by: Linda G. Miller
OMA-designed New Museum Expansion to Open Fall 2025
The New Museum, Manhattan’s only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art, announced that its 60,000-square-foot, seven-story building expansion designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Cooper Robertson will open in fall 2025, doubling the Museum’s gallery space. The expansion complements the Museum’s existing SANAA-designed flagship building on the Bowery at Prince Street. On the exterior, laminated glass with metal mesh will provide a simple, unified façade using materials that recall and complement the original building while allowing for a higher degree of transparency. Ceiling heights on the second, third, and fourth floors will be aligned for uninterrupted connectivity across both buildings. The design will improve vertical circulation for visitors through the addition of an atrium stairway, which will offer views of the surrounding neighborhood and the opportunity for site-specific art installations, as well as three additional elevators, two of which will be dedicated to gallery access. On the ground level, the Museum’s enlarged lobby will feature an expanded bookstore as well as a full-service restaurant, while just outside a new entrance plaza will create an open-air venue for public art installations at the terminus of Bowery and Prince Street. On the Museum’s upper floors, the new building will include a dedicated studio for artists-in-residence, a 74-seat forum, and a purpose-built home for NEW INC, the first museum-born cultural incubator, which will equip its annual cohort of 120+ creative entrepreneurs with collaborative working spaces and top-of-line production facilities. The seventh floor Sky Room will double in size while retaining its panoramic views of downtown Manhattan, and the expanded building will include three additional upper-floor terraces overlooking the Bowery. New Humans: Memories of the Future will inaugurate the expanded building. The exhibition will span the entire museum with an exploration of artists’ preoccupation with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes by more than 150 artists. The museum expansion marks OMA’s first public building in New York City.
Dattner Architects, Breaking Ground Begin Affordable Housing Conversion
Dattner Architects, Breaking Ground, a non-profit dedicated to serving vulnerable New Yorkers, and their partners in government and the private sector have begun construction at 1760 Third Avenue between 97th and 98th Street in East Harlem. Originally developed in 1974 as Florence Nightingale Health Center, the 250,000-square-foot, 19-story building was designed in the Brutalist style by William N. Breger Associates. Most recently, the building sheltered more than 400 migrant families. In 2008, it was rehabbed to serve as a college dorm for students of CUNY Hunter and Baruch Colleges. Fifteen years later, it was purchased by Breaking Ground, who will adaptively reuse to accommodate 434 dwelling units, social and medical services, and common amenities including a fitness room and computer lab on the first three floors. The existing dormitory rooms will be reconfigured to provide 395 compliant efficiency dwelling units, 38 one-bedroom units, and a two-bedroom unit for the super. Some of the units will be reserved for formerly homeless individuals living with serious mental illness and young adults aging out of foster care or who have experienced homelessness. The renovation will reconfigure layouts, upgrade systems, and transform public and amenity spaces. Porosity between the interior and exterior of the building through achieved by removing partitions in the ground floor lobby to expose the expansive storefront and maximize openness and visual connectivity. The design approach for the public and amenity spaces was framed by consideration of the building’s strong massing, materiality, and identity in the neighborhood. The new interiors recall the Brutalist style, while infusing it with a more contemporary and sustainable take. Design cues using strong geometric forms, carved “portal” spaces and volumes, clean lines, modular elements, and patterns focusing on repetition and texture, were explored. The exterior landscaped area was redesigned to redefine the street edge and knit together disparate existing exterior program elements within the heavy building setback. Green space along the public right of way, clarified entry circulation and wayfinding, and created a transitional zone between the street and the residential entry while creating exterior amenity space for passive recreation for the residents were incorporated. Sustainable features include energy-efficient rooftop air conditioners and hydronic heating system pumps that use water instead of air to transfer heat.
