Report: New Museum of Contemporary Art
For Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, who won the competition for this museum, the challenge lay in reconciling the spatial programme with the building regulations of New York City on a site only 20 metres wide and wedged in between other structures. A vertical development was only logical, therefore, and the architects pursued their image of a series of stepped containers set on top of each other. The New Museum extends over nine levels in all. The ground floor opens on to the Bowery with a glazed front and affords access to the auditorium below and to the three gallery levels and other facilities above. By stacking boxes with a slightly trapezoidal plan layout on top of each other, it was possible to insert a volume of considerable height into the small-scale existing building fabric. In addition, the various spatial realms are legible in the facade. Offsetting the storeys to each other also allowed roof lights to be inserted over the three galleries, which are of different heights. The architects have created neutral exhibition spaces with exposed concrete floors and white walls. A contrast may be seen in the colourful effects of the Education Centre above. A skin of expanded aluminium mesh is drawn over all faces of the New Museum externally. Depending on the incidence of light and one’s distance from the building, it changes in appearance, seeming like a Fata Morgana from afar, while acquiring a greater presence and weight closer to.
