Both born in Basel, Switzerland, 1950 Education (both): Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich, 1975 Selected projects: Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany, 1994; Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany, 1994; Signal Box Auf dem Wolf, Basel, Switzerland, 1994; Ricola Factory and Storage Building, Mulhouse-Brunstatt, France, 1993
	Jacques Herzog | Pierre de Meuron Harry Gugger | Christine Binswanger Photo: Hisao Suzuki

...The new Museum complex will need to focus on the encounter between works of art and people. An art museum is a place for art and people: it is not Disneyworld; it is not a shopping mall; it is not a media center. It is a place where the world of art can express itself in the most direct and radical way—in spaces that find the approval not only of architects and critics but of artists and visitors, spaces that stimulate people to concentrate on the perception of art....

Unlike other great Manhattan museums, MoMA does not border on an avenue. Urban strategies for the new MoMA site will therefore need to enhance the fact that the complex is located between two streets....Public space could be one space or a suite of open and closed spaces. Open courtyards could alternate with covered or enclosed lobby spaces....

Flatness means to accept the allowable street wall height of 85 feet and to turn this height into a kind of overall horizon of the new building complex. This...continuous facade height helps to integrate existing buildings along 53rd Street. Even on 54th Street the former Whitney building could become part of the new complex if this turns out to be desirable in the further planning process....This landscape-like building with courtyards and gardens inside and on top of the roof would have a very complex spatial structure, with different transparencies generated by the layering of spaces, courtyards, and surfaces....

The flatness of the building complex could be interrupted and accentuated by some individual buildings which would stick out from roof gardens. These buildings could be a group of roof galleries, perhaps the library or the restaurant....The MoMA roof garden fitted out with modern and contemporary art—including the possibility to relocate and remodel Philip Johnson's sculpture garden—will be a thoroughly genuine Manhattan experience. An artificial natural space...will extend between 53rd and 54th streets in courtyards on street level, in patios on higher levels and all over the roof of the new building complex....

The Sculpture Garden
...To us the garden is an exhibition space in a living museum and not a petrified monument of the 1960s....To a certain extent there is a conflict between the wish to keep the garden as the wonderful and quiet oasis that it is now and the needs of a lively museum, which wants to use it more as a terrain vague. Options for the new site should therefore try to include both or to combine both—a sculpture garden as a quiet oasis as well as a terrain vague ....

With the Dorset Hotel becoming part of the MoMA site, the garden wing will be even more off center. One option will be to move the whole garden farther west, thus creating a stronger and larger garden wing that can host galleries and other facilities and become a more integrated part of the new site....

Moving the garden farther down into the site toward the south would improve the connection between the different wings on the site. This option would transform the sculpture garden into an enclosed courtyard—it would become more of a museum space itself and less of an idyllic garden....

The longer we have been working on the scheme, the more we became aware of the necessity to reconsider and rethink the garden as it is now....An interesting option would be to create new courtyards or gardens on street level, courtyards that could work as entrance areas where a first encounter with art would be possible. These courtyards could have temporary art installations and would be used in a more experimental way than the sculpture garden is being used today....

Museum and Building Types
Agglomerate Type: This...clearly identifies the different partis, such as the Goodwin and Stone building, the new garden wing, the sculpture garden, and the new Dorset wing, which could become a new landmark in Manhattan....This option would allow for different architects to work on the scheme in a clearly separate way....The separate buildings in the agglomerate type might be compared to a still life. Such a "still life" concept has the advantage that pieces can be taken away and added to, according to the willingness to grow or change....

Conglomerate Type: Another...option takes inspiration from the homogeneous building types with continuous facade heights. An even height of all surrounding facades of 85 feet would allow...a continuous roof level, which could be shaped and landscaped in many interesting ways. The landscaped roof could...express the richness and diversity of the new site: some spaces, such as roof galleries, the library, or the restaurant would stick out of the various gardens on the roof top—some of them penetrating through the whole building complex....

