If there's such a thing as a diffident 22,000 sq m, 62m-tall urban building, then it's the new wing of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art designed by the New York office of the Norwegian architecture practice Snohetta. The long slab rises in the middle of a congested block behind the 1995 museum designed by Switzerland's Mario Botta, and the upper three floors of this 10-storey addition are notched back to leave ample breathing room for the wilfully iconic granite oculus that Botta placed atop his red-brick citadel. The newcomer is a discreet off-white and is tapered on the other side of the slab as well, as if ceding ground to such neighbours as the 26-storey Pacific Telephone Building, a terracotta-cloaked gem from 1925 (by Miller and Pflueger).
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