Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, 1944 Education: Eidgenöissische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich, 1969 Selected projects: Parc de la Vilette, Paris, 1983; Le Fresnoy National Studio for Contemporary Arts, Toucoing, France (under construction); Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University, New York (under construction)

Sketchbook
The possibility of a major expansion of The Museum of Modern Art into a 21st-century museum requires the imbrication of urbanistic, architectural, and aesthetic strategies. In keeping with the complexity of this endeavor and with the spirit of a sketchbook, we have proposed a series of points that act as conceptual vectors for the development of the project....Our aim was... to propose a conceptual armature in which the new Museum could develop. This is the concept of garden and courts, interlocking the old and the new. We subsequently tested this conceptual structure through a series of computer plans and section diagrams of a potential Museum program.

Ten Points for MoMA
1. A Dual-Street Museum: Heterogeneity on 53rd Street, calm and continuity, on 54th Street is our hypothesis. This is expressed architecturally, through a variety of facades on 53rd Street and a material theme (the beige glazed brick of the garden wall) on 54th Street, as well as programmatically: book and design stores, café, restaurant, and film theater access are on 53rd Street. We offer two main entrance options: a new dual 53rd/54th "entrance court" and the historical entrance in the 1939 building.

While MoMA remains a street Museum, a new presence will be visible from Fifth Avenue at 54th Street in a quiet but spectacular architectural event located above the north wing—a new covered upper garden....

2. A Sequence of Major Interior Spaces or Courts: This allows a unique route through the Museum, a sequential loop of courts that permits a spatially differentiated experience that alternates between art space and social space....The new MoMA is like a city with an interlocking sequence of spaces....

3. A Stunning Roof Garden:...The upper part of the garden and the new building literally interlock. The upper garden unfolds not only into the new building, but into a new reading of the project. Several scenarios are suggested, from a roof high above the north wing to a cantilevered space containing galleries or a performance room.

4. A...Continuous Relation Between Public and Staff Space: We envision not only the continuity and clarity of the public sequence, but also the continuity of the office layout with one single core of elevators allowing for administrative and curatorial environments with their dedicated conference rooms and study centers. This relationship also applies to a group of individuals who belong somewhere between the general public and the curatorial staff, namely scholars. The library has been relocated to a symbolical space in the Museum, behind the double-height translucent windows of the Goodwin and Stone building.

5. The Inversion of Core and Satellite Galleries:...By placing the core at the edges, we secure the best rooms and the best light; by placing the satellites at the center, we get the most flexibility and the most tension. Hence, a reversal of the traditional concept of the Museum, in which certainty is at the core and peripheral values are located at the edges. This is another example in which the programmatic concept becomes the spatial concept of the project. At the "seam" between core and satellite, we also can locate either small permanent or temporary education spaces.

6. Short Cuts within the Main Galleries' Two Levels: We have tried to suggest that although the Museum's curators will articulate the story of modern art...viewers will be able to construct their own short cuts in this trajectory. We have suggested replicating the Goodwin and Stone stair at multiple points to perform such linkages....

7. The Invisible Intimacy Grid: The conceptual armature that gives scale to the Museum (the expandable 25 feet of the brownstone)...may be articulated into small spaces located along the outer limits of the galleries, providing for a quiet critical space of viewing (a form of interactivity).

8. The Possibility of Multiple Options: The concept allows keeping the historical entrance on 53rd Street or creating a new entrance from 53rd to 54th in the new Expansion. Having a simple new beautiful roof above the upper garden or having a full cantilevered space. Keeping the existing north wing building or building a new one. The concept also permits options for the future: if the Museum were ever to expand further to the west, the continuity and clarity of both staff and public spaces could be extended while keeping the same organization and spatial logic.

9. Go Along with History: Maintain those parts of the existing MoMA that reinforce the new concept; alter the others. This includes only moderate revision of the existing construction of the current buildings. Our aim has been to find the interlocking between the old and new so that the... institution is regenerated into a new urban and spatial type.

