SFMOMA Expansion Design: New Details, Renderings And Video

Back in May the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) revealed the rough massings and early Snøhetta design for the expansion of the museum. Today, SFMOMA released refined designs for the building as rendered above and detailed below.

The design of the interior spaces synthesizes the current Mario Botta–designed building and the new Snøhetta expansion into one seamless whole. Two main entrances (the current entrance on Third Street and a new one on Natoma Street) will lead into a central space that will serve as the public entry point to all galleries. To create an expansive, flowing space on the entry level of the museum, the original staircase will be removed from the Botta atrium.

The galleries in the existing and new buildings will be unified and total 130,000 square feet, double the current square footage. The building also introduces a façade on Howard Street that will feature a large, street-level gallery enclosed in glass on three sides, providing views of both the art in the galleries and the new public spaces. Upon opening, the Howard Street gallery will house one of the gems of the Fisher Collection, Richard Serra’s masterpiece Sequence (2006). The sculpture will be visible from the outside even when the museum is closed.

On its east side, the new building will feature a sweeping façade and an entrance in an area that is currently hidden from public view and largely unused. This will be realized through the creation of a mid-block, open-air, 18-foot-wide pedestrian promenade running from Howard Street through to Natoma Street that will open a new route of public circulation through the neighborhood and bring Natoma Street, currently a dead end, to life.

Additionally, the design opens up a direct pathway between SFMOMA and the Transbay Transit Center currently under construction two blocks to the east of the museum. The public promenade will feature a series of stairs and landings terracing up to an entry court that extends from the new east entrance, providing additional public spaces.

Groundbreaking for the expansion is currently scheduled for summer 2013 with completion projected in early 2016. And a link to the aforementioned video atop the page.

∙ The First Sign Of Snøhetta’s Design For SFMOMA Expansion [SocketSite]
∙ SFMOMA Expansion, Fire Station Relocation And…Housing Project [SocketSite]
∙ SFMOMA Design: Architectural Sketches and Video [sfmoma.org]

SFMOMA Expansion Design: New Details, Renderings And Video

SFMOMA Expansion Detailed Rendering

Back in May the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) revealed the rough massings and early Snøhetta design for the expansion of the museum. Today, SFMOMA released refined designs for the building as rendered above and detailed below.

SFMOMA Expansion Rendering: View from Yerba Buena

The design of the interior spaces synthesizes the current Mario Botta–designed building and the new Snøhetta expansion into one seamless whole. Two main entrances (the current entrance on Third Street and a new one on Natoma Street) will lead into a central space that will serve as the public entry point to all galleries. To create an expansive, flowing space on the entry level of the museum, the original staircase will be removed from the Botta atrium.

The galleries in the existing and new buildings will be unified and total 130,000 square feet, double the current square footage. The building also introduces a façade on Howard Street that will feature a large, street-level gallery enclosed in glass on three sides, providing views of both the art in the galleries and the new public spaces. Upon opening, the Howard Street gallery will house one of the gems of the Fisher Collection, Richard Serra’s masterpiece Sequence (2006). The sculpture will be visible from the outside even when the museum is closed.

SFMOMA Expansion Rendering: Night

On its east side, the new building will feature a sweeping façade and an entrance in an area that is currently hidden from public view and largely unused. This will be realized through the creation of a mid-block, open-air, 18-foot-wide pedestrian promenade running from Howard Street through to Natoma Street that will open a new route of public circulation through the neighborhood and bring Natoma Street, currently a dead end, to life.

Additionally, the design opens up a direct pathway between SFMOMA and the Transbay Transit Center currently under construction two blocks to the east of the museum. The public promenade will feature a series of stairs and landings terracing up to an entry court that extends from the new east entrance, providing additional public spaces.

SFMOMA Expansion Rendering: Howard Street Entrance

Groundbreaking for the expansion is currently scheduled for summer 2013 with completion projected in early 2016. And a link to the aforementioned video atop the page.

∙ The First Sign Of Snøhetta’s Design For SFMOMA Expansion [SocketSite]
∙ SFMOMA Expansion, Fire Station Relocation And…Housing Project [SocketSite]
∙ SFMOMA Design: Architectural Sketches and Video [sfmoma.org]

Foster + Partners have completed the world’s first space terminal for tourists in New Mexico.

Flying displays by Virgin Galactic space vehicles WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo marked the opening of Spaceport America.

The low-rise building is dug into the landscape beside the El Camino
Real road and is entered through a cleft between the two wings.

Full-height glazing wraps around the end of the building, facing onto the runway beyond.

The spaceport hangar is located in the centre of the building, with
administrative areas to the west and flight training and preparation
areas to the east.

The project was designed in collaboration with New Mexico architects SMPC and project manager URS Corporation.

Operators Virgin Galactic are currently running a test flight programme.

Dezeen originally published visuals of the spaceport back in 2007 – see our earlier story here and see more stories about Virgin Galactic here. For more about Foster + Partners, including their circular campus proposals for Apple, click here.

Photography is by Nigel Young, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from Foster + Partners:

Dedication ceremony for the Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space

A dedication ceremony was held at Spaceport America in New Mexico –
the world’s first commercial space terminal. More than 800 guests
attended the event, which included flying displays of Virgin Galactic’s
WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo vehicles.

Click above for larger image

The Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space, a combined terminal and hangar
facility, will support up to two WhiteKnightTwo and five SpaceShipTwo
vehicles. The 120,000 square-foot building has been designed by Foster +
Partners, working with URS Corporation and New Mexico architects SMPC.

Click above for larger image

The Gateway will also house all astronaut preparation and celebration
facilities, a mission control centre and a friends and family area.

