• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

Sho-Time

An enlightening conversation with Shohei Shigematsu, the architect behind the New Museum’s sci-fi makeover, about the challenges of building in New York and what he learned from designing the Whitney extension that wasn’t.

Shohei Shigematsu
"My theory is that museum extensions used to just ask for more gallery space to accommodate a growing collection. But what’s often missing is a brief that says you need space for community engagement, because it’s very hard to quantify how much space you need for that, or what kind of space. I’m calling it open-ended space, where the museum more than ever needs places where people can improvise and do different activities that reflect the diversity of what the museum is actually doing," says architect Shohei Shigematsu. Photo: Zach Hilty/BFA.com
Dan Duray
March 29, 2026

Join Puck to listen to this article

The excitement around the New Museum’s annex exceeded normal expectations for an architectural face-lift. Earlier this month, the long-awaited extension finally opened, doubling the preexisting exhibition space to 120,000 square feet and addressing some of the original building’s well-known shortcomings—the museum was notoriously difficult for curators to program and not always pleasant for visitors to navigate. How did OMA, the architects tasked with reimagining the museum, solve those problems? I spoke with Shohei Shigematsu, a partner at the firm, to learn more about the difficult task of building a functional, forward-facing museum for the 21st century. As usual, this conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.