The world-renowned US architecture studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro has completed the first phase of renovation for MoMA galleries and public spaces, which opened to the public last week.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) revealed the completed images of the first phase of the renovation - including the east end of the Museum’s campus - and unveiled the full design plans for its multi-year expansion project, developed by MoMA with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler.

View of The Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin Lounge. Image © Iwan Baan

MoMA's renovation plans are divided into three phases - the newly-completed plans increase gallery space and allow the Museum to exhibit significantly more of its diverse collection in deeper and more interdisciplinary ways, while the studios' next renovation plans will provide visitors more welcoming and comfortable experience, and better connect the Museum to the urban fabric of midtown Manhattan.

View of The Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin Lounge. Image © Iwan Baan 

The renovation of the east section began in February 2016 and is now complete and ready to use -  it enhances galleries and public spaces on three floors. With the initial phase of the project, the studio has reconfigured 15,000 square feet space to create two spacious galleries on the third floor that allow more flexibility for installing the collection and special exhibitions and extended the historic Bauhaus staircase to the ground level to restore and enhanced access to the second-floor galleries. 

View of The Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin Lounge. Image © Iwan Baan 

Besides that, the US studio added a new first-floor lounge facing The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Improvements also include renovations of the restrooms and the provision of an additional coat check at street level. On the second floor, Cafe 2 has been renovated, and is now adjacent to a new museum store and an espresso bar overlooking the Sculpture Garden.

View of the second floor looking east with new Museum Store, espresso bar and The Daniel and Jane Och Lounge. Image © Iwan Baan 

"This project has called on us to work across MoMA’s rich architectural history, incorporating the Museum’s existing building blocks into a comprehensible whole through careful and deliberate interventions into previous logics, as well as the construction of new logics that arise from MoMA’s current aspirations. This work has required the curiosity of an archeologist and the skill of a surgeon," said Elizabeth Diller, founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

"The improvements will make the visitor experience more intuitive and relieve congestion, while a new circulation network will knit together the expansion spaces with the lobbies, the theaters, and the Sculpture Garden to create a contiguous, free public realm that bridges street to street and art to city," Diller added.

"The design integrates the various facets of the Museum’s architectural history, creating a distinct clear-glass façade on 53rd Street that complements the existing Goodwin and Stone, Johnson, and Taniguchi buildings and invites a more open dialogue between interior and exterior spaces."

View of The Louise Reinhardt Smith Gallery, including Lawrence Weiner’s SLOW CORROSION LEADING TO A LOSS OF INHERENT DIGNITY OF THE OBJECT AT HAND (1985). Image © Iwan Baan

For the design palette throughout the renovation and expansion project, the architects highlight the historic significance of the building. The main entrance of the original Goodwin and Stone building was located in what was known as the "Bauhaus Lobby," the ground-floor space that has undergone many changes over the decades. 

The architects have reinstated the connection between the ground floor and the galleries with a stair that uses the original materials of terrazzo, glass, and steel, while structurally optimizing the design of the stair using advanced engineering capabilities. The Grand Antique marble, sourced from the Ariège region in France, also recalls the marble surround of the historic stair in the Museum’s original lobby.

North/south section-perspective through the new gallery spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, looking east along 53 Street. Image © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Renfro

In consideration of the overall expansion, including the west side that is now under construction - the plans of renovation will increase net MoMA’s gallery space of one third, to 175,000 square feet. 

"The design is optimised on the current spaces to be more flexible and technologically sophisticated, and creates more areas for visitors to pause and reflect. It enlarges and opens up the main lobby into a light-filled, double-height space and creates intuitive circulation routes through the Museum, including a connector that seamlessly links the new galleries to the renovated east side of the building," noted MoMA.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro also redesigned the circulation, the new western portion of the Museum is dedicated almost entirely to the display of art. Increasing MoMA's exhibition space by 30 per cent provides a stack of vertically interlocking galleries of varying heights, some naturally lit, some equipped for performance and film.

Elevation of The Museum of Modern Art on 53 Street with cutaway view below street level. Image © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Renfro

"The 50,000 square feet of gallery space being added in the western portion of the building will enable MoMA to realize a long-held aspiration: to present significantly more of its collection through a series of fluid, interconnected narratives of modern and contemporary art across all mediums," added MoMA.

The overhauled galleries will provide an opportunity to reimagine the display of the Museum’s collection and showcase its depth, breadth, complexity, and diversity through a greater use of interdisciplinary installations, while also having rotating spaces devoted to specific mediums, including photography, architecture, and design. 

Elevation of The Museum of Modern Art on 53 Street with cutaway view below street level. Image © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Renfro

"The Museum of Modern Art’s renovation and expansion project will seek to reassure and surprise," said Glenn D. Lowry, Director of the MoMA.

"Our curators and the architectural team have spent more than two years in conversations about the nature of our collection, the history of our installations, the continually changing nature of art, and our opportunities and responsibilities for engaging our audiences. The outcome of these discussions is a design that accommodates a global view and new perspectives on modern and contemporary art, and that embodies the metabolic and self-renewing nature of our institution," added Lowry. 

Throughout the construction process, MoMA will remain open and continue to present its exhibition program. The main lobby entrance on 53rd Street will close as of June 4, 2017, to accommodate construction, and visitors will be directed a few hundred feet east to the lobby of the Ronald S. and Jo Carole Lauder Building, which was the original entrance to the Museum.

MoMA is planning to open its new expansions in 2019, the entire Museum will be devoted to exhibitions and installations from the collection.

Watch the exclusive interview of Charles Renfro, Partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, featured in World Architecture Community interview series in collaboration with Kalebodur. 

Top image: View of the restored Bauhaus staircase, with Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Stairway (1932). Image © Iwan Baan 

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