Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) - New York
Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro & Gensler
General Contractor: Turner Construction Company
Flooring Contractor: J.J. Curran & Son
Materials Used: Live Sawn White Oak Plank Flooring, Fingerstrip Parquet Flooring, White Oak Stair Parts
PLANK FLOORING
55,921 S/F - 1" x 8" x 6ft - 16ft long (majority 9ft and longer) FSC Certified Super Clear, Sap Free, Live Sawn White Oak Flooring.
FINGERSTRIP PARQUET FLOORING
9,746 S/F - 3/4" thick x 7/8" wide x 8" long. panelized in 22-24" back taped strips. FSC Certified Super Clear, Minimal Sap, White Oak Parquet Flooring.
WHITE OAK STAIR PARTS
140 Stair Treads, Risers & Returns to match flooring.
"The blade stair marks the threshold to the new expansion of the museum and acts as a palette cleanser. The stair is a vibrant urban sculpture, combining a monumental physical presence with intangible structural lightness. This stair’s minimal expression was achieved through a number of structural innovations – a six-inch thin vertical spine hangs from the roof structure to structurally support the stairs and landings, leaving the structure free of any lateral bracing. Glass balustrades on the seven-foot wide risers are cantilevered and held in place with pins to express the intersection of the two materials, a detail and dimension that echoes the renovated Bauhaus stair where the stair is embedded into the terrazzo."
-- DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO -- MoMA Expansion Project Architect
FINISH PROCESS
On the jobsite the floor was first sanded with either a Galaxy and Hummel belt sander. The finish sanding was done with an American Multi-Head Hydra Sander. The floor was then stained with a DuraSeal Country White Stain. Then coated with one coat of bona Mega and two coats of Bona Traffic HD Extra Matte.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
WoodCo was honored to mill the flooring for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) expansion project located in New York. This project spanned over several years and had three main goals. The first was to increase gallery space, second was to provide visitors with a more inclusive experience and third to better connect the museum to the urban fabric of New York city. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, the overall expansion yields a net increase in MoMA’s gallery space of one third, to approximately 165,000 square feet. The design optimized current spaces to be more flexible and technologically sophisticated, and integrates the museum’s significant architectural history with a more open dialogue between interior and exterior spaces.
Elizabeth Diller, co-founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, said, “This project has called on us to work across MoMA’s rich architectural history, incorporating the Museum’s existing building blocks into a comprehensible whole through careful and deliberate interventions into previous logics, as well as the construction of new logics that arise from MoMA’s current aspirations. This work has required the curiosity of an archeologist and the skill of a surgeon. The improvements will make the visitor experience more intuitive and will relieve congestion, while a new circulation network will knit together the expansion spaces with the lobbies, the theaters, and the Sculpture Garden to create a contiguous, free public realm that bridges street to street and art to city. The design integrates the various facets of the Museum’s architectural history, creating a distinct clear-glass façade on 53rd Street that complements the existing Goodwin and Stone, Johnson, and Taniguchi buildings and invites a more open dialogue between interior and exterior spaces.”
The flooring was designed to be extremely durable with a net thickness of 1" (standard is 3/4"). The floor needed to be very subtle to ensure that it did not distract from the art, hence the very clean look. To achieve this look, we used a wide plank, long length flooring, this minimised the flooring joints in the large open galleries. The super select grade also meant that the floor has very little distractions for the visitors. For more information on this floor, please contact us via email - info@woodco.com or phone - (210) 298-9663.
PROJECT CHALLENGES
This flooring is super select, hence achieving the desired look was a challenge. The white oak floor is sap free on the face and we could only allow one knot smaller than 1/8” every 3ft. Therefore, only a very small percentage of white oak lumber made the grade. The flooring was further sorted at our mill and finally once again on the job site, making it a very pristine floor.
The size of the boards, including the 1” net thickness, also added a challenge to milling the floor. Guiding the planks carefully through the machines for a perfect milling is just a little bit harder than usual with the larger plank size.
The floor had to line up perfectly with the columns in the building, thus we had to mill a partial amount of flooring in different widths. The plank flooring was milled in a 7", 7.25" and 7.5" width in addition to the standard 8". We also milled the parquet flooring in 8.5", 9" and 9.5" widths in addition to the standard 8".
Due to the size of the planks, and the location of the project, logistics was also a challenge. Freight had to be arranged in smaller vans and scheduled for off-peak hours to allow for delivery in downtown New York.
COMPLETED PROJECT PHOTOS
More photos of the finished project can be found here - https://www.woodco.com/projects/the-museum-of-modern-art-moma/
Click here to see full post with images of the project throughout the milling and installation.