Moving Forward With the SFMOMA Expansion: At yesterday's Board of Supervisors meeting...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, January 11, 2012, by Sally Kuchar

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Curbed Awards: Best RenderPorn Award, 2011: Snøhetta and SFMOMA

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, December 28, 2011, by Philip Ferrato

SFMOMA's expansion plans quite simply knocked our socks off here at Curbed SF. To paraphrase the museum's director Neal Benezra, if you're interested in the art of the 20th century, you're going to have to visit San Francisco in 2016. Kudos to the late Donald Fisher and his family for putting their collection in such capable hands in an urban, transit-friendly neighborhood- and not in the Presidio- and to Snøhetta for coming up with this glorious, hovering concrete container for it all.

Inside, while some have bemoaned the planned demolition of Mario Botta's "iconic" staircase (someone's got to bemoan something) we don't agree- while we love a monumental staircase as much as the next fella, the glitzy execution of Botta's lobby never seemed appropriate for a museum, and the new plan's multiple entrances, streetscapes and terraces will create a different experience, moving away from the "museum as temple" concept that dates back in this country to New York's c.1902 Metropolitan Museum. Click on the gallery above, check out the video. And not to worry: while all this brilliance is expected to cost somewhere upwards of half a billion dollars, fundraising is very close to the goal.
· SFMOMA Expansion: Take a Little Fly-Around [Curbed SF]
· SFMOMA: The Shape of Things to Come, Part 2 [Curbed SF]

151 Third Street San Francisco, CA 94103

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Turf Wars: W Hotel is Not a Fan of the SFMOMA Expansion

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, November 29, 2011, by Alex Bevk

[Rendering via Snøhetta]

The SFMOMA expansion project is back, this time in front of yesterday’s Board of Supervisor’s Land Use Committee hearing. And once again, the only one in opposition was the W Hotel. The committee needed to approve zoning changes to relocate a to-be-demolished fire station and vacate a landlocked alley between the museum and the hotel, but the W is not happy their access to the alley will be reduced. Lucky for MOMA, the Supes, like the Planning Commission, felt the musuem was accommodating the W enough, so the zoning changes were moved forward and the project will come back to the city this winter for approval of the full development plan.
· W Hotel gives SFMOMA expansion a bad review [Examiner]
· Planning Commission Approves SFMOMA Expansion [Curbed SF]
· San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Expansion / Fire Station Relocation and Housing Project [SF Planning Dept]

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SFMOMA Expansion : Planning Commission approves SFMOMA Expansion

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, November 10, 2011, by Alex Bevk

[Rendering via Snøhetta]

This afternoon the Planning Commission debated the Certification of Final Environmental Impact Report for the SFMOMA Expansion by Norwegian firm Snøhetta. The project expands the existing SFMOMA (with a 200-foot-tall, 230,000-square-foot addition) and demos-and-relocates Fire Station No. 1 from 676 Howard Street to a new building at 935 Folsom Street. First up, since it was the final certification of the (very long) EIR, public comment was kept short, and it was certified.

Next, the commish had to approve a thousand technical bits, including adopting the findings under CEQA, find the project consistent with the General Plan, amend the General Plan, and rezone the sites. Public comment was all super positive for the project. Even Commissioner Moore commented on how unusual it was that there wasn't opposition. The only real beef was from the owners of the W Hotel, who are concerned about vehicle and maintenance access to their building. Commissioners said too bad to the W, the museum is going to be a major thumbs-up for the nabe and the city, and unanimously approved all the items, sending the project on to the Board of Supes for final approval.
· SFMOMA: The Shape of Things to Come on Third Street [Curbed SF]
· San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Expansion / Fire Station Relocation and Housing Project [SF Planning Dept]
· SFMOMA Picks Snøhetta for $250M Expansion Design [Curbed SF]

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SFMOMA Expansion: SFMOMA: The Shape of Things to Come on Third Street

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, May 26, 2011, by Philip Ferrato

Aerial view looking north, with the new addition straddling space between the existing garage/sculpture roof and the 1995 Botta building. Image courtesy Snøhetta (Click on the image to enlarge in a new window)

There was a press preview yesterday up the SFMOMA rooftop sculpture garden- what might be described as a deeply satisfying teaser- of what's to come as the museum expands. Craig Dykers, partner in our favorite Oslo/New York architectural firm, Snøhetta, gave a presentation, explaining that the days of architects imposing a grand architectural vision was over for them; the proposal was the result of a year of listening. So what should we expect in 2016, aside from that gloriously honed iceberg in the images? One Snøhetta's primary objectives was to better engage the museum with the street and pedestrians. There will be a spectacular new entrance on Howard Street side, currently occupied by the firehouse, and along with re-orienting the existing lobby, a new entrance at the end of Natoma Street lined up with the yet-unbuilt Transbay Transit Center and Second Street. To quote Craig Dykers:

SFMOMA’s expansion will enliven the neighborhood through a generous plan that frees connections between well-known surrounding streets and more hidden urban spaces. The building will encourage people to enjoy the intimate small streets as much as the heavily used thoroughfares of the district. The new building does not push tightly against its property lines; instead it creates new public spaces and pedestrian routes through the neighborhood along with open views of the surrounding streetscape.

So just as the current Mario Botta building injected new energy into the neighborhood in mid-1990s, Snøhetta's looking to do the same by rethinking the street-level experience as much as the gallery experience upstairs.

Next up for museum staff and architects are visits to other museums around the world to begin planning the galleries and interiors- we were told to expect another presentation in November.
· SF MOMA Expansion [SF MOMA]
· SFMOMA Coverage [Curbed SF Archives]
· Snøhetta [SnøArc]

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Talking About the SFMOMA Expansion: Today's the day that Snøhetta unveils...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, May 25, 2011, by Sally Kuchar

Today's the day that Snøhetta unveils the initial conceptual design for the $250 million SFMOMA expansion. Craig Dykers of Snøhetta will be on site to discuss the design process and the next stage of the expansion. The reception will be held in the museum's rooftop garden. Curbed SF will be on site to get all the juicy details, so look forward to a heavy post tomorrow about the expansion. The SFMOMA expansion will be Snøhetta's first project on the West Coast. [Curbed Inbox/photo via Jonathan Percy]

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