Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art Eyeing Delancey Lot for New Facility

While plans for SPURA continue to chug and sputter like a little-engine-that-couldn’t, another boxy building is vying for this long-fallow real estate. Indeed, the SoHo-based Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (“MOCCA”) is currently fielding proposals for a new facility in the empty parking lot at the southwest corner of Delancey and Norfolk Streets. At the moment, this is just a big “what if.”  Even though it’s a pipe-dream competition facilitated by MOCCA, something like this could nevertheless become reality.  Holy box on Delancey, Batman!

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The most recent entry hails from Paris – a firm called Planda Architecture.  If their design is ever realized, a minimalist six-story glass box might drop onto SPURA lot number two.  One that challenges Blue, Sperone Westwater, and the New Museum for monolithic supremacy on the Lower East Side.  Its character is soulless and opaque, and “exists by expressing a clear introversion in a heterogeneous environment.”

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Plans reveal an interior that resembles the proverbial circular peg in a square hole.  An egg-shaped library, accessible by escalator, occupies four floors and houses a reading space and its collection of books, zines, cartoons and comics.  The remaining space is designated for galleries, classrooms, and workshop areas.

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MOCCA currently maintains a fourth-floor SoHo studio at 594 Broadway, but this new facility would provide the necessary breathing room for temporary and permanent exhibitions.

[Archdaily via L Magazine]