Working in exclusive partnership with façade specialist James & Taylor, we manufactured expanded metal mesh cladding for the New Museum in New York – Manhattan’s iconic contemporary art museum.

SANAA, founded by Tokyo based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, was given the commission for the New Museum building, the first to be built in New York for 25 years, – and the duo were determined to make the museum a combination of elegant and urban, in response to its history of being political and fearless.

What they created is certainly fearless as it towers over the buildings on Bowery at 175 ft above street level and is made up of a stack of seven distinct rectangular boxes. It was designed in this way to allow open and flexible gallery spaces that are column free, with different heights and atmosphere.

When it came to the exterior of the building and how it was to be viewed it was the idea of the architects not to have something that would hide the stacked boxes they had created, but rather enhance the structure and demonstrate the strength of the building.

Therefore, the building is cladded in our seamless anodized expanded aluminium mesh with the windows just visible behind the mesh. This allows light to be an added dimension to the installations inside the museum, with the light changing through the day.

On the second landing a large windowpane brings natural light to a thin stairwell through a punched out opening in the aluminium mesh cladding. Visitors are able to take in views across SoHo and toward the Hudson River providing a short break from the immersive museum experience and allowing them to feel the context of the city and the community the museum is a part of.

Viewing the building from street level it can be described as shiny and softly shimmering in the day light, where at night it is said to glow – the project was the first time expanded aluminium mesh had been used to clad a major building façade.

In 2008, New York’s New Museum was named one of the architectural New Seven Wonders of the World.

The specific mesh used to clad New Museum is pattern New York Large, which is part of our raised aluminium mesh range.

You can find out more on expanded metal mesh use as architectural cladding here.