Located on 125th Street, one of Harlem’s main thoroughfares and co-named Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the new building seeks to push the museum typology to a new place through a fresh approach to both displaying and receiving art. The main façade draws inspiration from the traditional brick masonry of the vicinity, and creates a collage of stacked volumes varying in size and shape in response to the typological variety and the rich cultural offer of the New York neighborhood. Large windows give a view into the activity going on inside, creating a direct rapport between the contents and passers-by.

One of the fundamental aims of the project is to open up the institution to the community. Access from the street is through a large stepped hall that recalls the interiors of nearby churches and forms a public space which invites one to take the exhibition route. The different galleries are made to be adaptable to the ever-changing contemporary art scene, and able to take in works of different scales and techniques. In addition, the galleries will be linked to the area reserved for artists’ studios and educational facilities, forging a dialogue between viewing and creating art...[+]