So it was a brutal irony to learn, as we were closing the following pages, that the Museum of Modern Art in New York plans to demolish its next-door neighbor, the stunning former home of the American Folk Art Museum, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the 2013 AIA Architecture Firm Award recipient.
Williams and Tsien's museum, which opened in 2001 (RECORD, May 2002), is the epitome of an urban catalyst: a beautiful and inventive jewel of a building that enriched its streetscape and the city when it opened in the dark days not long after the 9/11 attacks. Its modest scale (the 30,000-square-foot structure sits on a site just 40 feet wide) was humane, a reminder of the townhouses that once lined that Midtown Manhattan block. Its dazzling facade of pockmarked bronze-alloy panels was a tour de force of contemporary craftsmanship—an artwork that begged to be touched.
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