The Museum of Modern Art, Roof Garden

Abstract

In 2002 MoMA curator Peter Reed asked Ken Smith to propose an “imaginative” roofscape installation for the new gallery addition by architect Yoshio Taniguchi. Never to be accessible to the general public, the 17,400 square-foot garden, sitting six floors above street level, was destined to function more as one of the museum’s collected works of modern and contemporary art than as an inhabitable landscape. Numerous design considerations included weight restrictions, zero tolerance for irrigation, no elements above three feet in height, and a low budget. Smith’s first proposal was disallowed, sending the designer back to the drawing board to devise a final scheme of a contextually alert, patterned surface condition.