Tod Williams
Born in Detroit, Michigan, 1943
Education: Princeton University, 1965; graduate studies, Cambridge University, 1966; Princeton University, 1967

Billie Tsien
Born in Ithaca, New York, 1949
Education: Yale University, 1971; University of California at Los Angeles, 1977

Selected projects: University of Virginia Student Housing, 1992; Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, 1996; Neurosciences Research Center, La Jolla, California, 1995

...We believe in a relatively low horizontal building that encourages the exploration of the Museum by foot at an appropriate pace. Traveling as much as possible by nonmotorized mean....gives the eye time to see and the mind time to experience, think, and understand. While providing elevator access to all levels, we place primary importance on walking circulation paths....

Moreover, by keeping the building below the level of the 50-foot setback from the Museum Tower, we are better able to provide galleries of potentially grand proportion while avoiding the constriction that occurs above 110 feet that pushes possible connections between the existing and new buildings to the 54th Street edge.

By accepting and embracing the presence of the two-hour fire wall, we have traded far on the existing site to reconfigure volumes. The fire wall, rather than being a hindrance, acts as an ally to help define the great vertical sky court.

While sharing the same premises we have formulated two directions, which focus on the presence or lack of an elevated connection along the north boundary of the Rockefeller garden.

The bridge scheme is based on the desire to put galleries in a new structure built above the current Sette MoMA location and to find a way for people to move through them in a natural and interesting manner. These galleries would occur on the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors. Sette MoMA would move to the sixth and top floor. Connection between these galleries would happen vertically with stairs, elevators, and a horizontal connection to the permanent collection galleries would be made by an enclosed bridge at the fourth and fifth floors. The bridge would leave open space from above the garden wall to about fifty feet above the ground....The wall of the bridge would visually connect the complete MoMA site, making a coherent statement on 54th Street. Thus, 54th Street would provide the unifying facade of the Museum.... Views of the garden would be framed by the top of the existing wall and bottom of the bridge. The bridge, by being high above the garden and to the north, would not create a shadow but would have a presence. Taming and quieting that presence would be essential to its success....

In this scheme the Goodwin and Stone building is used for staff and curatorial offices on the second through the sixth floors. Galleries are in the new addition. The store remains in the Philip Johnson building and uses the second and third floors.

The second scheme, or nonbridge scheme, uses the space above the existing Sette MoMA to make a building to house staff offices. This will allow the majority of the office and support staff to work in spaces with light and air. It will be a freestanding building with connection to the rest of the Museum and staff entry and circulation occurring at the lobby and basement floors. The Goodwin and Stone building remains as permanent collection gallery space on the second and third floors while the fourth through sixth floors are devoted to curatorial space....

We believe that the Museum must find its identity and the integrity of its identity from the inside out. In this way it is always interesting because it is both fixed and changing. Rather like the Book of Sand in the short story by Jorge Luis Borges, the insides keep shifting while the cover contains them and stays the same....

Quiet
We think of the garden as the quiet heart of the Museum. The new addition needs to develop other places of quiet focus and delight.... We have thought about a great light court, a glass enclosed space open to the sky that would serve no other purpose than to give the Museum a quiet light from top to bottom. Another scheme proposes a large pool of water at the level of the existing lobby, extending the feeling of the garden....

We propose a vertical excavation of the Museum Tower's space surrounding its elevator cores. By cutting openings through from floor to floor we believe that this space can be "mined" to create dramatic vertical shafts of space between the old museum and the addition....

Interior streets moving east-west will structure movement of visitors and staff, and these paths will....be punctuated by a "necklace" of large and smaller light courts and vertical floor-through connections that provide visual orientation and memorable experience.

Facades
....We believe that all significant structures should be perceived externally and internally. We believe that each existing building should stand on its own. Its clear expression should come down to the street....

53rd Street: The Goodwin and Stone and Philip Johnson facades should be preserved. The translucent panels in the Goodwin and Stone facade should be restored to bring light to the stairway or to public space and offices. The Johnson building....will, as originally intended, provide useful and distinct space for the Design Store and the curatorial staff. The long horizontal line and canopy trying to link the Museum Tower and the Pelli addition to the Goodwin and Stone facade should be removed. We believe that the Pelli clad museum addition should be demolished and rebuilt. This would leave the Museum Tower coming down as a clear shaft to the ground.... The new addition should develop its own facade as a fourth building. . . .

54th Street: The addition of the Dorset site gives the Museum a chance to develop a coherent and powerful facade....This....will stand in marked contrast to the multiple presence on 53rd Street.

Entrance
....53rd Street is the historical front door an.... remains the front door for the Museum and the Museum's education entrance. We propose a second entrance at 54th Street. These both occur at approximately midblock. There will be no back door.

The 53rd Street lobby now feels busy and impersonal.... If it were possible to pay for admission prior to entering the Museum, the lobby could become more serene....

The 54th Street entrance is through a garden court adjacent to but shielded from The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. One will be able to have views through to it, but the quiet of the garden will be protected.

Circulation
A central circulation spine runs midblock parallel to 53rd and 54th streets. It can be extended east and west in future Expansions. The primary vertical circulation of the new Museum occurs at the middle of the site with secondary stairs and elevators at the far east and west extremes of the site. At the subcellar level, the spine is private circulation for staff use only.

Garden(s)
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden would remain intact. More importantly, we believe that it can be enhanced. The removal of the old Whitney to create a new garden court entrance could increase the sense of openness to the west. And a new sculpture terrace above this entry could be connected by a stair to the existing garden, recalling the connection to an upper garden before the Pelli addition....

Galleries
...We believe that what we are trying to do is provide a place that is a balance between the container and the contained....The curators should be able to create a variety of spaces within the same space. We propose changing exhibits galleries on the ground floor and the third floor with 20-foot-high ceilings. On the top floor is a temporary gallery for experimental works with a 40-foot-high ceiling. Ceiling lighting grids could raise and lower so that the sense of space can vary from intimate to grand. At the top westernmost portion of the building would be a 30-by-30-foot room open to the sky. The ground-floor gallery could have a monumental garage-type door so that very large pieces of sculpture could be installed with direct access from 54th Street....All new galleries would be structured so that they would be column-free space.

The speculation that artwork will continue to grow in size relies on a linear progression....Certainly the reduction of huge amounts of visual information to the size of a CD-ROM is a portent of the future....But it is important to speculate on how the Museum can dignify the viewing of digital information, not just for research or as additional curatorial information, but as art. So that even as we plan for the possibility of larger work, we plan for the possibility of smaller work....

In considering the issue of core and satellite spaces, we believe that if the containing volumes of the galleries can convey a sense of wholeness without being obtrusive, then satellite spaces could be configured freely anywhere within the container.... This would allow curators the freedom to construct and design the relationships as they occur....

What Is Being Kept
....The stair will be restored in one scheme as a public stair linking the permanent collection galleries on the second and third floors with the lobby at grade. In a second proposal the stair is restored as a staff stair connecting staff offices on the second and third floors.

Having reviewed a number of options we feel it will be least disruptive and expensive to keep the Museum Tower loading dock in place. We are also keeping Titus 1 and Titus 2 intact although surface renovations/restorations may be required....

Project Credits
Tod Williams/Billie Tsien, Betty Chen, Matthew Baird.


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.