NY museum showcases Sanaa work

New York’s New Museum is launching an exhibition this week to celebrate a decade of work by the Japanese architects that designed its contemporary art building in the Bowery area in downtown Manhattan.

Sanaa: Works 1998 – 2008 is presenting its latest designs ranging from museum, education, commercial and residential commissions through to furniture and housewares.

Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum and the exhibition’s curator, says, ‘The exhibition will take the form of an environment rather than a traditional show, exploiting Sanaa’s vision of the museum lobby as a kind of animated public-private living room.’

The installation will be on view in the museum’s glass-walled lobby gallery and will spill out into the café and main lobby area, the Marcia Tucker Hall.

Models, sketches and prototypes representing projects and clients including Japan’s Christian Dior building in Omotesando Tokyo, Germany’s Zollverein School of Management and Design, France’s Louvre-Lens, as well as early designs and models for the 18 000m2 New Museum, will be on display.

A 136-page book entitled Shift: Sanaa and the New Museum will be published in the spring to accompany the exhibition, designed by Amsterdam-based studio Mevis &Van Deursen, with photography by Dean Kaufman.

The show runs from 28 March to 15 June. For more details, see www.newmuseum.org.