SANAA vs Lady Gaga

Can a building ever be compared to Lady Gaga? Most experts may say no, but they obviously haven't seen the New Museum, one of the best looking museums ever made according to Delaine Isaac.

The New Museum, founded as the New Museum of Contemporary Art by Marcia Tucker in 1977, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world. On December 1, 2007, the New Museum opened its first freestanding, dedicated building at 235 Bowery.

The building, designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA with Gensler, New York, serving as executive Architect, is expressed as a series of six asymmetrically stacked aluminum-clad rectilinear boxes shifted off-axis around a central steel core. Sejima + Nishizawa's inspiration came from the traditional set-backs exhibited by some of the city's earlier skyscrapers. The facade is shrouded in 3,270 square meters of expanded aluminum, originally developed in the United Kingdom as a means of reinforcing roads. It was the first time this medium has been employed in the United States. The basement of the New Museum features a 188-seat theater.