Archinect - News

Sotheby's purchases Marcel Breuer's Brutalist Whitney for a rumored $100 million

2023-06-01T17:56:00-04:00

Sotheby’s said Thursday that it has purchased the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1966 Brutalist building by Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue and will move its headquarters there from York Avenue in 2025. The deal — which Sotheby’s and the Whitney refused to confirm in response to queries from The Times in April — finally resolves the fate of the Breuer building, which has hung in the balance since the Whitney moved down to the meatpacking district in 2015.

The auction house will operate a rotating exhibition space out of the building — in addition to hosting live auctions — beginning in September 2024. There are no plans for the subterranean level restaurant at this time. The Frick Collection, which has been leasing the building since the Met walked away in March of 2020, will officially move back into its $160 million Selldorf Architects-renovated original East 70th Street location in the months prior.

The New York Times reported a source mentioning the deal, which was brokered between the current landlords Whitney Museum and Sotheby's, was worth approximately $100 million. Sotheby's CEO Charles F. Stewart explained to the paper that it was simply a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we couldn’t pass up."

Frick Collection to vacate Marcel Breuer's 945 Madison Avenue building by next year

2023-04-24T17:53:00-04:00

The Frick Collection will vacate its Brutalist temporary home on New York’s Madison Avenue and return to Henry Clay Frick’s historic Fifth Avenue mansion in 2024. [...] The fate of the Breuer building—which was for decades the home of the Whitney Museum of American Art and, following that museum’s relocation to the Meatpacking District, a temporary outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dubbed the Met Breuer—is unknown.

“Our residency at Frick Madison has been rewarding and productive, and we look forward to the remaining months of our time at 945 Madison Avenue, as we continue to gain new insights into our collection by seeing it reframed in this unprecedented way,” the Frick’s director Ian Wardropper said in an announcement.

The museum replaced The Met two years ago following that institution’s own ill-fated five-year run that ended in the spring of 2020. The Frick now expects its return to the original 1 East 70th Street location in March of next year after Selldorf Architects’ contested $160 million refresh. As The Art Newspaper reported, the future tenant (and owner) of 945 Madison currently remains in doubt while its current landlord, the Whitney Museum, looks for answers.

Selldorf Architects, a leading female-founded/run NYC firm, is currently hiring

2023-03-08T11:57:00-05:00

Following last week’s look at an opening for an Assistant Professor of XR Technologies at Arizona State University, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore open roles at Selldorf Architects.

Over on Archinect Jobs, the 70-person architectural design practice is currently advertising for two roles in their New York City office. For their Project Manager position, the firm seeks a “senior professional architect responsible for delivering projects on time and on budget while maintaining design excellence and maximizing profitability and efficiency.” Meanwhile, their Interior Designer role calls for an individual responsible for “sourcing, ordering, creating digital images, generating proposals, purchase orders, specifications, and invoices, ensuring client presentations are properly prepared and executed, and more.”

Why the role interests us

C...

Art Gallery of Ontario reveals Selldorf, Diamond Schmitt, and Two Row-led expansion design

2023-03-02T16:52:00-05:00

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has just revealed the initial plans for its new Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery project led by Selldorf Architects, Diamond Schmitt, and Two Row Architect.

The 40,000-square-foot addition will add 13 galleries in order to expand its total exhibition space by 30%. The project is being funded by a $35 million donation from Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss and, led by Two Row, has sought expensive input from Ontario’s Indigenous community in addition to the other two architect-advisors that were announced by the gallery last year.

The AGO says: “These conversations and others are instrumental in leading the team to adopt adaptability, accessibility, relevancy, zero carbon operating, and inclusivity as their guiding principles.”

Rendering courtesy of Art Gallery of Ontario, Diamond Schmitt, Selldorf Architects, and Two Row Architect

The project will accomplish a zero carbon emissions output for all its operations and otherwise be designed along int...

Smithsonian American Art Museum selects Selldorf Architects to lead its much-needed revitalization

2023-02-07T17:32:00-05:00

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) has announced Selldorf Architects as the lead designer for an effort aimed at revitalizing its public spaces and permanent collections galleries for the first time since 2006.

