museum and its storied site. “The Bowery was very gritty when
we first visited it,” they have said. “We were a bit shocked, but we were also
impressed that a contemporary art museum wanted to be there.”
“In the end, the Bowery and the New Museum have a lot in common. Both have
a history of being very accepting, open, embracing of every idiosyncrasy in an
unprejudiced manner. When we learned about the history of the New Museum
we were flabbergasted by its attitude, which
is very political, fearless, and very tough. The
New Museum is a combination of elegant and
urban. We were determined to make a
building that felt like that.” (continues)
New Museum | 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
The New Museum, designed by Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue
Nishizawa/SANAA with Gensler, New York, serving as Executive Architect, is a
seven-story, structure located at 235 Bowery between Stanton and Rivington
Streets, at the origin of Prince Street in New York City. The first art museum ever
constructed from the ground up in downtown Manhattan, the New Museum
opened to the public on December 1, 2007, coinciding with the institution’s 30th
anniversary.
The New Museum building is a home for contemporary art and an incubator for
new ideas, as well as an architectural contribution to New York’s urban
landscape. Sejima and Nishizawa, who received the commission in 2002, have
described the building as their response to the history and powerful personalities
of both the New Museum and its storied site. “The Bowery was very gritty when
we first visited it,” they have said. “We were a bit shocked, but we were also
impressed that a contemporary art museum wanted to be there.”
“In the end, the Bowery and the New Museum have a lot in common. Both have
a history of being very accepting, open, embracing of every idiosyncrasy in an
unprejudiced manner. When we learned about the history of the New Museum
we were flabbergasted by its attitude, which
is very political, fearless, and very tough. The
New Museum is a combination of elegant and
urban. We were determined to make a
building that felt like that.” (continues)
| . |
| . |
| . |
Amidst a cluster of relatively small and midsized buildings of
varying types and uses, the New Museum rises 174 feet above
street level. As visitors approach the Bowery or from the west
along Prince Street, they encounter the building as a dramatic
stack of seven rectangular boxes. This distinctive form derives
directly from the architects’ defining solution to fundamental
challenges of the site: A dense and ambitious program, including
the need for open, flexible gallery spaces of different heights and
atmospheres, had to be accommodated within a tight zoning
envelope on a footprint of seventy-one feet wide and 112 feet
deep.
In order to address these conditions without creating a
monolithic, dark, and airless building, SANAA assigned key
programmatic elements to a series of levels (the seven boxes),
stacked those boxes according to the anticipated needs and
circulation patterns of building users, then drew the different
levels away from the vertebrae of the building core laterally to
the north, south, east, or west. The shifted-box approach yields a
variety of open, fluid internal spaces that are different heights at
every level, with different characteristics but all column-free.
The New Museum is clad in a seamless, anodized expanded
aluminum mesh chosen by SANAA to emphasize the volumes of
the boxes while dressing the whole of the building with a
delicate, filmy, softly shimmering skin. With windows just visible
behind this porous scrim-like surface, the building appears as a
single, coherent, and even heroic form that is nevertheless
mutable, dynamic, and animated by the changing light of day—
an appropriate visual metaphor for the openness of the New
Museum and the ever-changing nature of contemporary art.
“It was complicated to organize the architecture around all of
varying types and uses, the New Museum rises 174 feet above
street level. As visitors approach the Bowery or from the west
along Prince Street, they encounter the building as a dramatic
stack of seven rectangular boxes. This distinctive form derives
directly from the architects’ defining solution to fundamental
challenges of the site: A dense and ambitious program, including
the need for open, flexible gallery spaces of different heights and
atmospheres, had to be accommodated within a tight zoning
envelope on a footprint of seventy-one feet wide and 112 feet
deep.
In order to address these conditions without creating a
monolithic, dark, and airless building, SANAA assigned key
programmatic elements to a series of levels (the seven boxes),
stacked those boxes according to the anticipated needs and
circulation patterns of building users, then drew the different
levels away from the vertebrae of the building core laterally to
the north, south, east, or west. The shifted-box approach yields a
variety of open, fluid internal spaces that are different heights at
every level, with different characteristics but all column-free.
The New Museum is clad in a seamless, anodized expanded
aluminum mesh chosen by SANAA to emphasize the volumes of
the boxes while dressing the whole of the building with a
delicate, filmy, softly shimmering skin. With windows just visible
behind this porous scrim-like surface, the building appears as a
single, coherent, and even heroic form that is nevertheless
mutable, dynamic, and animated by the changing light of day—
an appropriate visual metaphor for the openness of the New
Museum and the ever-changing nature of contemporary art.
