Happy 20th Birthday, MASS MoCA!

Bruner/Cott has been working on the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art since its inception. Housed in a vast 17-acre industrial complex built in the late 1800s for the Arnold Print Works company, the museum was completed in three phases, initially opening to international acclaim in 1999 with 125,000 square feet. Today, the museum comprises 280,000 square feet of galleries, performing arts venues, video/multimedia spaces, and commercial rental units.

MASS MoCA has become ingrained in our firm’s history and has served as a model for other adaptive reuse projects. In a recent interview with ArchDaily, Bruner/Cott Principals Jason Forney, Jason Jewhurst, and Dana Kelly offer insider perspectives on the genesis of MASS MoCA.

Over the last thirty years, it has become a testing ground for our practice—in developing ways of weaving old and new together in a more dynamic way than it is typically done. Our co-founder, Simeon Bruner, and one of our principals, Henry Moss, began working with MASS MoCA in the 1980s. Their initial ideas evolved and became intrinsic to the next generation in our firm. Often, historical architecture is preserved as is or taken down to start building from scratch. Our goal is to keep the right amount of old and add the new so that the result is appropriate, sensitive, and coherent.

— Jason Forney, AIA, LEED AP, Principal

Read more, here.