Project Category: Competitions (not realized)

The actual exhibition galleries are on the upper five floors, whose height ranges from 5.5 to 6.7 meters. The eccentric position of the main stairway and elevator shaft produces varying room depths, thus providing for a diverse circuit on each level. Due to a setback, a typical feature dictated by New York’s building code, a terrace is created on level 7 that functions as resting place and lookout point on the way through the exhibition.

The exhibition galleries of the New Museum are basically conceived as “containers” for art. They are designed as clear-cut, mostly rectangular spaces evincing a carefully composed interplay of proportions, materials, and lighting. High side windows of etched glass bathe the galleries in even, diffuse daylight. The floors are made of poured concrete.

The façades reflect the various demands met by the building: the special features of the site, its construction, and the urban context. Various types of glass surface generate fascinating, diffusely flowing transitions between clear, reflective, and etched glass in which the surroundings appear as a mirror image, only to disappear again. The materials used are characteristic for New York, but are deployed here in an unconventional manner. The building’s exterior makes the museum functions within legible, yet simultaneously obscures them; by both working and playing with the light it reveals itself to be a built “instrument of perception.”

The new museum complex, situated between the parking lot and the old and new Castro, is comprised of three subterraneously connected volumes of different sizes – hence the ensemble is based on the basic form of a settlement and at the same time symbolises the development of human housing from huts to skyscrapers. The new buildings are prominent without dominating the authentic site.

While the smallest building structure accommodates the shop and administration premises, the middle building serves as a café-restaurant and also houses a crèche and overnight accommodation facilities. Finally, the museum is located in the largest of the buildings. Above the foyer on the ground floor and the areas for temporary exhibitions on the first floor, a sequence of exhibition rooms extends over a total of ten half-storeys. At the top, a terrace provides a comprehensive view over Castro and the surrounding countryside.

The exhibition rooms have a neutral appearance and can be utilized in a variety of ways; due to the casement windows, nearly all the rooms are able to relate to the landscape – the actual “object of exhibition.”

The cladding of the supporting structure is made of sheet metal – matted in the area of the restaurant, structured by the shop, while in the area of the museum it is visible from a distance, its shiny surface mirroring the surroundings.

Text: Hubertus Adam

Visitors access the new extension via the wide, existing main staircase and the garden wing. The ‘head’ of the new building is formed by the entrance area to the east, starting with a ‘distribution and orientation’ space which latches onto the garden wing. One of the possible tour routes leads from here up into the exhibition rooms on the second floor, via the west stairs to the art sections on the first floor and back to the ‘head’ again, to the Garden Room and the exhibition spaces on the ground floor. The Garden Room has been conceived as an art café; it is here that internal and external spaces, urban and garden areas interact, and it is here that the delights of art and coffee can be enjoyed.
The exhibition rooms are reserved in design: smoked oak parquet floors, smooth plastered and painted walls and ceilings with fluorescent lighting create a restrained background for the works of art. Crystaline, glazed oriel-style windows of varying depths serve as points of orientation for visitors moving from room to room, as well as relaxation zones. The exhibition rooms on the three floors in the main building corpus have been designed to be used in a variety of ways, especially with regard to the juxtaposition of individual pieces in the museum’s collection with groups of works loaned from private collections. This is facilitated by spanning the interior spaces of the building without columns and integrating ventilation ducts in the exterior walls. In addition, a lofty ceiling height creates generously proportioned spatial combinations.
The load-bearing structure of the extension building is of concrete. The façade cladding of rhythmically folded stainless steel sheeting protects the layers of insulation and mirrors the sky, the historic buildings and the trees countless times. The building corpus captures and plays with light, and establishes a presence through the multifaceted reflection of its surroundings while at the same time creating a sense of space and distance to existing museum buildings.

Like the institutional architecture along Rämistrasse, the new museum building boasts a substantial footprint, yet it also references the small scale of the buildings immediately adjacent to it through the configuration of the roof structures.

Inside the extension, a system of ‘squares and pathways’ leads visitors to the open-access facilities and through to the garden at the back, as well as into the exhibition spaces. these ‘passageway spaces’ form generously proportioned, light-filled circulation areas that provide orientation and offer vistas to the exterior, while also displaying artworks. They offer information, set the mood, and give visitors an opportunity to linger and relax.

In contrast, the main exhibition spaces are restrained, concentrated, rectangular rooms with light-diffusing glass ceilings. A range of different light solutions allows carefully controlled levels of daylight to enter the exhibition spaces, creating a lively atmosphere with natural light. To achieve this, daylight is focused into the building laterally through skylight superstructures set atop the building. Conversely, this has the striking effect of making the building glow with its own luminosity when the interior is brightly lit during evening events and residual light filters through to the exterior. The height of these skylight structures varies as a function of the depth of the exhibition spaces and the number of glazed faces on each skylight unit. This rule generates a roof landscape with an engaging relief effect.

The load-bearing structure is primarily in concrete, with steel deployed in the skylight areas. The façade is conceived as a translucent and ‘light-bearing’ wall. It is composed of windows and concrete elements with glass bricks in a range of sizes. Some are more transparent or translucent, others less so, to reflect the distinct requirements of the particular parts of the building. Rear-ventilated elements made up of large-format etched glass bricks protect the lateral glazing in the roof-light units and their louvers. Where the glass bricks are set in front of the insulated load-bearing walls, they form ‘peepholes’ affording occasional blurred glimpses of the wall construction. Glass as a construction material thus appears in a wide range of different manifestations: as matt or reflecting glass, as panes, ‘bricks,’ or solar elements; it may appear pixelated, ‘pointillist,’ or as a smooth expanse of glazing. Glass gives the building its characteristic appearance and conveys a sense that this is a museum building, an architectural genre whose primary function lies in harnessing light to enable the visual perception of artworks.