San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

SFMOMA

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Architect: Mario Botta
Coauthor: HOK
Address: 151 Third Street, Yerba Buena center, San Francisco, USA
Investor:Museum of Modern Art Foundation, San Francisco
Project:1989–92
Completion:1992-95
Area:18500 m2
Built Up Space:100000 m3
Price:55 000 000 USD


The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art went through many separate phases to develop the current building site. M. Goodwin Associates’ full-time work for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art first entailed a feasibility study assessing the viability of the museum’s possible move as a joint tenant into the base of a commercial skyscraper. When the feasibility study for this indicated that the project was unsuitable for the museum’s needs, a second study looked at the museum spread out over two sites: the current site and the Jessie Street Substation. This also proved impractical and too costly. The third program consisted of site acquisition for the current site on Third between Mission and Howard; and this program was directed by MGA. We then produced three full building programs and several partial ones along with numerous cost estimates and directed the architect selection program. This process required extensive work with the board of trustees and its numerous committees, as well as the entire staff of the museum.

The situation of the museum building on a plot surrounded by a three high-rise blocks encouraged the adoption of a particularly powerful image, while at the same time  avoiding and direct-and inevitably disadvantageous - comparison with its surroundings. The scheme was carried out with three declared objectives:
- natural lighting, in spite of the unfavourable one-to-four relationship between the area of the site and total built surface called for by the programme.
- the creation of a unitary interior image.
- the construction of an external skin which, the opposite of a shell, effectively leaves the building  faceless, thus stimulating visitors to enter.
- the stepped facade to the fore, finished with brick, accommodates the series of exhibition  spaces, all lit from above. This facade opens up in the center to reveal the presence of the cylindrical volume clad with bands of marble in two colours. This totem-like figure is cut off at a slanting angle at the top, emerging from the roof with an oblique transparent plane which captures the natural light and conducts it down into the spacious cavity in the centre of the building, around which are ordered the distribution routes giving access to the exhibition rooms.

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Viktor
19.01.12 06:56
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takyarchitekt
21.01.12 01:36
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