Working in exclusive partnership with façade specialist James & Taylor, we manufactured expanded metal mesh cladding for the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York – Manhattan’s iconic contemporary art museum.

SANAA, founded by Tokyo based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, was given the commission for the New Museum building, the first to be built in New York for 25 years, and the duo were determined to make the museum a combination of elegant and urban, in response to its history of being political and fearless.

What they created is certainly fearless as it towers over the buildings on Bowery at 175 ft above street level and is made up of a stack of seven distinct rectangular boxes. It was designed in this way to allow open and flexible gallery spaces that are column free, with different heights and atmosphere.

When it came to the exterior of the building and how it was to be viewed it was the idea of the architects not to have something that would hide the stacked boxes they had created, but rather enhance the structure and demonstrate the strength of the building.

Therefore, the building is cladded in our seamless anodised expanded aluminium metal mesh with the windows just visible behind the mesh. This allows light to be an added dimension to the installations inside the museum, with the light changing through the day.

On the second landing a large windowpane brings natural light to a thin stairwell through a punched out opening in the aluminium mesh cladding. Visitors are able to take in views across SoHo and toward the Hudson River providing a short break from the immersive museum experience and allowing them to feel the context of the city and the community the museum is a part of.

Viewing the building from street level it can be described as shiny and softly shimmering in the day light, where at night it is said to glow – the project was the first time expanded aluminium mesh had been used to clad a major building façade.

In 2008, New York’s New Museum was named one of the architectural New Seven Wonders of the World.

Mesh: New York

New Museum Expansion

In 2026, the New Museum completed a major expansion designed by OMA, further extending one of New York’s most recognisable contemporary cultural buildings.

The new seven-storey extension sits directly alongside the original SANAA designed museum and continues the use of expanded metal mesh as part of the building façade, helping to create a strong visual connection between the two structures while maintaining the museum’s distinctive architectural identity.

Mesh manufactured by The Expanded Metal Company features across both the original New Museum façade and the newly completed expansion, highlighting the long-term versatility and architectural appeal of mesh within globally recognised contemporary design.