Moca WORKSHOP
Client: MOCA
Services: Architecture, Interior Design, Signage Design, Branding
Awards: AIA Connecticut Design Award, Architect’s Newspaper Design Award, NYCxDesign Finalist for Environmental and Social Impact
Our firm worked closely with the Museum of Chinese in America, located in New York City's Chinatown, to design MOCA Workshop, an innovative neighborhood-integrated museum that bridges community participation and archival research to chronicle the Chinese American experience.
MOCA Workshop is a two-story space made up of a storefront library event space, an oral history studio, workspace for staff, and, most importantly, archival storage for over 85,000 artifacts. Our firm created naming and branding for the space as well as all architectural and interior design.
In 2020, MOCA's Collections and Research Center was destroyed in a devastating fire; after extensive recovery and repair, MOCA's collection of artifacts was relocated to the Workshop, where the materials are conserved, studied, and made accessible to visitors to explore and learn. At the same time, the main museum, located around the corner, is undergoing a massive expansion and renovation; the Workshop acts as temporary workspace for all staff space during this transition.
The public-facing library invites visitors inside to share their family artifacts and stories; the collection grows each day as airmail letters, family photos, and objects are added to the collection. As an object joins the archive, it makes a journey through the Workshop: from a review with the donor and curators at the front communal library table, to the archive counter in the back of the space for analysis and accession, then on to display in the museum or into protected storage in the archive shelves.
Formerly a retail storefront, the facade is now a window into the inner workings of a museum, reflected in the project branding: square logo ‘windows’ exhibiting values of transparency and openness to community. On Howard Street, hand-painted lettering and graphics share the mission of the museum in both English and Chinese.