“It was complicated to organize the architecture around all of
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the desires,” Sejima and Nishizawa have said. “We knew we
could not maximize the entire site with solid architecture, we
had to reduce the building’s mass somehow to create space
between it and the perimeter. The solution of the shifted boxes
arrived quickly and intuitively. Then through trial and error we
arrived at the final, ideal configuration. Now we have a building
that meets the city, allows natural light inside, gives the Museum
flexible column-free galleries, and expresses the program and
people inside to the world of New York outside.”
FROM THE STREET TO THE ART
Visitors will be drawn into the New Museum by views through a
nearly fifteen-foot-tall plane of clear plate glass along the
Bowery, stretching across the full width of the building, named for
the Eisenberg and Feinstein families, to include both the public
entrance and the entrance to the Museum’s loading area, on the
north side of the core, where back-of-house activities and the
movement of artworks will be on full view to passersby. Through
this clear membrane, visitors will see all of the various functions
of the lobby level, a transitional space between the life of the
street and that of the Museum. The color and buzz of the Bowery
neighborhood give way here to a luminous, pale space.
“We wanted to make interiors that expose the way they work in
an elegantly rough way that is appropriate to the Museum and
right for the budget and the place,” Sejima and Nishizawa have
stated. “We don’t want to hide things behind gyp board, we
want to show what the building is made of and maximize the
feeling of openness, but do it in a beautiful way inside the
parameters of the toughness. This is why the building’s structure
and guts are exposed— the ducts, the sprinklers, the fireproofing
material—and the view from the street includes everything on
could not maximize the entire site with solid architecture, we
had to reduce the building’s mass somehow to create space
between it and the perimeter. The solution of the shifted boxes
arrived quickly and intuitively. Then through trial and error we
arrived at the final, ideal configuration. Now we have a building
that meets the city, allows natural light inside, gives the Museum
flexible column-free galleries, and expresses the program and
people inside to the world of New York outside.”
FROM THE STREET TO THE ART
Visitors will be drawn into the New Museum by views through a
nearly fifteen-foot-tall plane of clear plate glass along the
Bowery, stretching across the full width of the building, named for
the Eisenberg and Feinstein families, to include both the public
entrance and the entrance to the Museum’s loading area, on the
north side of the core, where back-of-house activities and the
movement of artworks will be on full view to passersby. Through
this clear membrane, visitors will see all of the various functions
of the lobby level, a transitional space between the life of the
street and that of the Museum. The color and buzz of the Bowery
neighborhood give way here to a luminous, pale space.
“We wanted to make interiors that expose the way they work in
an elegantly rough way that is appropriate to the Museum and
right for the budget and the place,” Sejima and Nishizawa have
stated. “We don’t want to hide things behind gyp board, we
want to show what the building is made of and maximize the
feeling of openness, but do it in a beautiful way inside the
parameters of the toughness. This is why the building’s structure
and guts are exposed— the ducts, the sprinklers, the fireproofing
material—and the view from the street includes everything on
| . |
the ground floor.”
Gray concrete pavement outside gives way to polished gray
concrete floors in the grand but intimate Marcia Tucker Hall. This
space contains the Visitor Services desk; ticketing; coat check;
the New Museum Store defined by a serpentine screen of metal
mesh; the New Food café and its open kitchen; a stairway down
to the building’s lower level and Theater; elevator banks for
access to the galleries above; and the luminous, 1,100-square-
foot Joan and Charles Lazarus Gallery separated from the rest of
the space by a soaring glass wall and illuminated by daylight
filtering down from the shift of the structural box above. A
floating dropped screen of metal mesh softens and abstracts the
largely visible functions of the ceiling above it, filtering light from
a grid of glowing, thin florescent tubes.
From the lobby level, visitors may choose a variety
of paths upward or downward through the building.
Descending by either the open, glass enclosed interior stairway
or an elevator to the building’s lower level, visitors will find the
182-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theater—a white box theater with a
pre-function hall that doubles as a gallery for special projects.
This level also houses the Museum’s restrooms (where Bisazza
mosaic covers the walls with hotly hued, pixilated hanami cherry
blossom patterns—the only intensely colored feature in the
building aside from the vibrant green elevator cab interiors);
backstage support, storage, and green room areas for the
theater; general storage; and mechanical support.
Electrical and mechanical areas, storage for the café kitchen
and the Store, and a workshop are housed on the mezzanine of
the lower level.
Gray concrete pavement outside gives way to polished gray
concrete floors in the grand but intimate Marcia Tucker Hall. This
space contains the Visitor Services desk; ticketing; coat check;
the New Museum Store defined by a serpentine screen of metal
mesh; the New Food café and its open kitchen; a stairway down
to the building’s lower level and Theater; elevator banks for
access to the galleries above; and the luminous, 1,100-square-
foot Joan and Charles Lazarus Gallery separated from the rest of
the space by a soaring glass wall and illuminated by daylight
filtering down from the shift of the structural box above. A
floating dropped screen of metal mesh softens and abstracts the
largely visible functions of the ceiling above it, filtering light from
a grid of glowing, thin florescent tubes.
