"We could never recreate Mario Botta's SFMOMA" says extension architect Craig Dykers of Snøhetta

Interview: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reopens this month with a
Snøhetta-designed extension to its original Mario Botta building . In this interview, Snøhetta partner Craig Dykers explains how he tried not to step on the toes of Botta's Postmodern structure.

The Norwegian firm 's addition almost triples the amount of gallery space at
SFMOMA , which has been closed for three years while work took place.
The pale cliff-like exterior of the extension was designed to provide a stark contrast to Botta's 1995 Postmodern building, which is predominantly clad with red brick.

"We could never recreate Mario Botta," Dykers told Dezeen. "We didn't want to just take red brick and extend it, for somebody to say 'that's a very strange Botta building'."
"You don't want to copy your dance partner, you want to be complimentary to it so you don't step on each other's toes," he added.

Renovation of the original structure involved the controversial removal of the granite staircase located beneath the building's iconic oculus.
The steps were dismantled and given out in bits to museum staff, then replaced with a timber staircase that doglegs at an angle to connect the building's two lobby levels.

"Probably the moment that was trickiest with the Botta building was the staircase, where we had to take down this iconic staircase," SFMOMA deputy director Ruth Berson told Dezeen. "There were lots of physical reasons why we had to do it."
She described how Dykers travelled to Lugano, Switzerland – where Botta founded his practice and has designed some of his most important projects – to meet with the 73-year-old architect and discuss the intervention.
"When Craig explained that we were going to have to do something to the staircase, [Botta] was incredibly generous," Berson said.

"[Botta] said to Craig: 'I've had my moment with the building, now it's your moment'," Berson recalled. "Then there's was a little pause, and he got this little twinkle in his eye and he said: 'but that's not going to prevent me from criticising you later if I don't like it'."