The Museum of Modern Art reopens on 20 November after being closed for over two years. Its new galleries, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, are a triumph: a brilliant justification of designing from the inside out

Apollo, Nov, 2004 by Louise Nicholson

Finally, a 'very long brief' was written for working sessions with ten selected architects. These were then reduced to three: Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, Bernard Tschumi, and Yoshio Taniguchi. In 1997 they were given the architectural competition brief. Taniguchi won. Well known for his exquisite museums in Japan to be celebrated in MOMA'S inaugural temporary exhibition--this would be his first building outside his native land. 'It was simply the best scheme', says Mr Riley. 'We visited and liked his previous work, its excellence in construction, materials and craftsmanship.' Importantly, Mr Riley feels Taniguchi's design enables MOMA to recommit to Alfred Barr's idea of 'a metabolic collection that continuously renews itself through time'.

As the idea became a reality, zoning laws, costs and other restrictions demanded compromises, readily acknowledged by the curators as improvements. It was zoning laws prohibiting a solid wall next to another that resulted in Taniguchi coming up with the idea of the central glass atrium with glass bridges connecting the galleries. It is an architecturally spectacular solution that makes the museum a more social place, allowing people to see up and down the whole, while impressing upon them the extent and variety of the collection and the relation of different parts to one another.

The furniture and accessories will all be Danish, adding to the coordination of the interior spaces. Sponsored by the Danish Design Project, the 33 designers selected by MOMA include Arne Jacobsen, Hans J. Wegner and Poul Kjaerholm.

During the building, experiments and revisions continued. Over in Queen's, John Elderfield and his curators peered at gallery mock-ups and models of art works to assess gallery volumes and the effects of light on wail finishes and floor colours. Not content with this, nor with computer simulations, they had a full-sized gallery taken to completion to 'experience the whole room, the volumes'. This led to re-organising the layouts, putting more pieces in some galleries, fewer or a different mix in others. Now, as he finalises the hanging, his praise is unbounded: 'The building is an art work, with spaces so good we do not want to put works on every wall'. The new hang will change little for the first year, while Mr Elderfield and his colleagues learn from visitors what works best. The exception is a special inaugural four-month loan of six works, including Signac's Portrait of Felix Feneon, from David Rockefeller's gift that will come to the museum after his death.

Taniguchi's building now shimmers beneath New York's cloudless autumn skies awaiting its first visitors. They can choose their entrance: a glass, granite and aluminium one fusing with the Johnson and Pelli buildings on 53rd Street, or the entirely new one on 54th Street. Inside, the vast lobby is open free to all and contains the excellent MOMA Design and Book store as well as providing access to the sculpture garden, an urban oasis that has been restored to Johnson's larger 1953 design.