The scope of the project entails the creation of a new dedicated space for time-based media art and other types of displays in line with the museum’s “new vision.” Selldorf’s design will “highlight the grandeur of the historical architecture” of the Greek Revival Old Patent Office Building while simultaneously creating the new spaces. A press release mentioned the firm’s engagement with the Smithsonian Institution on the project dating back to 2020.

“This reinstallation project will invite essential conversations around inclusion and diversity now central to both public discourse and the daily work of arts organizations,” SAAM's Director, Stephanie Stebich, said in a statement. “It will shed new light on American artists whose voices will be more prominent in convers...

Denise Scott Brown says she's not pleased with Selldorf Architects' Sainsbury Wing redesign

2022-11-28T15:19:00-05:00

A considerable row has sprung up concerning Selldorf Architects' controversial revamp of the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing after one of its original co-designers, Denise Scott Brown, made comments over the weekend indicating a disagreement and lack of support for the currently under-review proposal.

"She’s making our building look like a circus clown," Scott Brown told The Guardian's James Tapper without elaborating on which specific elements the already widely-opposed plans she has an issue with. "There are elements of tragedy – circus clowns are made up to look happy, but they’re not. This is a circus clown wearing a tutu."

Selldorf had previously mentioned in an April New York Times preview of her MOCA San Diego makeover and in another Architects Journal update from August that she had spoken with Scott Brown about both projects. During our coverage of the Sainsbury Wing in October, Seldorf said, "she has been counseled by the wing's original co-architect Denise Scott Brown ...

Selldorf will join SOM for the Hirshhorn Museum's vital third revitalization phase

2022-10-31T18:03:00-04:00

Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has announced that a joint team of SOM and Selldorf Architects will lead a major modernization of its now 48-year-old Gordon Bunshaft-designed facility in the last of a three-phase campus revitalization that will begin in 2025, according to the Washington Post.

The upgrades will cover the interior and plaza area and are being undertaken in order to help the museum adjust to a 40% rise in attendance that has been recorded since 2017.

The project will address important areas such as storage, stormwater management, accessibility, vertical transportation, and other upgrades to its galleries and public areas to correspond with the museum’s needs. In a press statement, Selldorf co-principal Chris Cooper said: “Ensuring that the building is better able to accommodate the museum’s ambitious programs, while serving a larger and more diverse audience, is of critical importance. And we need to be able to do so while making the building ...

Selldorf unveils revised Sainsbury Wing plan in response to critical backlash

2022-10-21T09:00:00-04:00

Selldorf Architects has released a revised plan for the controversial overhaul of the Sainsbury Wing at London’s National Gallery following a torrent of criticism that has grown online after their initial designs were unveiled this summer.

The Architects’ Journal is reporting on the revisions, which appear to have entailed the retention of certain ground floor elements in the lobby and changes to the originally proposed placement of existing structural columns, as well as to the materials used in the balustrade and lobby walls.

Image courtesy Selldorf Architects

"I don't think of these changes as a compromise. I see them as a welcome development," Annabelle Selldorf told AJ. "In the resubmitted plans, much more of the existing fabric will remain, creating a clearer dialogue with the original building. And yet the original goals remain intact."

Image courtesy Selldorf Architects

"I took from this reaction hat people truly care about the building. And when when you perceive that, you ha...

Rowan Moore issues a blow to the Selldorf-led Sainsbury Wing redevelopment

2022-06-23T09:00:00-04:00

The problem is that the proposed new work is something else altogether to Venturi and Scott Brown’s playfulness and personality. It has curving glass balustrades, white walls and oak-clad pillars, and expanses of plain paving outside. It is an architecture of near-emptiness, the default style of international art-world good taste.

Moore ran through the litany of changes Annabelle Selldorf is making in replacement of the current iteration’s “bum notes,” which the critic pinned on a rift between the original expansion's benefactors and what was then called Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates.

