New Museum Expansion
OMA’s first cultural institution in New York, a new addition to the SANAA-designed museum building at 235 Bowery, provides much-needed space for its expanded activities and increasing public ambitions—doubling the program and square footage on a site immediately adjacent to the existing building.
The new building acknowledges a changing role for museums, beyond their function as producers of exhibitions. Today, museums are spaces for public participation, both programmed and unprogrammed, and they can foster new connections and even porousness with the city. The building’s façade reveals the circulation and slices of the activities taking place within its flexible interior and exposes them to the street. The New Museum’s expansion creates an outdoor plaza at the intersection of the Bowery and Prince Street, which invites the public to enter and also acts as a gathering point. The result is an extroverted museum, one that is an extension of a continuous city and that participates in its public life.
The expanded footprint doubles the museum’s gallery space; provides fluid circulation through the addition of three elevators, an Atrium Stair, and an entrance plaza; and introduces new venues for public programs and special events, including an enlarged seventh floor Sky Room and a new 74-seat Forum. On its upper floors, the expanded building will feature a dedicated studio for artists-in-residence and a home for the museum’s cultural incubator NEW INC. On the ground level, visitors will be welcomed into an enlarged lobby, an expanded bookstore, and a full-service restaurant operated by the Oberon Group.
Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum: “Since our founding nearly 50 years ago, the New Museum has been a home for the most groundbreaking art of today and a haven for the artists who make it. Our new 120,000 sq ft building on the Bowery signals our redoubled commitment to new art and new ideas, and to the museum as an ever-evolving site for risk-taking, collaboration, and experimentation.”
Shohei Shigematsu, Partner-in-Charge, OMA: “The New Museum is an incubator for new cultural perspectives and production, and the expansion aims to embody that attitude of openness. Imagined as a highly connected yet distinct counterpart to the existing museum’s verticality and solidity, the new building will offer horizontally expansive galleries for curatorial variety, open vertical circulation, and a diversity of spaces for gathering, exchange, and creation. The building is further shaped to create an active public face—including an outdoor plaza at the ground, moments of transparency throughout the central atrium, and terraced openings at the top—that will openly engage the surrounding community and beyond.”
Rem Koolhaas, Partner-in-Collaboration, OMA: “Marking our first public building in New York City, the project with the New Museum is especially meaningful—an institution whose forward-thinking ethos we have long admired. Building on past collaborations with Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, it has been a privilege to engage in dialogue with their original building, one of the most resonant works of architecture in the city. The completed project stands as both a continuation and an expansion of that legacy.”
Jake Forster, Project Architect/Associate, OMA: “The new building aims to support, complement, and diversify the existing museum to establish a campus. We have enjoyed engineering a variety of spaces, structures, and materials to create new opportunities and engagements. It has relied on the passion and expertise of a diverse group of designers, engineers, and makers to get to this milestone. I’m excited to see our collective effort come to life as it welcomes the public in.”
