Via MOCAView of main entrance and atrium, facing Euclid Avenue - Click image to enlarge———————————————————–“The new Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland will be forty-four percent larger than the Museum’s current, leased facility, and will demonstrate that a museum expansion need not be large in scale to be ambitious in all respects. Devised for both environmental and fiscal sustainability, the design for the four-story building is at once technically inventive, visually stunning, and highly practical.The project is designed by the internationally acclaimed firm Foreign Office Architects (FOA), London. FOA has responded ingeniously to the project’s roughly triangular site by designing a building with a hexagonal base that, with imperceptible changes in the shape of each story, rises to a square roof. Viewed from the exterior, the building will appear as an inventive massing of six geometric facets, some flat, others sloping at various angles, all coming together to create a powerful abstract form.———————————————————–View of secondary entrance, facing intersection of Mayfield Road and Euclid Avenue - Click image to enlarge———————————————————–Clad primarily in mirror-finish black Rimex stainless steel, the façade of the new MOCA will reflect its urban surroundings, changing in appearance with differences in light and weather. Window glazing will be tinted to assimilate with the reflective skin so that during the day the building will read as a unified volume, while at night interior lights will create a dynamic pattern on the dark surface.Three of the building’s six facets, one of them clad in transparent glass, will flank a public plaza. This will provide a public gathering place and also serve as MOCA’s “front yard,” and will be the site of seasonal programming. From here, visitors and passersby may look through the transparent facet, site of the Museum entrance, into the ground floor, a space intended for socializing and for civic and cultural events.While the building’s dark exterior will offer almost no hint of the interior massing and structure, the experience inside will be notably transparent. Upon entering MOCA, visitors will find themselves in an atrium from which they may visually grasp the dynamic shape and structure of the building as it rises. This space will lead in turn to the Museum’s lobby, café, and shop, and to a double-height multi-purpose room that will house public programs and other events. From here, visitors may take the Museum’s staircase—itself a monumental sculptural object—or an elevator to the upper floors.———————————————————–———————————————————–While the main exhibition gallery is on the top floor, all four floors of the Museum contain space for either exhibitions or public programs, with the second and third floors combining public and “back of house” functions. The second floor, for example, will house both exhibition workshops and a 1,500-square-foot public gallery, to be used for more intimately scaled exhibitions; consonant with the openness that is characteristic of the building’s interior, visitors approaching this gallery will also be able to glimpse the workshops. The third floor, home to MOCA’s administrative offices, will also include spaces for classes, lectures, and other educational programs.In keeping with the ways in which contemporary visitors engage with art, the new building will have wi-fi throughout, enabling the use of wireless devices for on-demand learning. MOCA anticipates that the building will receive LEED silver accreditation.———————————————————–Section with atrium, building form, and program distribution - click image to enlarge———————————————————–In addition to Foreign Office Architects, the design team for the new Museum includes executive architectsWestlake Reed Leskosky, headquartered in Cleveland and designers of more than fifty cultural buildings throughout the United States.” MOCA
