FOCUS 063ADAM ROUSE, associate at Aidlin Darling Design, explains
the background to the design for the In Situ restaurant at
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA).
In Situ is located within SFMoMA – how did this influence
your design? In support of chef Corey Lee’s culinary vision
and SFMoMA’s greater mission, the design’s genesis was
to emphasise visibility from the street and open
accessibility to visitors within a simple, comfortable
environment. Designated for the street-front space in the
existing shell of the Mario Botta-designed portion of the
recently re-opened SFMoMA, the interior volumes of the
previous museum cafe and assembly hall were excavated
and left partially raw and exposed as the blank canvas to
In Situ, San
Francisco
Museum of
Modern Art
Aidlin Darling
Designwork from. The restaurant was to feel like a natural
continuation, yet a unique space, within the museum as a
whole, in dialogue with the creative energy and ethos the
SFMoMA offers the community. The project employs timber, steel and concrete in a very
spare and understated way. Why these materials? As the
excavation of space within the existing building was an
important starting point, the shell of the space was
returned to its raw state of concrete floors and expanded
metal mesh ceilings, evocative of a Chelsea gallery space in
New York City. This would be the base condition for the
insertion of floating, white art walls, and architectural
artefacts would help bracket space within the largerBelow Timber was employed
to give warmth and tactility