In summer 2017, Board of Trustees of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center approved a plan for enlargement of museum’s spaces and for a commencement of building an extra underground floor of 1000 sq.m.
A plan for enlargement of museum's spaces will be held with a financial support of a member of the Board of Trustees, co-founder of the Endowment Fund of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Roman Abramovich.
Since its opening in 2012, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center has been increasingly active in operating museum conservation, exhibitions, and educational programmes. Every year new programmes appear, museum’s departments enlarge, the audience grows, and by 2017 the museum has almost used up its spaces.
The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center is located in a famous building of the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, built by an architect Konstantine Melnikov and an engineer Vladimir Shukhov in 1927. The building is an architectural masterpiece and a cultural heritage property. Therefore it was decided to enable underground space to pursue enlargement.
The enlargement plan rethinks museum space and offers an opportunity to build an underground multifunctional floor.
The architectural design proposed by the enlargement plan is aimed to build a new form into a spatial structure of Melnikov’s building.
The underground floor will provide an actively developing museum with additional spaces. It’s considered that it could offer new spaces for a cinema, lecture halls, a conference center for events and educational programmes, as well as new space for the constantly growing Tolerance Center and an additional concert area.
”The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center turns five years in November, and by now it has become one of the main attraction points on a cultural map of Moscow. An attendance is constantly increasing from year to year, and by the moment of turning five years a necessity for an additional space has become obvious – there is a need for new spaces for holding exhibitions, educational events, film screenings and music concerts. The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center is located in an architectural monument, the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, therefore it seems to be an optimal solution to create new spaces by using grounds, leaving the historic appearance of the building untouched. This approach will let us acquire new spaces on an underground floor, as well as enlarge display area of the ground floor by 800 sq.m.”, - comments on the museum enlargement plan Alexander Boroda, the Museum Director General.
Architectural design is held by Architectural Bureau FORM.