New Museum taps Rem Koolhaas’ OMA to design next phase of Bowery expansion
231 Bowery sits next to the New Museum, image via New Museum
The New Museum Board of Trustees announced Wednesday that OMA’s Rem Koolhaas and Shoehei Shigematsu will design the museum’s new building at 231 Bowery as part of the institution’s expansion. The new structure, purchased by the contemporary art museum in 2008, will link the museum’s Sanaa-designed building and double their footprint on the Bowery, adding 50,000-square-feet of space. OMA’s first public project in New York City, 231 Bowery is expected to break ground in 2019.
First announced last May, the museum’s expansion makes way for more galleries, improved public circulation and flexible space for new programs. In a press release, a member of the museum’s board of trustees, Lisa Phillips, called OMA a “great choice.” She added, “Koolhaas has thought deeply about the identity and landscape of our city going back to his landmark book Delirious New York, published in 1978, a year after the Museum’s founding. Though he is one of the world’s finest architects with a deeply civic and public spirit, this will be his first public building in New York City.”
The project will be funded by a $85 million capital plan and builds upon the museum’s continued expansion over the past ten years. This next phase will provide a closer integration with the museum’s exhibition program, which typically features cross-disciplinary experimentation between art, urbanism, and technology.
“I’m particularly excited that our first public building in New York City will be for the New Museum, one of the most forward-thinking institutions for which I’ve always had a great affinity,” Koolhaas said in a press release. “Having collaborated with Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa on a number of projects in Europe, it is a real honor to stand alongside their great work of architecture, one of my favorites in the city.”
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