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HEAVYLIGHTNESS
THE WHITNEY MUSEUM Marcel Breuer
Left: Eyebrow windows. Photographer unknown.
COURSE SEMESTER STUDENT
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INSTRUCTOR UNIVERSITY
ARCH 793a 2018 Fall Sarah Tropper Amy Murphy USC School of Architecture
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building summary
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plans
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elevations
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sections
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3d drawings + diagrams
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HISTORY
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an oeuvre
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breuer + the whitney
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design
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reception | 1966
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reception | 1980s
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a new whitney
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ANALYSIS
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the whitney + public space
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the museum + movement
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an urban filter
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a serene escape
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space of art
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critique
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PROPOSAL
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sculpture garden
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gallery kinetic
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the oculus
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sphere of influence
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DOCUMENTATION
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01 DOCUMENTATION
“Museums have had the habit of waiting until a painter or sculptor had acquired a certain official recognition before they would accept his work within their sacred portals. Exactly the contrary practice will be carried on at the Whitney.”
The Whitney Museum of American Art was founded with the purpose of discovering, stimulating, and recognizing the creative spirits of American artists. Artists with fresh and innovative ideas had difficulty breaking into the art world in the early twentieth century, inspiring Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to begin purchasing and showing their work, becoming the leading patron of American art from 1907. By 1929, she had amassed a collection of over 500 works, which she offered to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When her offer was rejected, she struck out on her own, founding her own museum with the radically different philosophy to focus solely on American art and artists.1 The Whitney Museum was founded in 1930, and continued to grow and expand at a rate that, by the 1960s, required a new building that would reflect and encompass Gertrude Whitney’s principles. Left: Eyebrow windows. Photographer unknown.
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Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
“Outside, it is expression; inside, only proportion -
By the time Marcel Breuer was approached to design the Whitney Museum in 1963, the requirements for the design were clear. The new building had to function as a museum, but also mark the Whitney as an independent entity from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as the recently completed Guggenheim Museum, only a few blocks north of the proposed site.
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With the help of his colleague, Hamilton Smith, Breuer designed one of his best known works. The design, an inverted ziggurat with distinct pyramidal windows and a sunken sculpture garden, stands in strong contrast with the neighboring brownstones and historical facades. A sculptural study in concrete and granite, the Whitney Museum’s unconventional volume has stood the test of time, creating an intimate art-viewing experience despite (and perhaps because of) it’s heavy exterior.
Left: Breuer at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1967. Photo by Evelyne Burnheim. Below:The building’s stepped facade. Photo by Ezra Stoller
the architect
Marcel Breuer, a Hungarian-born architect, was trained in the art of design at the Bauhaus. Working closely with Walter Gropius and others, Breuer’s designs of furniture and, later, buildings, brought modernism to a domestic scale. Though his early work was largely residential, after the second World War, Breuer’s office and the scale of his work grew massively in scale. His architectural interest turned to concrete, and his designs, now often called “brutalist”, were distinctively sculptural. One such design was the Whitney Museum, a collaboration with Hamilton Smith.
the context
The Whitney, located on Madison Avenue and situated among old brownstones, seems out of place. It’s somber concrete form, with pyramidal steps and fronted by a moat, has an assertive appearance. However, rather than ignoring its context, Breuer was extremely careful in his approach to this corner site. A corner building can often seem as though it is an incomplete quarter of some greater whole, but Breuer’s design kept the scale modest to respect its neighbors. By expanding the museum below grade, the building’s height does not block daylight from its surroundings. Its poured-in-place concrete walls on its neighboring facades step back from the Whitney as a whole, both to emphasize the architectural form as well as to solve the inherent problem of a corner building.2
- it stands back and lets you see the pictures.” 06 00
Marcel Breuer
site plan
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In addition to its modest scale in respect to its context, Breuer’s distinctive windows create aesthetic interest while providing privacy both to its neighbors and to its visitors. This concept of privacy, of an enveloped experience, begins from the sidewalk. To enter the Whitney, visitors cross over a sunken sculpture garden, leaving behind the city and entering a “cocoon-like, human-scaled” space that creates an intimate art-viewing experience. 3 The heavy volume implied by the exterior of the building is continued with its immense passenger elevator, transporting visitors directly to the museums primary focus: art.4
