FAR CORNER
architecture
urbanism
art
Philip Nobel
Last point first: the 90-degree angle is
the architect’s friend for good reason.
Good Box Work
SANAA’s New Museum makes compelling
use of an elemental form.
It is a little shiny. Inside one finds white walls and art varying from the profound to the hilarious. There’s a place to sit
with coffee and contemplate it all. There’s a gift shop. And
there end the similarities between SANAA’s new building
for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened
in Manhattan in December, and the products of that grand
international fad that has, over the last decade, raised
or proposed strident museum buildings following the lead
of that once humble Iberian port everywhere from Akron to
Abu Dhabi.
The October 2005 ground-breaking ceremony for the
New Museum was auspicious. Luminaries gathered under a
tent on a lot that had until a few weeks before stored cars;
a Shinto priest gave a blessing at a portable Shinto shrine.
Laurie Anderson announced that she got “kind of a thrill”
putting electronics in her mouth and then, inserting a small
speaker modified into a microphone, played (sang?) a haunting little
threnody as kitchen appliances were bought and sold and traffic
flowed on the adjacent Bowery, as on any other day. Two years later
we have a building—this ragged stack of six tall boxes floating over
a glazed lobby plane—that is not only beautiful, urbanistically deft,
and primed to function well but also illustrates the power of employing
architectural thinking—versus sculptural or hysterical thinking—in
the design and construction of a museum.
Last point first: the 90-degree angle is the architect’s friend for
good reason. It is a fact that, due to whatever unforeseen laws govern
our particular strand of reality, any angle much smaller will create an
uncomfortably tight corner, while any angle much larger, though in
itself capaciously open-armed, most often defers continued on page 56
Top: The New Museum’s seventh-floor terrace and event
space has a commanding view of lower Manhattan.
Below: The ground floor features a small café and
a museum shop with a wire-mesh display case that
mimics the exterior cladding of the building.
