On the event of its 50th anniversary, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has received a redesign by LA-based architects Johnston Marklee – a careful interior sculpting and shifting, respectful of the original Josef Paul Kleihues designed building completed in 1996. While lines are continuous and additions seamless, Johnston Marklee’s design makes a quietly dramatic update that reflects the developing role of the museum into a social, educational and civic space.
Reviewed in the New York Times the original MCA was described by critic Herbert Muschamp as a building that ‘put art back in the box’ – he celebrated how it confined art into a single focused activity, without distraction. Yet, half a century later, Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, no longer sees the museum as just a ‘treasure box’, but also a ‘tool box’, where audiences visit to connect to other people, as well as look at art.
‘Madeleine envisioned the MCA as an arts activated space, it wasn’t just galleries showing works in the most traditional sense,’ says architect Sharon Johnston, who worked closely with Grynsztejn, along with architect Mark Lee on the redesign. Within the boundaries of Kleihues’s grid based rationalism, they worked to ‘excavate the plan of the building – not to create something new, but to work within the grid to give it more fluidity and range,’ she says.
The new restaurant, Marisol, features a site specific mural by Chris Ofili titled The Sorceress’ Mirror, depicting a sensuous narrative of leaping figures within emotive landscapes inspired by Trinidad. Courtesy of MCA Chicago
‘The problem with the building was that there wasn’t a lot of intimacy – places to curl up and contemplate, reflect and be comfortable, and part of the new environments that we tried to create – whether through scale, materials, acoustical treatments – was to bring a more diverse set of experiences, but also a more intimate experience,’ says Johnston.
While adjustments have been smoothly integrated, they drastically evolve the function of the museum – the reconfiguration brought in the new restaurant, Marisol, and the cafe down to the ground floor. The classrooms, previously on the ground floor, were moved up to a new third floor built within an existing double height space.
The architects addressed the design from an urban perspective. The ground floor space has become an actively social domain that was about ‘unbending and lowering the thresholds to get into the museum’ says Johnston. Accessible directly from the street through a widened double entrance, the MCA’s ‘street’ is a wide, friendly thoroughfare that connects the theatre, restaurant and cafe with the new second stairway that leads up to the museum and the ‘commons’ on the first floor, another newly evolved multi-use space for events and exchange over which a hanging garden installation carpets the ceiling by artists Pedro y Juana.
Johnston Marklee's new second staircase offers up an alternative route from the ground floor to the first floor.
Johnston Marklee’s staircase – where W* shot Johnston and Lee for a portrait for our October 2017 issue – is a sculptural sweep, lit by bucket loads of morning light drawn in from Kleihues’s glazed façade above. It brings balance to the building by allowing visitors to circulate the building in a loop and it is also a conceptual signature by Johnston Marklee who make their mark on the building – striking up a conversation with Kleihues’s original Parnassian staircase that sits at the other end of the ‘street’, winding up in an elegant teardrop shape framed by slim white banisters.
As a practice, Johnston Marklee bring a studied understanding of history to their work and as directors of the Chicago Architecture Biennial they chose the theme ‘Make New History’ as a way to start a conversation about the past, that also looks forward. The MCA is an example of placing this thinking into practice, as well as their current work on the Menil arts campus in Houston.
‘The work you see in this project is in the spirit of what we were trying to do at the Biennial,’ says Johnston. ‘Always moving between the contemporary and understanding the past is part of how we breathe and how we work.’
The Marisol restaurant, named after the French Venezuelan artist whose artwork Six Women, 1968, became the first work in the MCA’s collection of contemporary art
A view from the 'street' into the Marisol resturant. Internal apertures open up the restaurant to the wide interior avenue
The cafe seating is placed in the 'street' with a view up Johnston Marklee's new staircase where light floods in from the Lake Michigan-facing glazed facade
Kleihues’s majestic MCA was a response to the dense verticality of Chicago’s architecture, flanked by Michigan Avenue, the Water Tower and Lake Michigan, it had to rise to its public role with its cuboid facades facing the city and the lake, like billboards or sails of a ship
A new site specific comission by artist Ernesto Neto has been installed within the central void of Kleihues's original staircase
Warm intimate spaces for informal meetings have been included in the design of the ground floor 'street'
The first floor 'commons' space is a multi-use area designated for events, exchange and discussion
A detail focus on Pedro Y Juana's site specific hanging garden deisgned for the 'commons' space
The MCA facade facing onto Lake Shore Park and Lake Michigan beyond
Aerial view of the MCA building
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Johnston Marklee website and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago website
-
‘I want to bring anxiety to the surface': Shannon Cartier Lucy on her unsettling worksIn an exhibition at Soft Opening, London, Shannon Cartier Lucy revisits childhood memories
-
What one writer learnt in 2025 through exploring the ‘intimate, familiar’ wardrobes of ten friendsInspired by artist Sophie Calle, Colleen Kelsey’s ‘Wearing It Out’ sees the writer ask ten friends to tell the stories behind their most precious garments – from a wedding dress ordered on a whim to a pair of Prada Mary Janes
-
Year in review: 2025’s top ten cars chosen by transport editor Jonathan BellWhat were our chosen conveyances in 2025? These ten cars impressed, either through their look and feel, style, sophistication or all-round practicality
-
Step inside this resilient, river-facing cabin for a life with ‘less stuff’A tough little cabin designed by architects Wittman Estes, with a big view of the Pacific Northwest's Wenatchee River, is the perfect cosy retreat
-
Remembering Robert A.M. Stern, an architect who discovered possibility in the pastIt's easy to dismiss the late architect as a traditionalist. But Stern was, in fact, a design rebel whose buildings were as distinctly grand and buttoned-up as his chalk-striped suits
-
Own an early John Lautner, perched in LA’s Echo Park hillsThe restored and updated Jules Salkin Residence by John Lautner is a unique piece of Californian design heritage, an early private house by the Frank Lloyd Wright acolyte that points to his future iconic status
-
The Stahl House – an icon of mid-century modernism – is for sale in Los AngelesAfter 65 years in the hands of the same family, the home, also known as Case Study House #22, has been listed for $25 million
-
Houston's Ismaili Centre is the most dazzling new building in America. Here's a look insideLondon-based architect Farshid Moussavi designed a new building open to all – and in the process, has created a gleaming new monument
-
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fountainhead will be opened to the public for the first timeThe home, a defining example of the architect’s vision for American design, has been acquired by the Mississippi Museum of Art, which will open it to the public, giving visitors the chance to experience Frank Lloyd Wright’s genius firsthand
-
Clad in terracotta, these new Williamsburg homes blend loft living and an organic feelThe Williamsburg homes inside 103 Grand Street, designed by Brooklyn-based architects Of Possible, bring together elegant interiors and dramatic outdoor space in a slick, stacked volume
-
This ethereal Miami residence sprouted out of a wild, jungle-like gardenA Miami couple tapped local firm Brillhart Architecture to design them a house that merged Florida vernacular, Paul Rudolph and 'too many plants to count’