This is now the second Denise Scott Brown-designed museum that Selldorf has laid her (very capable) hands-on after the recently opened Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego revamp, which she said engendered a “greater clarity across the history of all the building types.” Moore, seizing on the difference in intrusion levels between the two similar projects, said “there could be more rapport between the current and the proposed and more cleverness and wit” before making a surprising turn to his own long-distant past.

Moore concluded, “by refusing to align themselves with any one architectural camp, trad...

Annabelle Selldorf goes inside her long-awaited Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego design

2022-04-29T12:06:00-04:00

“People always think we do sensitive historical renovations, but that’s not all we do,” “It matters a great deal because it’s new,” Ms. Selldorf said of the San Diego museum. “It’s my biggest new-built institution. And it stands on its own two feet.”

NYT writer Ted Loos went to San Diego for a visit to the just reopened Museum of Contemporary Art with the doyenne of the typology who talked about the renovation’s overarching mission to “greater clarity across the history of all the building types” and her personal desire to leave Irving Gill’s original 1916 structure “completely unencumbered.”

Image courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Selldorf acknowledged the early preservation effort championed by Denise Scott Brown indicating that it was a major focus not to alter her 1996 design as much as possible, adding that it was her “only regret” that they didn’t meet before the project was inaugurated in 2015. She described the end result as “a space that is well-balanced, well-proportioned, calm, focused and not about gesture” and closed by mentioning its intention in the context of the development of the museum's audience.

“I thought about how I can bring people in, and make them feel like they are welcome there,” she said...

Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario announces major expansion project led by Selldorf Architects, Diamond Schmitt, and Two Row Architect

2022-04-28T14:35:00-04:00

Fresh on the heels of Selldorf Architects’ most recent museum upgrade, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) announced its selection of a team led by Annabelle Selldorf's firm to oversee its new AGO Global Contemporary expansion beginning in 2024.

Two Row Architects will join Diamond Schmitt on the project that will give the institution an extended footprint for the first time since its last Frank Gehry-designed expansion opened in the fall of 2008.

The museum has undergone a total of seven renovations since first opening in 1900, and is now looking to add about 50,000 square feet of new galleries that reportedly comes in the form of “flexible volumes suited to the varied media of contemporary art.”

The AGO’s director Stephan Jost also said “we want the work we show to reflect the city that we serve,” and that the expansion should be responsive to the institution’s new targets for audience development and community involvement. Plans are for a six-story tower to be constructed along the...

Selldorf Architects reveals first round of designs for National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing redevelopment

2022-02-18T17:38:00-05:00

An important update has been issued to one of the most-watched cultural projects in the UK this afternoon after Selldorf Architects released their initial plans for the redesigned Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery of Art in London.

The firm was tapped in July to lead a multidisciplinary design team that includes Purcell, Vogt Landscape, and Arup.

A proposed loop connection of the Sainsbury Wing. Image courtesy Selldorf Architects.

As part of a public consultation phase that was unveiled today, the firm put forth its NG200 proposal for the overhauled award-winning Venturi, Scott Brown building, which is meant to increase accessibility in advance of the museum’s upcoming bicentenary celebration.

The initial batch of renderings appears to show a more opened-up foyer that welcomes visitors from a revamped entrance and newly-created public realm leading into Trafalgar Square. Improved lighting and wayfinding are to be emphasized throughout, including a new walking path meant to conn...

The Rubell Museum comes to Washington with its Gallery 64 mixed-use development effort

2021-09-27T13:41:00-04:00

One of America’s most influential private art museums is moving forward with an expansion into new territory thanks to a partnership with Beyer Blinder Belle.

Image courtesy Beyer Blinder Belle

Nearly two years after opening its new 100,000-square-foot Selldorf Architects-designed space in Miami, the former Rubell Family Collection is now looking to make an even bigger statement with a 12-story, 2.7-acre mixed-use development that its founders hope will create another cultural hub in the nation’s capital.