From the lobby level, visitors may choose a variety
of paths upward or downward through the building.
Descending by either the open, glass enclosed interior stairway
or an elevator to the building’s lower level, visitors will find the
182-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theater—a white box theater with a
pre-function hall that doubles as a gallery for special projects.
This level also houses the Museum’s restrooms (where Bisazza
mosaic covers the walls with hotly hued, pixilated hanami cherry
blossom patterns—the only intensely colored feature in the
building aside from the vibrant green elevator cab interiors);
backstage support, storage, and green room areas for the
theater; general storage; and mechanical support.
Electrical and mechanical areas, storage for the café kitchen
and the Store, and a workshop are housed on the mezzanine of
the lower level.
| . |
Visitors who choose to ascend from the lobby level to the
galleries above can take an elevator or use one of the
staircases situated in the building’s core. SANAA has designed a
fluid, three-level zone of extraordinary galleries on the building’s
second, third, and fourth floors —all freed from columns by the
structural support of the core, all characterized by unique
atmospheres ranging from intimate to grand.
“A museum for contemporary art should be neutral in the
character of its gallery spaces, in order to create the widest
palette for the art itself,“ SANAA has stated. “With the galleries
in this building, we tried to play with dimensions and the way
daylight falls in the spaces. This allows the visitor to experience
art in slightly different conditions on different visits, at different
times of the day, in different spaces, without impeding the
qualities of the art.”
The second floor Eugenio Lopez Galleries provides approximately
5,000 square feet of exhibition space with ceilings eighteen feet
high, skylights tracing the west and north walls of the building,
and concrete floors that appear to float via a carefully crafted
reveal that runs the full perimeter of the space where the floor
meets the walls. The shifting of the structural box at this level has
created an additional quiet and unique gallery space on the
north side of the core—a volume ten feet wide and forty feet
long, accessed from either end of the main gallery.
The third floor Maja Hoffmann/Luma Foundation Galleries, with
approximately 4,000 square feet of exhibition space, boasts a
ceiling height of nineteen feet with east and west skylights. On
this floor, visitors find the entrance to an exquisite open stairway
running fifty feet upward along the building’s north side
connecting the third and fourth floors.
galleries above can take an elevator or use one of the
staircases situated in the building’s core. SANAA has designed a
fluid, three-level zone of extraordinary galleries on the building’s
second, third, and fourth floors —all freed from columns by the
structural support of the core, all characterized by unique
atmospheres ranging from intimate to grand.
“A museum for contemporary art should be neutral in the
character of its gallery spaces, in order to create the widest
palette for the art itself,“ SANAA has stated. “With the galleries
in this building, we tried to play with dimensions and the way
daylight falls in the spaces. This allows the visitor to experience
art in slightly different conditions on different visits, at different
times of the day, in different spaces, without impeding the
qualities of the art.”
The second floor Eugenio Lopez Galleries provides approximately
5,000 square feet of exhibition space with ceilings eighteen feet
high, skylights tracing the west and north walls of the building,
and concrete floors that appear to float via a carefully crafted
reveal that runs the full perimeter of the space where the floor
meets the walls. The shifting of the structural box at this level has
created an additional quiet and unique gallery space on the
north side of the core—a volume ten feet wide and forty feet
long, accessed from either end of the main gallery.
The third floor Maja Hoffmann/Luma Foundation Galleries, with
approximately 4,000 square feet of exhibition space, boasts a
ceiling height of nineteen feet with east and west skylights. On
this floor, visitors find the entrance to an exquisite open stairway
running fifty feet upward along the building’s north side
connecting the third and fourth floors.
A second landing along this flight of stairs offers views through an
enormous, punched single-pane window bringing in sweeping
natural light. Visitors arrive at the top of these stairs in front of a
large window offering vistas westward across SoHo and toward
the Hudson—vistas that provide a momentary break in the
immersive experience of viewing art and reconnect that
experience to the context of the city and the community
beyond the Museum’s walls.
On this level, around a fast corner, is the fourth floor Dakis and
Lietta Joannou Galleries. At nearly 3,000 square feet it has the
smallest floor space of the Museum’s main galleries but also the
tallest and most dramatic. Ceilings here are twenty-four feet in
height in a space graced by a southern skylight that permits
natural light of varied qualities to wash through the galleries
during the course of days and seasons and be controlled, as in all
of the building’s galleries, through a system of shades beneath
the glass.
