Transparency and refinement are the hallmarks of SANAA, the partnership of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, which won acclaim for their shimmering glass facades in Tokyo, and their crystalline art museums in Kanazawa and Toledo (AR November 2006). Even the Almere Arts Centre (AR October 2007), which adds concrete to the mix, has a cool, pristine quality. At first sight, SANAA'S New Museum of Contemporary Art in lower Manhattan seems a radical departure. A stack of six sharp-edged boxes, shifted off axis, and clad in expanded aluminium mesh rise 54m from the Bowery; a raw response to a street that was once a byword for poverty. As you approach, this metallic Cubist sculpture quietly mutates into a vertical cluster of galleries and meeting spaces that engage each other and the city at every level. The permeability of the mesh and the way it captures every shift of light seem apt metaphors for the dynamic art this institution fosters.
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