figure ground
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The upper floors of the museum, each cantilevering over the site farther than the last, are almost entirely dedicated to gallery space. The museum’s heavy outer shell not only creates an intimate interior, but allows for the galleries to be free of beams and columns. A distinct feature of these galleries are their concrete gridded ceilings, from which moveable panels and lighting allow for a flexible display space. The floor to ceiling height is high- almost thirteen feet in the lower floors and more than seventeen in the top gallery- which was in consideration of the increasing size of paintings.5
Shipping, Receiving, and Storage
Carpentry Shop
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Storage
NY Steam Room
Hydraulic Elevator
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CELLAR FLOOR
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FOURTH FLOOR
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MEZZANINE
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Mail Room Conference Room
Mechanical Equipment Room
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SIXTH FLOOR
FIFTH FLOOR 10’
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Stair below the lobby. Photo by Ezra Stoller
Breuer’s attention to detail and artistry with texture is clear in the Whitney’s material palette. The rough concrete, smooth polished granite, and warm wood creates a delicate contrast that pays homage to the materials themselves. The use of concrete became a signature of Breuer’s in his later works, and he was able to take the principles of industrial production and elevate them to a level of architectural mastery. No longer simply a two-dimensional material, Breuer’s concrete structures mold and enclose space in such a way that makes the building and its details sculptures themselves.6
“They were also particular, refined and muscular, with their gridded concrete ceilings. Outside and in, the mix of gray granite, concrete and slate conveyed extreme finesse.” Michael Kimmelman
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
“History of the Whitney.” Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, www.whitney.org/about/history. Biddle, Flora Miller. The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made: a Family Memoir. Arcade, 2017. Breuer, Marcel, and Tician Papachristou. Marcel Breuer: New Buildings and Projects. Praeger, 1970. Kimmelman, Michael. “A New Whitney.” New York Times, 19 Apr. 2015. Hyman, Isabelle, and Marcel Breuer. Marcel Breuer, Architect: the Career and the Buildings. H.N. Abrams, 2001. Breuer, Marcel, and Tician Papachristou. Marcel Breuer: New Buildings and Projects. Praeger, 1970. Sullivan, Dan. “Whitney Museum Has Gala Opening.” New York Times, 28 Sept. 1966. Vegesack, Alexander von., and Mathias Remmele. Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture. Vitra Design Museum, 2003.
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Footnotes
“That world of stone behind stone, of vistas, of weight and material, of large and small cubes, of long and short spans, of sunny and shady voids, of the whole horizon of buildings and cities: all that inanimate world is alive.�
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Marcel Breuer
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HISTORY
Marcel Breuer was born in Hungary in 1902. He moved shortly to Vienna in 1920, but soon after leaves to join a new school in Weimar: the Bauhaus. Though he was much younger than the great designers who taught at the Bauhaus, he quickly fell in with them, being recognized as a young visionary. Under mentorship of Walter Gropius and others, he completed his design education, though never earning an architecture degree. Though he would later focus solely on architecture, his early years at the Bauhaus were filled with painting, sculpture, and furniture design. These interests permeated his work for the rest of his career.7 Marcel Breuer at the Dessau Bauhaus during the 1920s. Photo from the Museum of Modern Art.
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In 1937, Breuer was invited to teach alongside Gropius at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He stays at Harvard until 1946, when he moves to New York City. He starts a firm of his own there, and becomes increasingly in demand as a residential architect. Completing a number of modernist homes through the northeast, in the post-war period Breuer begins being sought after to design much larger projects, including the UNESCO World Headquarters and the headquarters for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.8 It was during this period that he designed the Whitney Museum of American Art.
an ouevre
Breuer’s breakthrough design was not a building at all, but a chair. The Wassily chair, as it would later become known, was a strikingly elegant design that made use of industrial steel tubing in a new and exciting way. The many aspects of this chair, as well as some of his other stand-out furniture pieces, show the hallmarks of an early Breuer: an immaculate attention to detail, the use of industrial processes, an innate knowledge for contrasting materials, and a keen eye for balance. In 1936, Breuer and F.R.S. Yorke became partners in an architecture practice in London. It was soon after when he designed the “Civic Center of the Future,” which was a model for an exhibition of the Cement and Concrete Association. Though the design was never built, themes of his future work surfaced with this design, including inverted ziggurat forms, receding pyramidal steps, and pedestrian streets, all of which appear in his design of the Whitney Museum.9
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“The second house that he built in Massachusetts is the Chamberlain Cottage - small, but important. It is very much like his furniture- simple and elegant.” I.M. Pei
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Top: Chair (model B33) by Marcel Breuer. Photo from the Museum of Modern Art. Bottom: Chamberlain cottage. Photo by Ezra Stoller. Right: Wassily chair. Photo from Knoll.
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Top left: Geoffnet, 1933. Painting by Paul Klee. Top right: UNESCO headquarters library. Photo by Gilles Ehrmann. Bottom Left: Windows on the Whintey Museum’s facade. Photo by Ezra Stoller. Bottom right: St. John’s Abbey Church. Photo by Serhii Chrucky.
