News- Eric Owen Moss Fired from Queens Museum Redesign
Posted by JoeVare, 26 January 2005

A sad day in Queens.

In August 2001, Eric Owen Moss won a competition to redesign the Queens Museum, a museum that is the only surviving piece of the 1939 Worlds Fair and home to the famous New York panorama model.

Moss's design ripped out the center of the museum and replaced it with a cascade of glass that opened up views to the park and the Unisphere sculpture, a design that had been received and was one of the first indications that good design was becoming a reality in New York. Moss had been working on the winning design and a scaled back version for the last three years. According to the New York Times, Moss was fired late last year due to a management change at the museum, one that now uses the familiar excuse that Moss's design was either too expensive or too hard to realize.

There will be no competition, but the museum will go ahead with a renovation from one of the firms on a list of city preapproved architects. They are:
Fox & Fowle
Rafael Vinoly
Polshek Partnership
SOM
Arquitectonica
1100 Architects
Gluckman Mayer
Amman & Whiney/Grimshaw

It will be interesting to see what type of design emerges at the museum. If you believe the reasons for Moss' firing, then there will be no greatness to expect- just another inoffensive, bland building that will do little for the museum or the city.

Update- New Architect Named
Posted by JoeVare, 15 April 2005

Amman & Whiney/Grimshaw have been named as Eric Owen Moss' replacement at the Queens Museum. Grimshaw is currently working on the Fulton Street Transit Center in nearby Manhattan. No design has been released, even though construction is scheduled to start in 2007 and finish in 2009.