To put it simply: brace yourself. The plans laid out today for the SFMOMA expansion by Snøhetta's Craig Dyckers are dazzling and unexpected, best described as an immense sculpture hovering over the streetscape around the museum, bringing it to life and connecting it to that other ambitious project, the Transbay Tower (without going down the high-speed rail tunnel, for now.) Plus taking visual cues from Timothy Pflueger's Pacific Bell towers. The surface of what we've been referring to as "The Iceberg" will be clad in huge cast concrete panels, cut away to expose the aggregate underneath and create a striated surface that will visually change in the course of the day.
The iceberg's been honed and shaped to allow light and air into the alleyways along with narrow balconies on the upper floors off the galleries, giving Mario Botta's earlier, Post-Modern building a respectful backdrop. Botta's lobby on Third Street will be expanded into a sort of indoor plaza with food and retail; ticket sales will move to the second level, accessed by stairs, elevators and escalators from Howard, Natoma and Minna Streets, and a new entrance on Minna Street will access the existing auditorium, giving it a street presence it never had and new possibilities as a cinema. For more, check out the SFMOMA site and be sure to watch the video.
· SFMOMA: The Shape of Things to Come on Third Street [Curbed SF]
· SFMOMA Expansion Coverage [Curbed SF]
· Our Expansion [SF MOMA]
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