Kulapat Yantrasast, a principal of Los Angeles– and New York City–based architecture firm wHY, will design a 9,000-square-foot addition to the Asian Art Museum (AAM) of San Francisco.
The addition, a pavilion, will unify gallery spaces on the east side of the museum’s first floor, and allow the AAM to display more contemporary art. It will be situated atop a wing on the Hyde Street side that dates to the 1990s.
Yantrasast will also rework the museum’s galleries to create a more legible layout, allowing more of the 18,000-piece permanent collection to be put on display, as well as permitting more special exhibition programming.
Educational spaces will be updated to accommodate increasing attendance. Currently 35,000 Bay Area students visit the AAM each year, although that number is expected to rise to 50,000 once classroom spaces are upgraded.
wHY has two museum projects wrapping up in 2016. The firm’s addition to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville will be complete this month, while the Marciano Art Foundation, a conversion of a Los Angeles Scottish Rite Masonic Temple into a private art center, should open this September.
Right now, the $25 million AAM project is in the schematic design phase, and construction is set to begin next year.