Image courtesy Beyer Blinder Belle

Situated in Southwest D.C., the new satellite location will feature a 492-unit residential development called Gallery 64 anchored by the campus of Randall Junior High School, a historic former public school that served the community from 1906 until its closure in the late 1970s.

Image courtesy Beyer Blinder Belle

Formerly under the stewardship of D.C.’s metropolitan government and later the Corcoran Gallery of Art (the building was acquired by the R...

The fate of Marcel Breuer's Frick Madison building could fall into developer hands soon

2021-09-20T19:01:00-04:00

The Breuer building, an architectural icon and the former longtime home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, could soon have a new owner. The Whitney is considering the sale of the building and brokers are compiling lists of potential buyers, according to sources in the art world and real estate. Now the multi-million-dollar question is: If the building is sold, can it be developed?

The brutalist masterpiece know colloquially for its architect Marcel Breuer opened as the new home of the Whitney Museum in 1966. The building exchanged hands in 2015 as the Met expanded past Fifth Avenue for the first time to make room for the collection of billionaire cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder.

Previously on Archinect: Frick Collection opens in Marcel Breuer-designed temporary new home, Frick Madison

The Met Breuer’s ill-fared run ended in March of 2020 before reopening in the spring after a pandemic overhaul led by Selldorf Architects. The new Frick Madison will occupy the current site for the remainder of its lease, which runs through the end of next year.

The National Gallery has tapped Selldorf Architects for its bicentennial upgrade

2021-07-14T19:41:00-04:00

London’s National Gallery has announced the architect for its upcoming renovation that’s part of a bicentennial celebration planned for the museum in 2024.

Selldorf Architects will be in charge of the renovation tied to a planned competition called the NG200 Project.

Selldorff beat out Chipperfield Architects and four other UK-based firms for the commission said to be the institution’s largest in two decades. The firm is coming off of a recent successful renovation of New York’s Frick Collection, and will now look to another high-profile museum project with the potential for tremendous institutional impacts at a critical juncture for culture writ large.

The £25-30 million project will upgrade the museum’s Sainsbury Wing as well as some public spaces around its Trafalgar Square entrance.

A five-member panel had previously raised the shortlist cap to include a sixth entry after announcing the competition in February.

The Grade-I Listed building will be getting a new foyer and resea...

Selldorf unveils plans for a remade Shaker Museum campus in Upstate New York

2021-06-29T14:11:00-04:00

Plans for the new home of Upstate New York’s Shaker Museum have been unveiled this week, offering the public a glimpse at the multimillion-dollar makeover that has given new life to a restored former Hudson Valley hotel.

Selldorf Architects is responsible for the effort which will add some much-needed shelf space allowing the museum’s 18,000 objects and artifact collection to be properly displayed. The collection had not been on view in over a decade and will now be hosted by a new modern building and remade Victorian-era hotel on Austerlitz Street in the artistically significant village of Chatham.

Renderings of Shaker Museum, Designed by Selldorf Architects

The plan was announced in August and will now join the firm’s list of recent high-profile museum restorations that has included projects for the Frick and LUMA Arles collections. The museum’s offices and permanent collection will be relocated from nearby Old Chatham and will showcase great American design. The museum also owns ...

Met Breuer to serve as temporary installation site for Frick Collection

2020-06-24T17:26:00-04:00

The Met Breuer building in New York City is set to become the new temporary home to the Frick Collection as the Frick's flagship facilities undergo an expansion and renovation led by Selldorf Architects.

The Marcel Breuer-designed Brutalist style building was the original home of the Whitney Museum, which opened in 1930 and decamped to new Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed facilities in 2015. Since then, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been using the building to display a collection of Modern art and architecture exhibitions. The Breuer site was slated to run an exhibition of the works of Gerhard Richter through the summer, but the exhibition closed prematurely in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Artnet reports.

Rendering showing proposed expansion of Frick Collection facilities. Image courtesy of Selldorf Architects.

The hotly debated $160 million Frick expansion project received a green light to move ahead in March. The project will bring 27,000 square feet of new s...

