The Museum of Modern Art has come one step closer to renovating itself and expanding on its current site. From an invited field of ten competitors, last month the museum chose three finalists for the project, which is expected to be completed by the year 2006. The final three are Bernard Tschumi of New York, Yoshio Taniguchi of Tokyo, and the team of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Basel. A committee that included nine museum trustees and two curators chose the finalists after inviting ten firms to participate in a month-long design exercise. Besides doubling the current 92,000 square feet of exhibition space, MoMA seeks to create larger, higher galleries for contemporary works and a more coherent interior configuration than the current 1984 design by Cesar Pelli. Among the three finalists, Mr Taniguchi, sixty, has built four museums in Japan, including the Tokyo City Museum and the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art. Mr Herzog and Mr de Meuron, both forty-seven, are the architects for the Tate Gallery and Mr Tschumi, dean of Columbia University’s architecture school, designed the Parc de la Villette in Paris. The larger group of ten included the Dutch architects Rem Koolhas and Wiel Arets, but passed over such celebrated museum builders as Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey and Renzo Piano. From 3 May to 8 July all ten plans go on view in the museum’s Philip Johnson Galleries. The choice of architect will be made by the end of the year. Insiders who had previously ruled out the selection of Mr Herzog and Mr de Meuron because of their work for the Tate, now give the duo the lead in capturing the commission.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'MoMA narrows down the field'