Rafael Viñoly Architects designed the new East Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) in Cleveland, Ohio. With it’s opening to the public on June 27th the first of three planned wings were unveiled. Viñoly’s design for the new wing gets a seven-year expansion and renovation project underway. The 139,200-square-foot addition connects CMA’s original 1916 Beaux-Arts building with the 1971 addition by Marcel Breuer, creating ethereal new spaces for the presentation and conservation of the museum’s collection.

Double-height exhibitions galleries and an entrance lobby, located on the Lower Level, serve as the centerpiece of the two-story East Wing. New galleries for the museum’s collection of 19th- and 20th-century European, modern and contemporary art, and extensive photography collection are located on Level Two. The new wing also houses expanded offices and workrooms for the conservation department on Level One.

The firm’s plan restores focus to the original 1916 building, conceiving it as a “jewel” set within a continuous ring of expansion spaces that include the renovated Breuer building. Other later additions are being demolished to make way for a vast indoor piazza topped by a gently curving canopy of glass and steel. The entire museum will be organized around this sunlit space that is intended to draw visitors into the center of the museum complex and act as a central meeting place and event space for large functions.

New gallery wings to the east and west will enclose the piazza and taper toward the 1916 building where they culminate in fully transparent, glazed galleries and pedestrian bridges that permit unobstructed views of the sides of the historic pavilion. The project is due to be completed in 2012.