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The New Museum of Contemporary Art
Outcome:
A beautiful new site in an ideal location on the Bowery at the foot
of Prince Street that confirms and enhances the Museum's signature
image.
Fabulous spaces are born and made. When
this cutting edge Museum needed a new home, they approached Freeman/Frazier
for general advice; and ended up making us a veritable partner throughout
the site quest, acquisition, disposition of prior site and pre-construction
phases.
The new site for the New Museum must make
a statement about the Museum's content by being edgy, and accessible
visually and by transportation. They thought of Chelsea. We advised
them that other Manhattan areas were equally desirable including
NOHO and the Bowery, then an emerging district. For two years, we
searched for the ideal place. We saw every site and negotiated on
several, even as we honed the negotiation parameters with the Museum's
Board of Directors. Concurrently, they looked for a young edgy architect
with no prior New York credits. We knew that the Museum would need
an interim architect – to establish appropriate program parameters
and assist with preliminary cost estimates. This crucial role must
fall to that particular firm which can straddle art and functional
design, and not let ego get in the way. Then, we set parameters
for the architectural design competition and worked with the client
to select the best-qualified architect.
Meanwhile, before a single brick was set,
we were working to find our client the ideal construction manager,
too. This organization must understand budget and constructability
issues and also know the special materials that complement art and
its display. We designed an RFP process and selected an initial
list of qualified firms, drawing on our years of experience. Finally,
with the site selected and acquired, and the team assembled, we
poised the project for a successful start, completing the role we
had played in this story all along: to help this client "step
out of the blinders" and make informed choices.
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