Select the images below to open a new window with a larger view. In his proposal, Bernard Tschumi has taken the concept of the "street museum" and expanded it, proposing a through-block entrance hall connecting the north and south facades of the Museum on Fifty-fourth and Fifty-third streets, respectively. Even as Tschumi's proposal redefines and expands this urban typology, it also addresses a larger identity, that of the "avenue museum." The penthouse structure that rises above the westernmost part of the site is canted on one side, for part of its length, toward Fifth Avenue and on the other side, toward Sixth Avenue. It thus provides a highly visible architectural symbol of the Museum and a space for urban-scale informational signs or even for temporary multimedia installations. Tschumi sees "a precise relationship between four parts"--The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, the departmental galleries, the temporary galleries, and the Museum Collection galleries. It is these four principal elements of the Museum that are interwoven by the sequence of major spaces. Temporary exhibitions galleries are in the far eastern portion of the site. The Museum Collection galleries are in the western portion of the site on four levels, two of which span the entire depth between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth streets. Lastly, the departmental galleries are principally situated in-between. The three major gallery blocks reflect the major volumetric elements of the exterior of the building, a physical arrangement that "avoids privileging media or disciplines" and insures that the sculpture garden remains part of the experience of all three. The architect's proposal responds to specific curatorial needs laid out in the Competition Program In those guidelines, the architects were asked to include "fixed" galleries, which would, on an ongoing basis, represent the core collection of the Museum from all media, as well as "variable galleries," which would also represent works from the Museum's collection but on a more flexible basis. Additionally, the architects were asked to consider the need for periodic pauses in the gallery sequence.         Site Plan (1000x365, 81k) As in his pre-Competition conceptual studies, Tschumi has designated that the fixed galleries be placed around the periphery of the Museum, allowing for the best light as well as addressing the logic of construction: The most fixed part of the building is the outer skin. Conversely, the variable galleries are located at the center, where the construction, principally nonstructural partitions, is the most flexible. In his "Urban Museum Manifesto," included in his proposal, Tschumi refutes the idea of the new Museum of Modern Art as "a unitary totality." Instead he terms it a "heterotopia" that "combines three distinct types on its site: a received type, the 25-foot-square column grid and doubly bay of the historic MoMA . . . ; a borrowed type, the columnless factory type, for its temporary exhibitions; and a new type, our proposal for fixed spaces, variable spaces, and interspaces, for the permanent collection." The architect succinctly summarizes his approach to redeveloping the site: "Our aim has been to find the proper 'interlocking' between the old and the new so that the culture of the institution is regenerated into a new urban and spatial type."

Curatorial commentary and selected images

Curatorial commentary, selected images, and QTVR of architectural model

Links to all phases of the MoMA Expansion subsite