San Francisco | SFMoMA expansion by Snøhetta

The SFMoMA expansion close to completion in Fall 2015, photo © Henrik Kam, courtesy of SFMOMA

SFMoMA expansion by Snøhetta

The SFMoMA – San Francisco Museum of Modern announced its re-opening on Saturday, May 14, 2016, after major expansion and renovation works. On the occasion, the museum will present an inaugural installation featuring some 260 works from its collection, together with its brand new home, which promises to be one of the most dazzling contemporary architectures in San Francisco.

Top: the expansion under construction; photo courtesy Kreysler & Associates;
bottom: SFMoMA Expansion Aerial Southeast Façade; rendered image MIR and Snøhetta

In September 2010, the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced the winning proposal of the competition for the expansion of the SFMoMA: it was a bright and dynamic structure by the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta.
The challenge was very demanding: to design an expansion (actually a second, larger home) that should fit in a narrow lot adjacent to SFMoMA’s original building, designed by the Swiss architect Mario Botta in the 1990s.

The extension is necessary to increase the exhibition and service spaces of the museum, which have become short as the collections expanded and the museum’s popularity grew.
The answer provided by Snøhetta is a ten-story, white-colored, vertical building that does not try to match the appearance of Botta’s brick-clad architecture but establishes a visual and functional dynamic relationship with it, instead.

top: SFMoMA Expansion View from Yerba Buena; image MIR and Snøhetta
middle: the expansion almost completed and Mario Botta building; photos © Henrik Kam, courtesy of SFMOMA; bottom: SFMoMA Expansion Howard St. entrance; image MIR and Snøhetta

From the conceptual design preview to the topping-out stage reached in September 2014, and up to the late-2015 images of the nearly completed expansion, while details of the design were progressively unveiled, it became clear that the objective of the project is to create an open-access, public and social venue.

The new building, despite the limited area available, provides indeed plenty of gathering and socializing space: from the free gallery on the ground floor, which will accommodate large-scale artworks, to the panoramic balcony on the 7th floor, and the sculpture terrace on the third floor – an impressive outdoor space bordered by a vertical garden.

The project by Snøhetta includes a new public entrance, opposite the current one, and the redevelopment of Botta’s atrium with a new “grand” stair, linking the old and new buildings and unifying them into a functional and coherent whole.

top: The free-access gallery on the ground floor, housing large-scale artworks, visible from the outside through a 25-foot-high glass wall, and offering stepped seating, will be one of the new gathering spaces of the SFMoMA. rendering: MIR and Snøhetta
Middle up: the Roberts Family Gallery featuring Richard Serra’s Sequence (2006) photo © Henrik Kam, courtesy of SFMOMA; Middle down: The original atrium in the Botta’s building showing the new Snøhetta-designed grand stair and (in the background) the opening toward the new expansion; rendering: Steelblue bottom: The outdoor sculpture terrace with (on the left) the vertical garden; image MIR and Snøhetta

The expansion, on a floor area of about 235,000 square feet, accommodates flexible exhibition galleries, educational spaces, conservation studios, new services to the public, and a state-of-the-art “white-box” space for performing arts, film screenings, installations, and live events.

The new building is clad with innovative lightweight panels made of Fibre-Reinforced Plastic (FRP), manufactured by the U.S. company Kreysler & Associates. This is the largest application of composites technology to architecture in the United States, so far.

Top: installation of the FRP facade panels; bottom: the manufacturing process of the cladding panels; images courtesy of Kreysler & Associates

Cutting-edge solutions for building insulation, cooling and heating, rain and wastewater recycling, and artificial lighting will make the new SFMoMA a low-impact museum, targeted for LEED Gold certification.

top:  Schwab Hall under construction in SFMOMA, © Henrik Kam, courtesy of SFMOMA;
middle top: The flexible “white box” space on the fourth floor will be a state-of-the-art venue for live performance and education programs; rendering MIR and Snøhetta 
middle bottom: SFMoMA Expansion Art Court; rendered image MIR and Snøhetta
bottom: SFMoMA Expansion Night Aerial from Howard St.; rendered image MIR and Snøhetta