The concept is treating the new museum building as part of landscape. The main building consists of the two thick walls that accommodate the main structure, mechanical services and circulation system. The two thick walls are distorted by three axes shifted from historical Olmsted’s parkway system that connects downtown Buffalo to the three major parks of the city. The building’s configuration includes four main elements: ground level for public activities; two thick walls for vertical circulation; floating boxes for gallery spaces and roof system for natural lighting.

A series of gallery spaces protrude from the two walls to form a picturesque urban landscape. The gallery sequence is a loop of ramps that allows the visitors to move from one gallery to the next and from one wall to the other. The gallery boxes make the rhythmic experience from inside to outside, from private to public, from dark to bright and from compression to release. The masses of the workshop and the library, functionally independent, grow from the outdoor garden and bring the landscape into the main gallery space.