Beyer Blinder Belle Restores South Street Seaport Museum
After an extensive renovation and modernization by Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB) of the A.A. Thomson & Co. warehouse building at 213-215 Water Street, the South Street Seaport Museum has reopened. The Museum’s inaugural exhibition Maritime City is conceived and designed by Marvel, who has worked with the Museum to protect and revitalize spaces damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Located in the South Street Seaport Historic District, the 12,000-square-foot, five-story Italianate cast iron and stone warehouse, was designed by Stephen D. Hatch and built in 1868 with masonry side walls and heavy timber floors and columns. The ground floor now houses new exhibition and event space with AV/IT technology, new interior partitions and doors, and new windows. To create better sightlines in the space, BBB removed some of the existing, densely spaced wood columns and replaced them with new steel joists spanning between the remaining columns. To safeguard the building’s infrastructure against storms, all mechanical equipment is located on the second floor of the building orms such as Hurricane Sandy, which flooded the South Street Seaport Historic District. A new elevator and two new fire stairs, as well as a new exterior lift for the front steps of the building, provide accessibility throughout the entire building. The second and third floor contain additional galleries. The inaugural exhibition on the third floor showcases 540 objects from the Museum’s collections of 80,000 works of art, historical artifacts, and archival records, representing a wide range of time periods, themes, and materials that have been in storage for a decade. Placement of objects within a system of modular oak boxes, inside cabinets, on top of pallets, and within immersive videos provides multiple points of view. The 100-year-old, 22-foot long builder model of RMS Queen Mary has been restored and installed in its specially-designed case for the exhibition. The fourth and fifth floors remain flexible for future uses, including temporary exhibitions, programming spaces and administrative use. On these floors, while BBB shored up, cleaned, and restored the building, the team also deliberately left traces of the building’s former use as a printing press: ink stains on the floors; graffiti on the walls, and mechanical artifacts including pulleys, leather belts, and cogs, from a long-obsolete elevator system. The historic building is the last of the city-owned parcels to be restored according to BBB’s 1980 master plan, commissioned by the South Street Seaport Museum and the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which balanced historic preservation and new development in the Seaport.
WXY, NYC Health + Hospitals Completes 20th Wellness Room in NYC
During the past year, WXY, in collaboration with NYC Health + Hospitals (NYCHH), has completed 20 Wellness Rooms located in hospitals throughout all five boroughs. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for dedicated retreats for healthcare workers that foster moments of peace where they can recharge after long shifts in high-stress environments. These tranquil spaces have been shown decrease stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout, and increase positive mood and cognitive alertness. WXY created a strategy to address community engagement, budget, and design tool kit of parts. The critical element was the design survey that asked the workforce what the rooms should include. The subsequent design tool kit of parts addressed the system for rollout and equitable design, but it also included was ways to express the uniqueness of place for each of the sites. Each Wellness Room was constructed simultaneously with leadership teams particular to the site working with hospital facilities teams, contractors, graphic designers, furniture installers to build out the interior spaces. Saturated and rich colors line the walls of the Wellness Room and provide a wholly different feel from the sterile bright-light and white walls of the rest of the hospital. The rooms incorporate art from the Arts in Medicine collection, one of the largest public art collections in the country. Healthcare workers can relax on chairs with ottomans or couches and look at immersive nature murals, nature lightbox images, and art. Dimmers on both the custom lightboxes of nature featuring forests and underwater scenes and for lights above, allow for the workforce to have personal space and a moment to collect their thoughts. This is supplemented with programming such as guided meditation or journaling, yoga, or massage. The project includes material elements that are hospital-safe and antimicrobial and where possible there are finishes and furniture that meet the stringent safety requirements of the Declare label from the Living Building Challenge. The firm coordinated with NYCHH’s Helping Healers (H3) team, which offers support for mental, emotional, physical, social, and spiritual wellness. H3 began in 2018 and is the largest municipal program implementing a wellness program and created a second victim response initiative that recognizes that patient outcomes affect caregivers and that the workforce needs mental health support through compassionate conversation and peer-to-peer dialogue.
