AIC's 41st Annual Meeting

In July 2013, SFMOMA will break ground on a two-year expansion project that will more than double its overall size. Cross-disciplinary expert teams were convened during project design development to affirm the museum’s promise to its collection while also realizing its broader vision to enhance visitor experience and public access.

The SFMOMA expansion is subject to one the most rigorous sustainable building requirements in the country, the City of San Francisco’s Green Building Ordinance. The ordinance requires that the new addition achieve at least LEED Gold certification and an energy reduction of 15% or better over California’s energy code. SFMOMA thus must balance its commitment to preserve works in the collection with the demand to maximize energy efficiency and minimize its carbon footprint.

Design of the 84,000 sq. ft. of new galleries was guided by the vast array of contemporary art forms that will be on display, a wish for diverse gallery experiences ranging from the animated to the contemplative, expanded educational programming including live performance, and more admission-free areas.

In order to build broad consensus among the architects and museum curators, conservators, registrars, art handlers and engineers about gallery scale, lighting, and finishes, SFMOMA constructed a gallery mock-up where works from the collection were installed to consider details such as size, ceiling configuration, light fixtures and flooring.

The Board's commitment to the museum’s collection and a strengthened pledge to art conservation led to a broad rethink about effective collection stewardship. Over two-thirds of the roughly 30,000 works in SFMOMA’s collection will remain on-site when the museum re-opens in 2016. Galleries, study rooms, conservation studios, work rooms and storage vaults, both on and off site, have been configured as part of an integrated, programmatic whole. Works residing off-site will be consolidated from four, discrete storage locations within the larger SF Bay Area into a newly purchased and retrofitted Collections Center twenty minutes from the downtown museum.

This panel will present a number of design outcomes for the SFMOMA expansion with hopes that it will foster productive dialog in the field of conservation and museums at large.