10. Interlocking Is the Name of the Game:...Each of the major interior spaces is the place of interlocking: between the old and the new, between the permanent and the temporary, between the painting and sculpture collections and the other departments, between the public area and the curatorial offices or the education areas, between the galleries and the film theater spaces, etc. This interlocking is both structural—a spatial diagram—and conceptual....

The interstitial spaces between the old and the new are reprogrammed to arrive at...a sequence of interlinked courts: tower court, upper court, garden court, entry court.

Simultaneous Scenarios for a New MoMA (Homage a Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities)
The Modem Modern (or The Museum of Modem Art): For a nominal site-entrance fee, the Museum offers on-line exhibitions capable of allowing thousands more visitors (in the form of "hits" or virtual visits) per day than any physical museum structure could comfortably accommodate. The permanent collection is shown in its entirety at all times of day and night....Special exhibitions are mounted and can remain available to the public for much longer time periods than traditional temporary exhibitions. Contemporary artworks can be displayed real-time in their native media—the digital realm.

Catalogues, monographs, and design-store items are sold in the virtual bookstore and virtual design store. Bulletin boards on the current exhibitions and on a wide variety of art subjects stimulate intellectual discussion and social interaction. The Museum library catalogue and books are available on-line. Special members-only chat rooms foster networking. Without the need to physically accommodate visitors, the Museum staff moves into several floors of any generic office building equipped to handle extensive computer cabling in any city in the world with sufficient computer hardware support services.

MoMALL: The design store, bookstore, and eateries (Modern Meals) serve as the anchor stores in a new theme mall; they use the importance of the unparalleled collection of modern art to appeal to the throngs of people who already come to the Fifth Avenue area to shop....The exhibition galleries are scattered throughout the mall behind retail storefronts; each is "accessed" and paid for independently as one more commodity in the mall. In this fashion, the exhibitions are able to draw a much larger diversity of visitors. Filled with picnic tables, the garden becomes the obligatory food court.

The Modern Club: Permanent Club: In addition to the usual public galleries, special Museum galleries contain exhibitions reserved for contributing members. The members' restaurant becomes a social hub/club space from which the members' galleries can be "accessed" or in which the artworks are actually located. While advertised within the public section, these exclusive rooftop spaces are visually severed from the rest of the Museum and remain invisible to the public.

Temporal Club: Certain sections of the Museum accommodate social gatherings for openings or special celebrations. Spaces normally designated for other programs (lobby, hall, temporary exhibitions, library reading room, performance, etc.) are designed to accommodate banquets, parties, or formal dances when necessary.

More Modern than Modern: Contemporary Artists' Workshop: Actively promoting an artists-in-residence program, the Museum commissions, exhibits, and collects works of contemporary art. Several large, unfinished spaces with rough, industrial detailing and layered traces of their own history provide unique environments in which artists can not only act but react to create site-specific installations. Extensive video and multimedia editing equipment, computer facilities with state-of-the-art graphics, and more traditional machine shops are placed at the disposition of contemporary artists for the creation of new works and are explained to the public to demystify contemporary art....

Modern Multiplex: To allow the Museum to show its film collection to the ever-increasing art-film public, four cinemas are built underneath the sculpture garden. Screenings of modern classics from the MoMA archives are joined by contemporary art films and films on loan from other archives. Themed film festivals are accompanied by lectures, debates, and scholarly publications....

The Modern Preservation Archive: Given the extraordinary technical difficulties involved in preserving 20th-century works of art, several large loft spaces are used as laboratories for experimentation. The fragility of many of the artistic techniques developed during the last century demands immediate attention; the diversity of the techniques requires that multiple scientific possibilities be explored simultaneously....

Modern Art Warehouse/Stockyards: The Museum accumulates artwork from 19th and 20th centuries, but the exhibition is chronological, encyclopedic public storage. While the artworks are on display to the public, no curatorial efforts are made to contextualize or historicize the art. All of the art is hung in an identical manner....

Project Credits
Bernard Tschumi with Kevin Collins, Gregory Merryweather, Peter Cornell, assisted by Rhett Russo, Frederick Norman, Anthony Manzo, Jimmy Miyoshi, Ruth Berktold. Art consultant: Kate Linker.


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.