Born in Tokyo, 1937 Education: Keio University, Tokyo, 1960; Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, 1964 Selected projects: Higashiyama Kaii Gallery, Nagano City, Japan, 1990; Marugame Genichiro­Inokuma Museum, Japan, 1991; Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Japan, 1995

....The primary objective in the design of a museum is to create an ideal environment for the interaction of people and art. Galleries and public spaces are the core elements in a museum. A variety of gallery spaces appropriate to MoMA's collection of 20th-century masterworks as well as new galleries for the yet unknown works of contemporary art is the first requirement for an expanded Museum. Renovation and reuse of the intimately scaled existing galleries, along with the addition of multiuse new galleries with high ceilings and long continuous walls, would provide a diversity of exhibition spaces while creating an interlocking dialogue of space, art, and architecture....

Ancillary to the galleries and public spaces of the Museum are the areas for support services and staff. Services, including loading, workshops, storage, archives, mechanical, and kitchen are located in the basement levels with a separate entrance and a new service yard....Offices for trustees and executive staff, curatorial departments, conservation, and administration should be concentrated above the public zone....of the Museum. These spaces should be made pleasant and livable....with an abundance of light, air, and views.

In addition to the issues common to all museums, The Museum of Modern Art poses certain unique challenges. Part of MoMA's distinction as the world's premier museum for the collection of contemporary art is its unique history and context. MoMA has in the past used the design of its built form as an opportunity to regenerate itself and to express what is current in the arena of modernism. As an integral part of the Museum's history, this record of regeneration should not be destroyed but should be preserved and celebrated in the juxtaposition of past and present, the new or experimental contrasted to the known or established.

As a distinctive cultural institution, the Museum must engage the city. The immediate physical environment of the Museum is markedly different on its north and south periphery, and those differences should be reflected in the character of the Museum itself by concentrating the commercial elements of the Museum on the 53rd Street side, and by placing the cultural uses and main museum entrances on the quieter 54th Street side. The dual missions of the Museum in the 21st century—exhibition of the collection and education of the public—are best given their own symbolic identities. These two realms are housed in separate structures facing the garden. One provides for the viewing of real objects and the other their representations: the virtual museum as counterpoint to the actual one. As an architectural composition, however, the two structures work together to define the new public facade of the Museum. A seamless architectural expression of simple geometric volumes will create a powerful horizontal presence on 54th Street in stark contrast to the random verticality of Manhattan, establishing the Museum as a new urban landmark, clearly visible from Fifth Avenue.

Growth and change are integral to MoMA's mission, precluding a static or finished Museum. Structuring the Museum to anticipate the next phase of growth is an essential concept for the Expansion plan. While a scheme of galleries and offices structured on a central core is a promising concept, it does injustice to the natural character of this site if it does not accommodate the site's potential for Expansion. Being a "street" not an "avenue" museum, the direction of future growth is linear. The circulation spine which unites all portions of the site, and which can also extend to subsequent sites to the east and west, can—at the same time—define a core zone within the Museum about which galleries and offices will be configured....


Organization of Gallery and Public Spaces
Achieving Diversity Through Two Types of Spaces: The principles underlying the design of gallery spaces are to achieve to the fullest extent possible.... the protection of the artwork....and the provision of spaces that facilitate viewing those works by visitors to the Museum.

To provide maximum diversity of gallery spaces, I will use a combination of remodeled existing galleries and newly built galleries located on the Expansion site. The former will undergo major renovation in order to create a visual relationship between elements that symbolize modernism (including the existing windows and the Bauhaus staircase, which will be preserved) and the representative artworks of the 20th century. The new galleries will be universal spaces with long, continuous wall surfaces and high ceilings capable of accommodating every possible exhibition. The interior will be imbued with a sense of scale solely by a row of columns supporting the upper structure....

A new, generous entrance lobby with all the requisite amenities is to be located on the Expansion site, entered from 54th Street. Vertical circulation is best provided by a system of quiet, fast, and convenient elevators which can allow visitors to begin their exploration from any level....A supplementary system of gentle stairways will restore the contemplative mood appropriate to a museum and allow visitors to set their own pace while moving through the galleries.


Functionally Distinct Blocks
The Systematic Arrangement of Efficient Maintenance, Management, and Administration....The organizational intent of the present proposal is to provide efficiency....by creating distinct functional blocks. The first floor consists mainly of public spaces, and the galleries all begin on the second level. The library and education areas are approached through their own lobby, which will also accommodate group admissions. The cellar of the garden provides a potential future Expansion capability.

The Museum Book Store, Design Store, cafeteria, and restaurant entrances are all deployed along the 53rd Street side, at ground level, and can be serviced from below. Curatorial departments and skylit conservation areas are collectively located above the new Expansion-site galleries. Linked to these are other office areas, which are arranged above the renovated existing gallery spaces. These work areas will be environments of optimum liveability, and are "accessed" by elevators from their own newly-created entrance on 53rd Street. Access to the two theaters on the lower levels will be from a separate 53rd Street lobby, which will also be connected at cellar level to a new 120-seat lecture hall.

Respect for History
Maintaining the Centrality of the Garden and Conceiving of the Facade as a Collage of Historical Architecture: The Museum of Modern Art is distinguished by its unique history, and by the diversity and abundance of what has accumulated there culturally, socially, artistically....It is meaningless, therefore, to ignore or destroy the historical context in order to create in the design of the expanded and renovated Museum a work of architecture that is merely new....The Museum's garden is, and should remain, central to MoMA's identity. The architecture of the Museum has, throughout its history, developed around the garden, and that space is perhaps the most distinctive single element of the Museum today. While the relationship between the original MoMA buildings and the garden was a cross-axial one, the development of the Expansion site offers an opportunity to realign the primary axial relationship to one that is lengthwise, paralleling 54th Street. This will enhance the relationship between the garden and Expansion site and reorient the force of the entire complex in a new direction of growth. New architectural elements flanking the garden at its east and west ends will exploit this new axis, while closing off the upper floors of the Goodwin and Stone building from the garden will de-emphasize the old axis. These new elements, in combination with the historical landmark buildings on the north side of 54th Street, will reinforce the core role of the garden....

Relationship to the City
The Arrangement of Cultural and Commercial Spaces: ....One of architecture's most critical tasks is to establish a relationship between a particular site and its environment. In the redesign of the Museum, my principle has been to strengthen the relationship between urbanism, architecture, and art....I propose to relocate the main entrances of the Museum to the 54th Street side, where a quiet, more reflective atmosphere, suitable for an art museum, prevails. The commercial spaces of the Museum will be arranged on the more active 53rd Street side.

Along 54th Street, flanking the garden at either end are two new architectural elements. On the west side of the garden is a building containing the main entrance to the Museum, the lobby, and the new gallery spaces. The building to the east of the garden will house the library and education department....

Architecture for Growth
The Circulation Spine and Future Sites: The history of MoMA has already demonstrated that....the architecture for MoMA should not be completed and finished, but should be an expression of a system that is flexible enough to accommodate change.

The circulation zone at the rear of the existing buildings (at present equipped with escalators) will be redesigned and extended eastward and westward to form a spine that connects the entire expanded Museum block. It is here that all principal circulation routes—both horizontal and vertical—will converge, linking the many varied functions of the Museum. This space will function as the backbone of the entire vital organism. Light will pour down from above, and the long horizontal arcade will express the extended development of the Museum. Symbolically, it also has long-term implications relating to a block-long Museum space between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas.

Project Credits
Taniguchi and Associates: Yoshio Taniguchi, Shinsuke Takamiya, Brian Aamoth.


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