Individual pieces of architecture within the conglomerate could be a new entrance courtyard on 53rd Street (possibly the Goodwin and Stone building transformed into a courtyard) and another courtyard on 54th Street (possibly Philip Johnson's Whitney wing transformed into a courtyard). Other new spaces such as the library, the galleries, or the restaurant could be designed by different architects....

Circulation and Orientation
The new enlarged site should have more than one entrance....The new entrance will need to run from 53rd to 54th streets....People will be walking through the new site, which could be designed like an artificial landscape of art, nature, and architecture, with existing and new buildings done by different architects....People can sit down and look at art on display in these public zones and visit one of the cafeterias, shops, or restaurants....

A linear concept is an obvious option considering the given shape of the site. A central spine would be the logical consequence of such a concept. There are any number of interesting architectural and structural strategies to make a rich spatial experiment and to avoid the "airport" character of such a long axis....

Central concept: The individual departments are too big, and the shape of the site would not allow for such a "classicist" concept. Some kind of a central area or a "center of gravity" is, however, needed in order to provide a good orientation and a simple organization to control the ticketed areas of the site....

In a Raumplan concept spaces would be connected with other spaces in a kind of a continuous spatial flow....A kind of spatial matrix will be required to connect different areas in the building not only through the main circulation spaces but also through smaller and more intimate paths, stairs, or bridges....

Multiple Choice:....We see a strong potential for architecture in the combination and new interpretation of simple elements such as stairs, courtyards, solid walls, light walls, and the perception of seasons, of weather, of day and night....

Galleries
...If we imagine how artists conceived their own studios in the early 20th century....we discover that these spaces were very different from the official museum spaces at that time. Only much later did the museums change and shift away from the bourgeois living-room style....What we can learn from this is that we should trust the artists....and not try to invent "futuristic" spaces for some art to come in the next millennium....

Gallery spaces need a solid floor, solid walls, and a ceiling that provides daylight and artificial light. This sounds very simple but it is very difficult to achieve in a straightforward and bold way, especially faced with an increasing number of technical requirements for services, security, lighting, fire, etc. We think the new MoMA building will need to offer a wide range of materials, a variety of room sizes, room heights, and lighting concepts....

In recent constructions wall-height side light has provided very pleasant daylight and worked well with painting, sculpture, and people, who can find better orientation within the building. Wall-height windows are more generous than "ordinary windows" cut into the walls, and they don't compete with the format of (classical, modern) paintings....

The core and satellite principle works best when some gallery spaces—not necessarily singled out architecturally but with a strategic "topographic" position within the building complex—are selected for a more permanent installation of outstanding masterpieces....If such installations...are not changed for long periods, the whole gallery space could become like a core ...within the whole Museum complex. Around these "cores," which would work like islands of memory, the installations could change more often and could be seen in changing relationships....We see the "cores" as islands of stability within constantly changing installation concepts in the Museum. They should be easy to find and to access from the main circulation areas. We also see them as a help for orientation, both geographically and historically....

Architectural Strategies for the New Parts of the Site
Courtyards: They are interesting spaces for temporary and permanent art installations, spaces where a collaboration between architect and artist can provide unexpected solutions.

Roof Gardens: Partition-like galleries could act as spatial dividers in the roof gardens. Pavilions and other artworks are for people to use. Stone walls and glass walls could enhance the artificiality and the sheltering quality of the roof gardens.

Facades and Interiors: These could act together to enhance the depth of the building complex, which would be built in multiple spatial layers. Different materials and surface treatments can achieve such multiple and changing transparencies.

Stairs: A kind of "ceremonial staircase" where people are not moved by escalators or lifts but consciously walk through the building complex. Each major parti could have its own set of stairs, for example, the Dorset stairs, the Goodwin and Stone stairs, or the garden stairs.

Project Credits
Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron, Christine Binswanger, Jean-Frédéric Kuscher, Andrea Saemann, Lukas Kupfer; Models: Bela Berec, Lukas Huggenberger.


These works have been selected from a larger collection of drawings that were submitted for the charette. In addition, the architects' statement has been abbreviated.