Annabelle Selldorf-designed Qianlong Garden Interpretation Center coming to Beijing's iconic Forbidden City in 2020

2019-01-29T17:42:00-05:00

The 250-year-old retirement digs of an 18th-century Chinese emperor are getting a face-lift. The World Monuments Fund announced Monday that the New York-based architect Annabelle Selldorf and her firm, Selldorf Architects, will design an interpretation center at the Qianlong Garden in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

According to the World Monuments Fund, "the interpretation center will be located in an existing, restored structure within the second courtyard of the Qianlong Garden."

Juanqinzhai theater room after conservation. Image courtesy World Monuments Fund.

"Selldorf and her NYC-based firm, Selldorf Architects, designed the center in three distinct halls surrounding an open pavilion, each of which will provide visitors with a unique perspective on the past and present of the remarkable complex."

Interpretation Center exterior before conservation. Image courtesy World Monuments Fund.

"The Garden was largely left dormant after PuYi, China’s last emperor, left the Forbidden City in 1924. Its buildings have never been opened to the public, and it is one of the most significant historical sites in the Forbidden City to remain unrestored since imperial times. In 2004, World Monuments Fund and the Palace Museum partnered on a comprehensive review of the entire Qianlong Garden site and developed a ...

As MCA San Diego plans to demolish much of Venturi Scott Brown’s 1996 extension, the architecture community petitions to save it

2018-07-30T15:29:00-04:00

Plans to expand the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, which involve demolishing part of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s 1996 addition, have come under fire as architects fight to save the beloved postmodern work. With over 70 signatures, including those of Sir Terry Farrell, Paul Goldberger, Sam Jacob, Inga Saffron, and Robert A. M. Stern, a petition recently sent to the MCA board is asking the museum to reconsider the plans in favor of an approach that is "sensitive and respectful to the village of La Jolla."

In 1996, the museum hired the celebrated Philadelphia architectural firm to create a much-needed overhaul. The result was a $9 million expansion, that provided an additional 10,000 square feet of space, and a renovation, that restored the original front facade of the Mission-style building originally designed in 1916 by Irving J. Gill. Situated on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the museum in La Jolla—described at the time by Goldberger as "an exquisite proj...

Frick Collection expansion clears NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission hurdle

2018-06-27T14:03:00-04:00

In a major victory for the Frick Collection, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday approved the museum’s latest plan to expand and renovate its 1914 Gilded Age mansion — the institution’s fourth such attempt to gain more space for its exhibitions and public programs. [...] Some critics were disappointed by Tuesday’s vote. Theodore Grunewald, a preservationist, called it “a vote for blandness.”

The approved proposal represented a revised version of the Frick Collection expansion scheme, taking into consideration concerns brought forward by the Stop Irresponsible Frick Development preservationist group at an impassioned four-hour public hearing in May.

The expansion plans were designed by Selldorf Architects with Executive Architect Beyer Blinder Belle.

Selldorf Architects' Frick Collection expansion design faces resistance

2018-05-31T14:27:00-04:00

At an impassioned four-hour public hearing [...] by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), around 50 members of the public, as well as Selldorf, the Frick’s director Ian Wardropper and members of the commission debated the proposed $160m Annabelle Selldorf Architects-designed expansion and renovation of the Frick Collection in New York. The LPC remains undecided on the project, which is due to break ground in 2020 [...].

"Many of the strongest criticisms throughout the hearing, particularly on this multi-storey library extension, came from local residents, although the neighbourhood speakers overall seemed split on the project," The Art Newspaper reports.

Take a closer look at the expansion scheme, designed by Selldorf Architects with Executive Architect Beyer Blinder Belle, which was unveiled by the Frick Collection last month.

The Frick Collection unveils Selldorf Architects' expansion scheme

2018-04-05T15:03:00-04:00

After a rough start, The Frick Collection unveiled their new expansion design by Selldorf Architects, who was appointed for the renovation job in 2016. Currently slated for a 2020 groundbreaking, the project is the Frick's first comprehensive upgrade to its buildings since they opened to the public in 1935.

