New York, New York, USA
Maya Lin and Ralph Appelbaum Associates have unveiled plans for the new Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) to be housed in a nine-story building on the site of the museum’s former headquarters in Manhattan’s Chinatown, which will serve as a permanent home for Chinese American history and culture.
The new 68,000-square-foot museum, genealogy center, theater, and education space will be designed by the artist/architect Maya Lin.
Ralph Appelbaum has joined the project as the museum exhibit designer.
Lin, who’s known for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and the Wave Field at the Storm King Art Center in upstate New York, was brought on to helm the project about three years ago. Appelbaum, who recently redesigned the Hall of Gems at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, was added to the team soon after.
The new renderings have been revealed by the Museum of Chinese in America and the new building will expand MOCA’s footprint from 114-square-meter square feet to 6,503-square-meter in the heart of downtown Manhattan.
Maya Lin’s design scheme is inspired by the spirit of a Chinese tangram and Chinese vertical landscape painting, which evokes a sense of movement upwards through natural elements of stone, metal, trees, and clouds.
Incorporating various program elements, including classrooms, a research and genealogy center, a theater, and exhibition spaces, the new national MOCA will be “the first-ever museum design partnership” between Maya Lin and Ralph Appelbaum Associates.
The museum spaces will be designed by New York-based firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates and create cohesion between the past, present, and future aspirations of the Chinese American journey.
The building’s façade is clad in perforated metallic panels, creating the form of a Chinese tangram.
The building will include enough space for the institution’s permanent collection documenting the Chinese diaspora in the United States as well as gallery spaces for other temporary exhibitions.
Thanks to the building’s puzzle-looking and porous façade, the panels will “allow daylight to strategically enter the exhibition spaces and larger openings to light workspaces and classrooms as well as create views,” MOCA explained.
Lin’s design also takes cues from Vertical Chinese landscape painting.
“This is a true passion project for me,” Maya Lin explains in a press statement.
“As a child of Chinese immigrants, I have throughout my life experienced firsthand anti-Asian discrimination and hostility.”
“I’ve been drawn to MOCA and its critical mission for years and am incredibly moved to be able to present our design for its new headquarters — a place that will welcome, teach, and inspire visitors from around the world,” Lin adds.
MOCA’s Genealogy Center is conceived as a unique center of learning where individuals and families can advance their understanding of their family’s history and the role their ancestors played in shaping American history, contemporary America, and their own lives.
Located on the second level of the new national MOCA, the Genealogy Center is aimed to attract local and visiting family history researchers, scholars, and patrons that want to gain the tools that can help them to discover their ancestral stories.
The Center will present a dynamic multi-media presentation of ancestral stories and artifacts, as well as provide access to MOCA’s archival records and research rooms, visitors and scholars will have the opportunity to advance their studies and knowledge of Chinese American ancestry.
The new building, Lin says, is designed “to be an open, friendly, warm, welcoming place for all people.”
The museum plans to close in late 2023 for construction and open its new building in 2025.
Project: Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)
Architects: Maya Lin Studio
Exhibition Designers: Ralph Appelbaum Associates