A Pair Kissed by a Spatial Duplication and an Angled Setback: New Museum

SPACE May 2026 (No. 702) 

Our first cultural institution in New York is a new addition to the New Museum, located next door to its iconic SANAA-designed building at 235 Bowery. The New Museum has been growing in number of visitors, exhibitions, and activities. Its diverse engagements, including its expansive education programmes, its cultural incubator NEW INC, and, of course, its globally recognised exhibition programme, have transformed the institution into a cultural laboratory. We were asked to add a new building that would provide much-needed space for its expanded activities and simultaneously reflect its increasingly public ambitions – duplicating the programme and square footage on a site immediately adjacent to the existing SANAA-designed building – part and counterpart, side-by-side.

©Jason Keen 

Reciprocal Duplication: A Synergistic Pair

This condition was entrenched in dichotomies. While dichotomies are inherent to museum expansions, they can suppress the full potential of the pair. We looked to less didactic, more unexpected, and maybe even romantically entangled relationships that could exist between two parts of a whole. Can one be highly infrastructural to give support and free agency to the other? Can it be two equal entities in complete harmony? Can the two be distinct and independent but reciprocal as a pair?

Our approach complements and respects the integrity of the adjoining SANAA building, while asserting its own distinct identity. The New Museum will be a synergistic pair working spatially and programmatically in tandem, offering a repertoire of spaces for the institution’s curatorial ambitions and diverse programmes. We stacked the required programmes exactly at the same level of the existing building – three floors of galleries, a permanent home for NEW INC, offices, and multifunctional education and event spaces – new and old conjoined. Ceiling heights of the newly connected galleries align on each floor, creating expanded space for exhibitions and a horizontal flow between the buildings.

©Jason Keen 

A Dynamic Interstitial Space and the Angled Setback

The galleries can be used singularly across the floorplate to host larger exhibitions or separately to introduce diversity and curatorial freedom. Due to the horizontality of the site, the galleries in the new building increase in size on the upper levels while the galleries in the existing building decrease in size—the total area per connected floor remains balanced. A distinction between the two buildings is created by taking advantage of our site’s depth to insert an interstitial space, in between art and city, containing an atrium stairway and dedicated gallery elevators for improved vertical circulation. This public face – beginning from the exterior plaza and atrium stair to terraced multi-purpose rooms at the top – is a conduit for art and activities that presents an openness to Bowery and the city.

The existing tower’s verticality treats the different programmes with the same expression. We wanted to create a healthy contrast by expanding the galleries horizontally and introducing two setbacks. An angled setback starting from the top of gallery stack to the street defines a new public plaza at the terminus of Prince Street which becomes a focal point and buffer zone between the existing and new. A second setback above the galleries makes the top of the building disappear, while opening up the upper-level terraces to the sky. Clad in laminated glass with a layer of metal mesh, the building appears monolithic during the day, establishing a unified exterior alongside the existing building’s metal mesh façade. In the evening, the transparency of the façade is enhanced as light permeates its openings, exposing the museum’s anatomy.

The new New Museum is a partnership between two different personalities of high compatibility—independent but in constant dialogue. The result is an expanded platform that provokes even more dynamic interactions between art, artists, and people, which are then exposed to communicate the museum’s civic ambitions to the city.

Programme diagram

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Image courtesy of OMA 

Image courtesy of OMA

©Jason Keen