SFMOMA Expansion opening May 14th

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's (SFMOMA) building expansion is opening May 14, 2016.

Oslo-based Snohetta designed this 10-story building for SFMOMA. And local Kreysler & Associates fabricated the contoured and rippled facade.

The project is ground-breaking is several ways. Unconventional and innovative methods were used for the fabrication. The composite panels are a fire-resistant design and ultra-light. And the facade panels are now the largest architectural application of composites technology in the United States.

Each composite facade panel is different, so Kreysler & Associates relied heavily on digital fabrication with Rhino and Grasshopper to mold the unique shapes.

Kreysler specializes in composites and digital fabrication. They often work with artists and architects on large sculptural works, acoustic surfaces, facade panels, and replicas of historic building elements for restoration projects.

"Leading up to this project, our in-house R&D pertaining to fire resistant composites has opened the door to more widespread use of these materials in the future. The whole process has relied heavily on our facility with software -- in our case Rhino -- for early conversations with the designers all the way through construction coordination, in-house fabrication, production tracking, and quality control."

"Rhino is like our 'digital pocket knife'. It's intuitive, inexpensive, adaptable, and has a huge community of users for support and developing custom tools. Nearly every project we do sees Rhino at one point or another." - Comments from Bill Kreysler, in an interview in NOVEDGE blog.

Construction details...