Museum of Natural History Reveals Design for Expansion

In designing its $325 million addition on Columbus Avenue, the American Museum of Natural History has opted for an architectural concept that is both cautious and audacious, according to plans approved by its board on Wednesday. The design consumes less coveted park space than expected, while introducing a contemporary aesthetic that evokes Frank Gehry’s museum in Bilbao, Spain, in its undulating exterior and Turkey’s underground city of Cappadocia in its cavelike interior.

The design, by the architect Jeanne Gang for the new Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation, aims to unite the museum’s various activities, solve its notorious circulation problems and provide a multistory showcase for the institution’s expanding role as a hub for scientific research and scholarship. Ms. Gang said she was looking to conjure spaces that have been created by forces of nature, such as “geological canyons, glacial forms,” and to foster a sense of connectivity and discovery.

The museum has yet to present the design to neighborhood groups, and it will be subject to a public approval process, including evaluation by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. Residents have objected to the idea of impinging on Theodore Roosevelt Park, which is on the back stretch of the museum grounds near West 79th Street in Manhattan but is owned by the city. A recently formed organization called Defenders of Teddy Roosevelt Park drew some 200 residents to a town-hall-style meeting last month.

In a clear response to this concern, the museum has decided to take down three of its existing buildings to make room for the six-story addition, rather than to protrude deeper into the tree-lined space along Columbus Avenue, as had been anticipated.

“These are very secondary buildings,” said Ellen V. Futter, the museum’s president. “It allowed us to set the building back to encroach less — at not insignificant cost.” (Ms. Futter said this cost would not increase the overall budget; savings would be found elsewhere.)

The design also makes a point of not extending higher than the existing cornice line. Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, said that the museum had been responsive to the height and volume issues. “They heard that we want as little of the park as possible to be the footprint,” she said.

Ms. Gang’s design calls for 218,000 square feet of new space. The new building will take up 11,600 square feet of parkland — roughly a quarter of an acre. The rest is to be carved out of the museum’s current structure. “Eighty percent of the new building is in the existing footprint,” Ms. Futter said.

The plan for the center — to open in late 2019 or early 2020 — features a curvilinear stone and glass exterior that is intended to echo the museum’s cylindrical towers and turrets. The contemporary design seems to be a radical departure from the institution’s dominant brick aesthetic, but it is meant to send a message that this is a new building for a new era.

“We want to make the science visible,” Ms. Futter said. “Science is a contemporary field, so it called for that.”

The interior, which evokes the Flintstones’ town, Bedrock, is to be made of reinforced concrete that acts as structural support. A new entrance area on Columbus Avenue, centered between 79th and 80th Streets, will be a hub for all things science in the museum, offering a multistory enclosure with cabinets, drawers and shelves for storing specimens and objects; a series of open, recessed chambers that highlight the exhibitions; an “interpretive wall” to orient visitors and help with wayfinding; an insect hall that will be home to the museum’s live butterfly conservatory; and clear directions to the library, labs and classrooms.

The space will also include a new Invisible Worlds Theater, with the latest imaging technology focused on revealing the inside of the brain or a grain of sand.

The new building creates the cross axis originally envisioned by the museum’s 19th-century master plan, which was never realized. Over the years, the institution has become a hodgepodge of 25 structures that are often difficult to navigate. “It’s a labyrinth in there,” said William J. Higgins, a specialist in landmarks issues who is a consultant to the museum.

The new design creates more than 30 connections at multiple levels across 10 buildings, “so we no longer have visitors bumping into cul-de-sacs or dead ends,” Ms. Gang said. “They have a fluid, continuous journey.”

Museum officials make the point that the complex already includes a variety of building styles that reflect different eras. The Rose Center for Earth and Space, for example, was striking for its glass enclosure — designed by the New York firm Polshek Partnership (now Ennead) — when it opened in 2000. Herbert Muschamp, then the architecture critic for The New York Times, called the planetarium “an aesthetic apparition as well as a major civic event.”

Ms. Futter said the new building represents her institution’s response to “a crisis in science education in this country.” She said the United States has fallen behind in “overall preparedness and global competitiveness,” and it’s the museum’s duty to ready New York City schoolchildren for science jobs of the future in areas like forensics and health care. “Many of the most important issues of our day have a scientific underpinning,” Ms. Futter said. “The environment, climate change, biodiversity, human health.”

More immediately, the museum is bursting at the seams with a collection of specimens that grows by as much as 100,000 objects a year and annual attendance that increased by nearly 70 percent over the past 20 years, to five million from three million.

More than half of the fund-raising goal has been reached so far, Ms. Futter said, including $44.3 million in city funding and $5 million from the state.

She added that the approval process would take about 18 months.

Mr. Higgins said he expected the landmarks commission to support the project. “It’s a significant new building, but Landmarks — particularly with the Rose Center — has established a strong record of contemporary architecture being appropriate.”

Nevertheless, the museum is bound to be in for some push back. “In New York, any square inch of loss of green space rightfully upsets people,” said Deborah Berke, the newly appointed dean of Yale Architecture School, adding that Ms. Gang’s design, which she had seen, “solves a lot of problems.”

A sore point will be the fate of the trees in the park; the design concept calls for removing nine trees and relocating one, but ultimately replacing these with 17 new trees, bringing the total to 75, up from 67. The design also calls for the installation of 17 benches, up from seven.

“It was in an effort to be responsive, but it was also to serve the design and the institutional needs,” Ms. Futter said. “The museum is not only a steward of its vast collections but also of a landmark building complex. In that context, we feel a deep commitment to the well being of the park.”