New Museum of Contemporary Art

Sciame was the Construction Manager responsible for the construction of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum’s design has a dramatic seven-story composition of boxes each expressing a key element of the institution’s program. The design was achieved by stacking the “boxes” vertically and shifting them off-axis laterally in different directions. This arrangement yields cantilevers and setbacks that filter daylight into interiors and provides views of the city.

The lobby is an animated, multi-purpose space that houses an entrance area, information desks, an open-plan gift shop, a café and bar, and a 1,100 SF exhibition space washed with daylight from a structural setback above.

Further, an open interior stair leads from the lobby to the first sublevel and contains a 200-seat black box theater/auditorium, media lounge, satellite bar, restrooms, and other support areas. The sublevel on the second floor houses various electrical, mechanical, and sanitation systems for the building with the staff offices and administrative functions being located on the fifth and sixth floors.

The second, third, and fourth floors of the building constitute a fluid 14,000 SF gallery zone with open, column-free spaces, offering great flexibility in proportioning galleries for exhibitions in a wide range of scales and media.