Located within the Picayune Place historic neighborhood of New Orleans’ Central Business District, the Magazine Street Museum is a contemporary intervention situated on a vacant site in the heart of the city. Along Magazine Street, the original 1854 façade stands as the only remnant of a structure destroyed by a fire over 20 years ago.

The design of the museum is centered on creating a place of quiet contemplation and repose in a city filled with excess and revelry. The design is a simple parti of a cast-in-place concrete box that is located beside a monumental weathered steel sculpture wall. The large steel panels form the backdrop for the interior of the museum, informing the relationship between inside and out, natural light and shadow. The material palette is limited to museum-quality concrete, glass, and steel which enhances the quality of natural light reflected into the building interior. Editing out internal visual and acoustical distractions was primary to all decisions, resulting in an atmosphere of subtlety informed by the seasons.