New tower for MoMA gets go-ahead

Nouvel designed the acclaimed Arab World Institute in Paris

An 82-storey extension to New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has been approved by the city council.

The extension, to the west of the current museum building, will include three floors of new gallery space, hotel rooms and luxury apartments.

Paris-based architect Jean Nouvel, whose previous work includes the Arab World Institute in Paris, will design the soaring steel and glass tower.

The museum, founded in 1929, called the approval "a major milestone".

Billed as one of the world's most high-profile building projects, the extension will give MoMA approximately 40,000 square feet of additional gallery space, which will connect to its second, fourth and fifth-floor galleries.

However, the commercial development has been the subject of some heated discussion in the planning department, which in September demanded a reduction in the height of the tower.

The extension will be Nouvel's third, and biggest, building in New York.

The museum, based in mid-town Manhattan, underwent a major extension in 2004, designed by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi.