Preview: Museum of Arts and Design Identity

This September, New York’s Museum of Arts and Design will relocate to 2 Columbus Circle, the former home of A&P heir Huntington Hartford’s Gallery of Modern Art. The 1964 building, originally designed by Edward Durell Stone, has received a bold renovation by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture, featuring a new skin of glazed terra cotta tile, and slots outside and inside the building to permit light to filter through the museum’s galleries.

Pentagram has been working over the past year on a new identity, signage program, and media installations for the new building for its debut this fall. Above, a preview of the new MAD logo. “The new symbol is built out of circles and squares, a reference to the fact this squarish building sits on one of the most prominent circles in New York City,” says designer Michael Bierut, who is working on the project with partner Lisa Strausfeld. “The forms also refer in a subtle way to the building’s distinctive, some would say notorious, ‘lollipop’ columns, which will still be visible through the new façade.” An entire alphabet, extrapolated from the three letters in the logo, will be used selectively on MAD’s marketing materials.