For the past few years, The Museum of Modern Art has been in the midst of the largest building project in its history. Designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, the new museum will open in midtown Manhattan in November 2004 – 2005 to coincide with MoMA’s 75th anniversary. The 630,000-square-foot complex is nearly twice the size of the former facility, with dramatically expanded and redesigned spaces for exhibitions, public programming, educational outreach, and scholarly research. In his initial proposal, Taniguchi explained that his goal was "to create an ideal environment for art and people through the imaginative and disciplined use of light, materials, and space." His stated vision of "a museum that preserves and reinforces MoMA’s unique character as the repository of an incomparable collection of modern and contemporary art, as a pioneer of museums of modern art with a unique historical inheritance, and as an urban institution in a midtown Manhattan location" has been resoundingly implemented.