Elevation of The Frick Collection showing current and proposed views from 70th Street; Courtesy Selldorf Architects

Designed with Executive Architect Beyer Blinder Belle, Selldorf Architects' scheme adds subtle expansions that address the Frick's programmatic needs, while largely preserving the museum's original aesthetic (watch closely in the GIF above) and its intimate visitor experience. The project comprises approximately 60,000 sq.ft. of repurposed space and 27,000 sq.ft. of new construction.

The Frick Collection Reception Hall looking east towards 70th Street Garden; Courtesy of Selldorf Architects

The Frick Collection Reception Hall; Courtesy Selldorf Architects.

A series of ...

After rocky start, Frick Collection selects Selldorf Architects to take on renovation

2016-10-21T12:31:00-04:00

“She’s somebody who has a clear vision of respect for historical buildings but at the same time has a clean, elegant, modernist aesthetic that is very much about welcoming visitors today,” said Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s director. In coming up with a new design, Ms. Selldorf has been charged with improving circulation in the Frick’s galleries, library and public spaces, while maintaining the museum’s existing footprint and preserving its jewel-box character.

Prior plans for the museum's addition (designed by Davis Brody Bond) were dropped by the Frick in June of last year, partially due to a letter of protest written on behalf of 51 artists and architects. This past March, the Frick put forward an RFQ for a new revision plan, and now that Selldorf has been selected, designs will be unveiled in 2017.

"It’s about enhancing the visitor’s experience and making it utterly seamless, so that it doesn’t harm any of the existing experience that people cherish, myself included,” Ms. Selldorf told the Times, speaking to the delicacies of renovating the late Gilded Age mansion's galleries, library and public spaces.

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego picks architect for expansion

2014-03-17T14:30:00-04:00

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has chosen the firm of architect Annabelle Selldorf to head a multimillion-dollar expansion that is expected to triple the size of the museum's location in La Jolla. Selldorf, based in New York, has worked for art-related clients including the Neue Galerie and the Acquavella Galleries on the Upper East Side. The San Diego museum will be the firm's first contemporary art museum project and its first project on the West Coast.

Editor's Picks #343

2013-11-26T12:22:00-05:00

Archinect inaugurated a new interview series The Deans List. For the first installment, Archinect talked with David Gissen, the Director of Architecture at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Reflecting on current trends and his own interests for the future of architectural education he reflects "I think lots of architecture schools are interested in working with cities, and with centers of power like a municipal office – some powerful agent that has the ability to transform and legislate the shape of the city. It’s an exciting thing for architecture students to be involved in those forms of power".

While in the latest edition of Showcase; featured Taipei Sales Center by Oyler Wu Collaborative. A somewhat temporary project with limited programmatic needs resulted in "a five-story volume pierced (quite literally) and interconnected by an intricate ribbon of rope, steel, and fabric. The renovation creates an entirely new identity and is suggestive of the modern ...

Selldorf Architects Designs 54-Story Faceted-Facade Tower Near WTC

2013-02-05T13:01:00-05:00

Reaching 637 feet, the tower features a faceted facade filled with 428 residential units. Last month the creative team at Selldorf posted a video showing the louvered façade system, a "second skin" controlled by each individual dweller, and described thusly: "Cloaking the façade, a system of operable terracotta louvers animates the building with its changing configurations and reflectivity."

Selldorf Architects unveiled a prismatic tower design for a site just south of the World Trade Center at 22 Thames Street. The 54-story building would replace a 10-story brick structure that sold last year. The first five floors would hold retail and residential amenities, which would be topped by two floors for "performing arts," and the tower rising 637-feet above that.

Frieze Masters: Architecture announced

2012-09-20T16:42:40-04:00

Frieze announced details of the architecture that will house the inaugural edition of Frieze Masters. Employing a design that aims to both literally and figuratively show art in a new light, Frieze Masters is designed by New York-based Selldorf Architects. Frieze Masters will take place 11–14 October 2012 on Gloucester Green, Regent’s Park, London.