Click above for larger image

Entrance is via a deep channel cut into the landscape and its
retaining walls form an exhibition space that documents a history of
space exploration alongside the story of the region. With minimal
embodied carbon and few additional energy requirements, the scheme has
been designed to achieve LEED Gold accreditation.

Click above for larger image

The low-lying form is dug into the landscape to exploit the thermal
mass, which buffers the building from the extremes of the New Mexico
climate as well as catching the westerly winds for ventilation; and
maximum use is made of daylight via skylights.

Click above for larger image

Built using local materials and construction techniques, it aims to be both sustainable and sensitive to its surroundings.

Click above for larger image

Sir Richard Branson said:
“Today is another history-making day for Virgin Galactic. We are here
with a group of incredible people who are helping us lead the way in
creating one of the most important new industrial sectors of the 21st
century. We’ve never wavered in our commitment to the monumental task of
pioneering safe, affordable and clean access to space, or to
demonstrate that we mean business at each step along the way.”

by dezeen design magazine

Criss-crossing lengths of aluminium cover the glass facade of this Barcelona skyscraper by Spanish architects EMBA.

The 25-storey Diagonal ZeroZero tower is located at the north-east end of a road that spans the entire city, overlooking both the city centre and the sea.

The building has a diamond-shaped plan and a 40 metre-high atrium on the ground floor, which is open to the public.

Upper levels contain a two-storey auditorium, open-plan offices and a boardroom for telecommunications company Telefónica.

More stories about skyscrapers on Dezeen »

Photography is by Aleix Bagué and Eloi Hortoneda of EMBA.

The following details are from the architects:

Torre Telefonica Diagonal ZeroZero

The position of Diagonal ZeroZero Tower is exceptional: it is located at the origin of Diagonal, Barcelona’s main avenue; it is very visible from the city and from the coast; and it lays on the border between the consolidated city and the large expanses of public space in the Forum area. Its immediate surroundings consist of isolated buildings in a diverse context of different scales and uses that generate at the same time a metropolitan center and a local neighborhood still in formation.

It is a contextual tower that has a double reading, from near and afar, in response to the two scales that such tall buildings must address. Taking the urban directions that form the perimeter of the plot as generators of its form, it is a trapezoidal prism, sharp and stylized, a clean and serene form, whitish and light, which reveals dynamic volumes that respond to the different specificities of the interior program and relate to the various heights of nearby buildings. The exterior responds to the city and the view from afar, and the interior responds to the program and the close-up vision.

The corporate program that the tower hosts has a major public part that will connect it to urban flows, situated on the ground floor, which actually comprises three interrelated levels, around an atrium 40 meter high that follows the slope of the adjacent Plaça Fòrum. This direct visual and physical continuity with the city will help the tower benefit from civic activities and will facilitate citizens to participate and enjoy the activities in the building.

Inside the tower four singular points make the ensemble dynamic and generate a variety of interior experiences despite being a relatively conventional program of corporate headquarters: the main lobby atrium, facing Diagonal; an atrium on the 17th level that goes all the way up to the top of the building, facing the Maresme coast; the terrace and the double height the Board Room, located on the 23rd floor; and the auditorium, which occupies two floors and is split into an orchestra and two amphitheaters that can operate autonomously for smaller groups.

The upper floors are open-plan office spaces, taking advantage of the structural system, a tube-in-tube scheme, with a bearing central core and a perimeter structure along the façade.

The perimeter structure is split into two parts: very small and slender vertical interior pillars that only take compression stresses, and external elements that bear horizontal forces and torque. These create a diamond lattice facade that follows the stresses of each part of the building, with the greatest concentration of bearing elements in the lower half and less so in the upper parts. The floors are solid concrete slabs that transmit these horizontal forces to the central core.

The facade is a modular curtain wall made of white aluminum profiles and extratransparent glass with white ceramic paint serigraphy, according to a vertical pattern that reinforces the slenderness of the building.

In combination with the inner structure, placed every 1.35 meters, and the exterior structure, this pattern contributes to the diffusion of solar light and to glare control, generating interiors of great quality of perception.

Location: Barcelona
Developer: Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona
User: Telefónica sa
Years: 2006-2010
Plot area: 4.044 m2
Height: 110 m
Floors: 25 above ground, 3 underground
Above ground built area: 25.300 m2
Underground built area: 8.622 m2

Click above for larger image

Team
Architects: EMBA_Estudi Massip-Bosch Arquitectes
Principal Enric Massip-Bosch
Project directors: Aleix Antillach, Elena Guim, Jon Ajánguiz
Architects: Esteve Solà, Ricardo Mauricio, Carlos Cachón, Cornelia Memm, Cristina Feijoo, Heidi Reichenbacher, Rita Pacheco, Rodrigo Vargas, Jana Alonso, Marta Marcet
Prescription + regulations: Montse Galindo, arch.
Document control: Glòria Andrés, arch.
Arch. students: Laura Rodera, Megan Charnley, Miguel Orellana, Jabi Fernández
Quantity surveyors: aumedes dap — Xavier Aumedes, Gemma Rius, Cesc Deharo, Anna Soler
Structures: MC2— Julio Martínez Calzón, Pietro Bartalotta, Luca Ceriani
Facilities: master enginyeria — Marc Jaumà, Luis Martin
Elevator consultancy: japssen — Johannes Maasberg
Safety control: aumedes dap — Marta Serra
Project management: aynova

Click above for larger image

Rendering: EMBA, Rupert Maurus
Models: Eloi Hortoneda-EMBA, Andrea Sanglas
Photography: Aleix Bagué, Eloi Hortoneda-EMBA

Contractors
Initial works: dragados
Foundations: terratest
Underground construction: guinovart & osha
Tower and finishes: fcc
Installations: sogesa
Elevators: thyssen