New York ? A six-story atrium forms the spectacular core of the newly designed Museum of Modern Art, drawing light into the sleek structure and providing breathtaking views from the museum’s balconies and sky bridges.

On three sides of the 110-foot-high opening, galleries unfold in airy clusters linked by wide doorways. Visitors may choose their own routes through the world’s premier collection of 20th-century modern art. Unlike the cramped old MoMA, there’s space galore.

An atrium rises at the center of the renovated Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York with the sculpture Broken

The white walls holding van Goghs, Picassos, Klees and Warhols are recessed at the bases with dark borders to create the illusion of floating above the varnished, hardwood floors. This design initiative underlines a sense of lightness and buoyancy at the new MoMA, which opens today after a 2 1/2-year, $425 million reconstruction at nearly double its former size.

For the first time, this Xanadu of modernity seems integrated into its high-rise neighborhood just off Fifth Avenue. That’s where its first permanent home opened in 1939, a boxy, modernistic building by Philip Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, with additions in 1951, 1964 and 1984.

The new, rebuilt MoMA by Japanese architect Yushio Taniguchi hews to principles of the international school of architecture and retains elements of the original building, such as the facade and the curved canopy at the entrance of the museum’s theaters and restaurant.

But in a design that gutted the old galleries and expanded display space to 125,000 square feet from 85,000 square feet, Taniguchi’s masterstrokes, such as the new atrium, manage to bolster functionality and add visual drama without overwhelming the art objects shown in adjacent galleries.

Taniguchi said that he integrated the renovation into the midtown location rather than attempting a radically distinctive design. He said he put special emphasis on restoring the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden to its original form.

The new glass curtain walls bring cityscapes into the museum. The backdrop for the rebuilt sculpture garden is the Manhattan skyline. Even the 52-story Museum Tower apartment building from the 1984 expansion is integrated into the complex with an exposed wall in the garden.