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Yoshio Taniguchi, in his Competition design submission, states that his goal is "to create an ideal environment for art and people through the imaginative and disciplined use of light, materials and space." He envisions "a museum that preserves and reinforces MoMA's unique character as the repository of an incomparable collection of modern and contemporary art, as a pioneer of museums of modern art with a unique historical inheritance, and as an urban institution in a midtown Manhattan location." |
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Taniguchi's proposal identifies The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden as the principal exterior element that can and should be revitalized through redesign and reuse. The southern terrace, which was part of Philip Johnson's original design for the garden, is reestablished, thereby restoring the diagonal relationship between its principal components that was lost in subsequent alterations. While the plan of the garden regains its original integrity, the architect's proposal does not seek merely to return it to its original appearance. To the east, west, and south, the open space of the garden is extended into the Museum in a more dramatic fashion than before.
The Museum's Midtown Manhattan location becomes a referent point for a number of design decisions. As in his preliminary conceptual designs, the architect proposes a through-block entry from Fifty-third to Fifty-fourth streets--with the principal entry on the latter street--recalling a number of recent midblock interventions nearby. He addresses the verticality of the public spaces integral to
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| Site Plan (1000x502, 150k) |
Taniguchi's proposal includes an in-depth study of his ideas for the galleries that, significantly, reverses the current chronological flow of the Museum Collection galleries. That is, the architect has proposed that the earliest works in the collections be situated in the upper Collection Galleries rather than in the lower spaces. The intention is not necessarily to reverse the visitor's experience of the collection but, rather, to take advantage of the fact that each floor can be considered a specific destination, and that the lower, larger floors are more suited to contemporary works. Thus, the large public spaces of the main lobby and atrium flow more seamlessly into the larger Collection galleries devoted to recent work, while they gradually break down in scale as the visitor moves upward. This also creates a situation where the visitor's first exposure to the collection, after arriving at the top of the grand stair, is to contemporary art.
