Today OMA revealed its design for the New Museum addition, a brawny 62,000-square-foot gallery expansion that leans into the contemporary art museum’s current home on the Bowery.
The seven-story building will replace an older loft that was home to the museum’s incubator, NEW INC, as well as artists who had lived and worked in the building for decades. The new structure will align with the SANAA-designed main building’s floorplates on three levels, doubling the current exhibition space. It will also sport additional space for education and community events, a spot for NEW INC, an 80-seat restaurant, studios, and more. The architects contend that it will be possible to see the vertical circulation through the laminated glass with metal mesh facade.
OMA New York partner-in-charge Shohei Shigematsu is the design lead on the project, and New York’s Cooper Robertson is the executive architect. The New Museum first announced OMA’s involvement in the project in 2017.
Rem Koolhaas, the co-founder of OMA, explained the design reasoning to the New York Times, which first reported on the expansion, as such: “One building is very enigmatic, and it did not seem fruitful to create an enigma next to an enigma.”
The project will break ground next year and is slated for completion in 2022.
