Apparently Taniguchi, architect of the new MOMA building now back in Manhattan, said to the museum trustees, "Raise a lot of money for me, I'll give you good architecture. Raise even more money, I'll make the architecture disappear." And they raised almost a billion dollars for him, so he did. "The customary sensations that buildings give us - of secure enclosure, of masses of matter firmly supported - are diluted by a black gap, a mere quarter inch wide, that runs along the bottom and top of every interior wall, even at the base of weight-bearing pillars, so that everything, subtly, floats. The...aesthetic accomplishment [of the gaps] is to dematerialize the walls; the visitor moves through spaces demarcated as if by Japanese paper screens." (John Updike, "Invisible Cathedral", The New Yorker, Nov 15, 2004)
Paul Goldberger from the same issue: "In 1997, the museum snubbed the radicals and hired Taniguchi, who represents not the cutting edge of architecture but, rather, a carefully wrought, highly refined modernism - a cool and reserved aesthetic that has more in common wiht the Modern's original credo than with the expressive direction of recent architecture and museum design."
Makes one want to visit the Modern just for its design, and I did enjoy the tiny pared-down Modern they had in Queens while they were renovating the main building.
[Note to self: post longer entry, or at least read the rather technical article Von linked.]