In the galleries, the steel of the architecture is exposed. The
diagonal structural beams of the exterior, rendered white with
their spray-on fireproofing material, intumescent paint, appear at
interludes. “We want the building to show what it is,” SANAA has
stated. “This openness is consistent with the openness of the New
Museum and the honesty of the everyday businesses along the
Bowery.” The structural steel makes frequent appearances
throughout the building.
The fifth floor houses the institution’s new Pauline and
Constantine Karpidas Education Center, with a wide expansive
west wall of glass looking over Nolita and SoHo with classroom
space, a video editing room; a Resource Center with computer
stations and the Bowery Artist Tribute; and a space for the
enormous, punched single-pane window bringing in sweeping
natural light. Visitors arrive at the top of these stairs in front of a
large window offering vistas westward across SoHo and toward
the Hudson—vistas that provide a momentary break in the
immersive experience of viewing art and reconnect that
experience to the context of the city and the community
beyond the Museum’s walls.
On this level, around a fast corner, is the fourth floor Dakis and
Lietta Joannou Galleries. At nearly 3,000 square feet it has the
smallest floor space of the Museum’s main galleries but also the
tallest and most dramatic. Ceilings here are twenty-four feet in
height in a space graced by a southern skylight that permits
natural light of varied qualities to wash through the galleries
during the course of days and seasons and be controlled, as in all
of the building’s galleries, through a system of shades beneath
the glass.
In the galleries, the steel of the architecture is exposed. The
diagonal structural beams of the exterior, rendered white with
their spray-on fireproofing material, intumescent paint, appear at
interludes. “We want the building to show what it is,” SANAA has
stated. “This openness is consistent with the openness of the New
Museum and the honesty of the everyday businesses along the
Bowery.” The structural steel makes frequent appearances
throughout the building.
The fifth floor houses the institution’s new Pauline and
Constantine Karpidas Education Center, with a wide expansive
west wall of glass looking over Nolita and SoHo with classroom
space, a video editing room; a Resource Center with computer
stations and the Bowery Artist Tribute; and a space for the
| . |
institution’s revolutionary Museum As Hub global intra-
institutional initiative. On the sixth floor are staff offices, kitchen,
restrooms, and meeting spaces. Here, windows wrap around the
space on three sides, and polycarbonate sliding panels provide
privacy.
On the seventh floor of the building, the New Museum will offer
one of the most arresting multipurpose spaces in downtown
Manhattan: The Toby Devan Lewis Sky Room. On this level, an
eleven-foot-high, nearly 2,000 square foot space for events and
special programs features floor-to-ceiling glass, offering
panoramic vistas of the city and an outdoor terrace that runs
without interruption around the east and south sides of the
building.
The eighth floor of the New Museum building houses mechanical
support.
Reflecting upon the completed building, five years from initial
conception to completion, SANAA comments: “The new building
is both part of SANAA and the New Museum. In the time that we
have been together, both have changed very much. In some
ways we are both bigger, more relaxed, but still always hoping to
explore and find new things. The New Museum is intriguing
because it is always asking questions and we hope that it
continues to do so. Our building is an attempt to express the New
Museum’s adventurousness and freedom.”
institutional initiative. On the sixth floor are staff offices, kitchen,
restrooms, and meeting spaces. Here, windows wrap around the
space on three sides, and polycarbonate sliding panels provide
privacy.
On the seventh floor of the building, the New Museum will offer
one of the most arresting multipurpose spaces in downtown
Manhattan: The Toby Devan Lewis Sky Room. On this level, an
eleven-foot-high, nearly 2,000 square foot space for events and
special programs features floor-to-ceiling glass, offering
panoramic vistas of the city and an outdoor terrace that runs
without interruption around the east and south sides of the
building.
The eighth floor of the New Museum building houses mechanical
support.
Reflecting upon the completed building, five years from initial
conception to completion, SANAA comments: “The new building
is both part of SANAA and the New Museum. In the time that we
have been together, both have changed very much. In some
ways we are both bigger, more relaxed, but still always hoping to
explore and find new things. The New Museum is intriguing
because it is always asking questions and we hope that it
continues to do so. Our building is an attempt to express the New
Museum’s adventurousness and freedom.”
| . |
“Skin Fruit” will be the first exhibition in the US of the
Athens-based Dakis Joannou Collection, renowned as
one of the leading collections of contemporary art in the
world.
More info + a complete artist list here:
www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/421
Copyright © AMBIENTE MAGAZINE. Do not reproduce without citing this source
Athens-based Dakis Joannou Collection, renowned as
one of the leading collections of contemporary art in the
world.
More info + a complete artist list here:
www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/421
Copyright © AMBIENTE MAGAZINE. Do not reproduce without citing this source