Stunning new buildings are popping up all around the Bowery. First there was SANAA’s tower for the New Museum, which was followed by Morphosis’ building at 41 Cooper Square for Cooper Union. Now, on the Bowery just south of Houston Street, they’re joined by a building for Sperone Westwater Gallery designed by the great English architect Norman Foster.
     The slender, eight-story building is incredibly elegant. It’s a simple, stepped volume with a poured concrete frame, a front facade of laminated glass, and side and back facades of corrugated metal panels. The whole building feels dressed up. Even the metal panels, which are standard industrial panels painted matte black, have a refined look. This formality is striking amid the surrounding rough-and-tumble Bowery storefronts, but it also muffles some of the building’s power.
     The most anticipated feature of the new building is the Moving Gallery, a room at the front clad in bright red panels that slides up and down from floor to floor just behind the glass facade. It’s an interesting gimmick and, when lit up at night, a striking effect.