Fifty years since the first footsteps on the Moon, the exploration of the cosmos remains irresistible, and the ambition to establish commercial space travel and planetary settlements continues to capture the imagination. Far Out: Suits, Habs, and Labs for Outer Space celebrates the visionary ideas and ingenious solutions from architects, artists, and designers who dared to imagine life far out among the stars. — San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

In the Bay Area, SFMOMA is now the largest art museum, surpassing the Oakland Museum of California at 110,000 feet. In the city, the de Young Museum is second at 84,000 square feet. Statewide, its exhibition space is 50 percent larger than the Getty Center in Los Angeles and is second only to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian of the West, which boasts 230,000 feet. — San Francisco Chronicle

About $570 million, or 94 percent, has been raised by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for its 235,000-square-foot (21,800-square-meter) expansion and to add $245 million to the museum’s endowment. The $305 million wing designed by the Snohetta architecture firm is rising behind SFMOMA’s current home, opened two decades ago in the technology-heavy South of Market area, or SOMA. — bloomberg.com

San Francisco Project: Inhabiting the Quake, Quake City, 1995; graphite and pastel on paper; 14.5 inches by 23 inches by 0.75 inches; Collection SFMOMA. — Wired

We're building our future, with a new expansion to open in early 2016. Open, engaging, welcoming, and embracing, the expansion represents a transformative vision of the museum, offering new opportunities for diverse audiences to experience modern and contemporary art. Hear about what's in store for SFMOMA and our audiences in 2016 and beyond from Director Neal Benezra, artist Richard Serra, and other members of the SFMOMA community. — youtube.com

Snøhetta has released a virtual tour exploring their proposed expansion/redesign for SFMOMA. SUVERK noted that he spends a lot of time walking through that hood and argues "the new Snohetta design is very stealthy...The surrounding towers St. Regis(SOM) and the W Hotel(Hornberger and Worstell) dominate the skyline to the point that one would not right away notice the SFMOMA expansion- (which is the same size as Botta's).- It will sneak up on you and then you will be curious -WTF is that?

The architects' sketches for SFMOMA's new expansion reveal a transformative design for the museum, the neighborhood, and the city. "Our design for SFMOMA responds to the unique demands of this site, as well as the physical and urban terrain of San Francisco," says Snøhetta principal architect Craig Dykers. "The scale of the building meets the museum's mission, and our approach to the neighborhood strengthens SFMOMA's engagement with the city. — sfmoma.org

Is it a building filled with art with some people in it, or a building filled with people with some art in it? There needs to be enough social space to make people feel comfortable in what can be an austere environment, the white box. You shouldn’t feel like you need to be quiet in the public spaces. — New York Times

In San Francisco, you feel like you’re always leaving and going, you go up and down, up and down. You’re always provided with a new view of the city. So we felt we could use that idea to allow people to experience the museum and the city in different ways. We’re creating a lot of variation within the design. So even though the building is relatively compact, you’ll always be able to step into a space and look down or across or up into another space. — Simon Ewings, via fastcodesign.com

Designed by busy Norwegian firm Snøhetta, which is also at work on the museum at New York's ground zero, the addition will slip a massive, 335-foot-long cruise ship of a structure behind the museum's existing building, which was designed by Mario Botta and opened in 1995. The main entry to Botta's museum, along Third Street, will remain, but a second gateway to the museum will open up along Howard Street. — latimesblogs.latimes.com