Brick and Screen
Project Type
Museum Extension
Location
Queens, New York, USA
Year
2025
Aaron Cole
Professor
Saba Salekfard
Studio
4th Year Integrated
The proposal expands the Noguchi Museum in Astoria, Queens through an adjacent addition that directly engages the existing site. The intervention is organized as four interlocking forms: a circle, a box, and an atrium, all anchored by a linear connector. These expressive geometries are inspired by Noguchi’s approach to form-making, particularly his ability to merge discrete masses into cohesive compositions, which guided the project’s volumetric development.
The connector or the Spine operates as the operational core of the museum, accommodating a classroom, ceramics workshop, and kiln space. Together with preparation areas and studio-based exhibition zones, it becomes the project’s most programmatically intensive element. Constructed with load-bearing brick, this component establishes a solid, grounded presence and acts as the primary structural and envelope system.
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The remaining three forms are dedicated to exhibition. Each is shaped by its own environmental strategies that respond to form and orientation, yet they are unified through a continuous exterior system. A façade of clay tiles functions as both a shading mechanism and a rainwater collection surface, contributing to passive cooling. These exhibition volumes are embedded within outdoor sculpture gardens, creating a fluid transition between the new addition, the existing museum, and the riverside landscape
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