Boston University Announces Plans for Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed Building
As the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University marks its 10-year anniversary, the school announced plans for a new building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Situated at the heart of the campus on a former parking lot, the new 70,000-square-foot, 12-story building will provide a central hub for interdisciplinary collaboration on global issues, while simultaneously increasing urban density and open space. Rising to 186 feet, it will be the tallest mass timber tower in the Northeast United States and the tallest in the state. It will house event and conference facilities, classrooms, faculty offices, and social spaces. Research centers converge around double-height “living rooms” for informal gatherings and community building, connected by a social stair. This vertical collaboration network will broadcast the school’s internal activity along the building’s façade.The all-electric, fossil fuel-free design features a monolithic massing to minimize material use and energy loss. Its mass timber structural frame reduces embodied carbon by 87%, compared to an initial steel and concrete option. The entire building envelope is triple-glazed with integral solar screening to reduce solar heat gain while maximizing natural light to interior spaces. Together, the massing and exterior wall significantly reduce building conditioning loads so that over 85% of spaces require no perimeter heating or cooling. The roof is equipped with a solar-ready infrastructure, supporting the university’s renewable energy goals. The vertically stacked program will concentrate the building footprint to just 10% of the site, with the remainder dedicated to a future central green. The project is expected to break ground in spring 2026.
Harlem River Houses Renovation Underway by Curtis + Ginsberg Architects
Curtis + Ginsberg Architects have completed a comprehensive renewal for a sustainable future for Harlem River Houses, the city’s first purpose-built public housing development, while preserving its historic character. Situated between West 151st and West 153rd Street, and Macombs Place and the Harlem River Drive in East Harlem, the houses were designated a New York City Landmark in 1975. Completed in 1937 by the Housing Division of the Public Works Administration as part of the New Deal, its construction was funded by the federal government to provide quality public housing for working-class African Americans. The design features seven four- and five-story meandering red-brick buildings grouped around large courtyards with wide Belgian-block walkways, sunken playgrounds, and integrates public art. In 2020, Settlement Housing, a non-profit developer was selected by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to lead the rehabilitation project. The renovation was approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in 2021. The holistic interior and exterior renovation of the eight-acre site renews the seven Harlem River Houses buildings and Harlem River II, an adjacent 15-story 1960s tower, preserving and enhancing the affordable residences. The spacious grounds, central courtyard and fountain, outdoor amphitheater, playgrounds, and landscaping have been restored and enhanced, bringing community play back to the heart of the campus. Historic statuary is being repaired and new murals created in collaboration with residents where historic frescoes were lost over time will be added. Retail storefronts and signage are renewed to complement the historic design. Along with upgrades to common areas, all 693 residential units have new finishes, fixtures, appliances, lighting, and high-efficiency domestic hot water and HVAC systems. The brick and concrete masonry of the façades was repaired, and site lighting was replaced to correspond with historic fixtures. Non-historic double-hung windows were replaced with new energy efficient casement windows, matching the configuration of the historic steel casement windows. At the ’60s tower, a new exterior insulation finish system (EIFS) provides a modernized counterpart to the historically restored 1930s buildings. By the time the Hudson River Houses celebrate their official completion in May, the onsite public art will be installed. Historic preservation experts Higgins Quasebarth & Partners served as consultants. The project has received a 2025 New York Landmarks Conservancy Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award.
In Case You Missed It…
The NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) announced the renovation of “Selmas House” in Corona, Queens. Bequeathed by the owner to the Louis Armstrong House Museum, it has served as the museum’s administration building. CTA Architects has designed the renovation that will restore the house to better accommodate various support function for the adjacent museum. Work is expected to be completed in summer 2026.
Mancini Duffy has released a new rendering of its 14-story SecureSpace self storage facility in Hell’s Kitchen. Demolition began last summer, and the new reinforced concrete foundations may begin construction later this spring.
Studio Libeskind, in partnership with La Compagnie de Phalsbourg, won the competition to transform Issy-les-Moulineaux Station in Paris with a mixed-use building that faces the future Line 15 station. This large-scale initiative is part of the city’s broader urban development strategy.
Meow Wolf, an immersive experience company, is coming to New York City and plans to open its seventh permanent exhibition at Pier 17 in South Street Seaport.