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cultural buildings project report
Snøhetta’s major extension offers a naturalistic approach the firm has employed in some previous projects photo © Henrik Kam, courtesy SFMOMA
that occasionally roll off the hills, pushing between the high rise buildings as if cutting the city into slices. This naturalistic approach is one Snøhetta has used before,
notably for the glacier-like opera house in Oslo, where the firm was founded. The sheer scale of the new wing was needed to exploit the
influx of visitors and tourists to the South of Market district of the city. Back in 1995, when Botta’s building was erected, the neighbourhood was a rundown area, characterised by dilapi- dated buildings and little development. In the intervening 21 years, hotels, cafes, restaurants, shops, and other cultural build- ings have sprung up, plus a large convention centre that pulls in millions of visitors from out of town each year. McNeal comments on the expansion: “It is an active cul-
tural and tourist destination in a way that was never envi- sioned when the original building was constructed. The museum's mission has changed too, it is no longer there just to develop and protect the art, but to make sure it is accessible to more people, which meant taking a very different approach to the street frontage.” A dizzying total of 1,900 works went on display when the
new museum opened, designed to show off the greatly expanded collection.
Large and opaque
As well as being physically large, the extension had to be very opaque to prevent sunlight from damaging the sensitive
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artwork inside and to meet strict sustainability requirements under California’s Building Energy Efficiency Standards, which discourage the use of extensively glazed facades in order to mitigate cooling requirements. The facade is punctured by just a few strip windows at locations where daylight and views don’t impinge on the artworks. Snøhetta developed over 100 concept models for facade
treatments in effort to identify one that would give the building a strong personality and make it more friendly to its neighbours. “The idea for the ‘ripple-scape’ won out over other ideas
because we saw that it would self-animate the building, compared to having a flat facade, or a repeat pattern, creating different shadows at different times of day as the sun moves around the site,” says McNeal. More dynamism was introduced by curving the facade,
vertically and from north to south around the centre, which increases the amount of shadow on the northern end and, by cutting off views along the length of the museum, helps break down its volume to a more human scale. The bulging centre accommodates the vertical stair and lift
circulation, minimising the need for corridors and hallways. This allowed the corners of the building to be pushed back from the street, to bring in more daylight and improve views. Rather than clad the expansion with stone or precast
concrete, which would increase weight and cost, Snøhetta worked with cladding contractor Enclos and facade manufacturer Kreysler and Associates to develop a
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