Mathias Remmele
For the next two decades, Breuer’s practice was almost entirely focused on residential projects. In these designs however, his use of materials and interest in structure and space were evident. Breuer’s work on these projects, as well as his earlier furniture design, clearly influenced his future designs and attention to human scale. Over the course of his career, Breuer began to become increasingly interested in concrete as a medium for himself as an architect. Though glass and steel dominated architectural design in the 1960s, Breuer, and his “Brutalist” concrete structures, became a leader toward a sculptural trend in design.10 His unique, crystalline forms may draw inspiration from his days at the Bauhaus, particularly from the work of his friend and teacher, Paul Klee.11
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“The molded rhythm of prefabrication combined with concrete details poured individually, results in his enclosure of space, no longer an abstract skin but one with substance and plastic variation.”
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Marcel Breuer Left: HUD Headquarters under construction. Photo by H. Beckhard.
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“I like to use concrete because it has a kind of rugged quality. It is not a sweet material. It is a relief in modern architecture from all that glass and steel.�
Left: Sign announcing construction of the Whitney Museum, opening in 1966. Photo from Marcel Breuer Digital Archives. Above: The Whitney Museum under construction. Photo by Bill Rothschild.
breuer + the whitney
Breuer’s work caught the attention of museum’s chairman of the board, and granddaughter of the founder, Flora Miller Irving, and her architect husband, Mike. Aiming to expand the Whitney’s gallery spaces and emphasize its independence from the other galleries and museums in New York City, the trustees of the Whitney Museum knew that Marcel Breuer could accomplish their goals.
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After the decision of architect was made, the remainder of the design process was relatively streamlined. According to Breuer’s colleague, Robert Gatje, “Once he had his contract, Lajko retired to the country for a weekend and returned with one 8½-by-11-inch sheet of carefully drawn and dimensioned freehand sketches of the plan and elevations that, to those who saw them, completely defined the building that was eventually built.”12
Though Breuer’s early schemes are not exactly what was built, the stepped concrete structure, sunken garden, and expansive, uninterrupted gallery space were present in the design from very early on.13 In discussions with Matt Levy, a structural engineer on the project, Breuer proposed a completely homogeneous concrete outer shell. However, because of the daring dimensions of the cantilevered floors, Levy convinced Breuer that a steel substructure was necessary to support the building’s weight. Aside from slight adjustments to the facade to cover these additional supports, the original sketches were built essentially as drawn.14
“[A museum in Manhattan] should transform the vitality of the street into the sincerity and profundity of art.�
Above: Architectural model, view of entrance. Photo by O. Winston. Below: The site in 1940. Photo from the New York Times. Below: Preliminary sketch. Image from Marcel Breuer Digital Archive.
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Marcel Breuer
design Breuer’s design for the Whitney is ultimately about two things: the streetscape of urban Manhattan, and the artwork that would be displayed inside. The constraints of a corner site, on Madison Avenue and East 75th Street, coupled with the influx of structures of glass and steel at the beginning of the 1960s, provided a unique design problem for a museum of American Art. Conceptually, the Whitney museum was the antithesis of all of these buildings. Rather than being transparent and sky-high, Breuer’s Whitney would provide a refuge from the city, cocooning its visitors within its robust walls. The stepped facade and moat, constructed of concrete and finished in granite tiles, are in sharp contrast to the surrounding brownstones of the neighborhood. However, rather than create animosity with its surroundings, the Whitney’s stark outline gives the effect of seclusion, which is further emphasized in the museum’s sunken sculpture garden.
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This idea of seclusion and a degree of separation from the the cityscape was an opportunity for Breuer to explore the sculptural qualities of concrete that he had been so interested in. The result, the Whitney’s pyramidal form and unmistakable protruding windows, makes the building as much a sculpture as the art on display in its interior.
Sectional perspective of the museum. Image from the Marcel Breuer Digital Archives.
“These textures... prove his mastery in skillfully combining materials to create contrasts between colours and tones, bright and dark, rough and smooth, hard and soft, natural and artificial.�
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Mathias Remmele
Left: Rendering depicting gallery interiors. Image from Marcel Breuer Digital Archives. Right: Preliminary floor plan. Image from Marcel Breuer Digital Archives.
“The trick... is the subtly scooped curve of a stone stair riser, the shape of a teak rail, or the juxtaposition of a rough-surfaced concrete wall with the extravagant luxury of massive, silky bronze doors�
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Ada Louise Huxtable
The experience of the museum’s design beings at the sidewalk, beckoning its visitors over the striking concrete bridge above a sunken courtyard. Through large glass doors is the lobby, which is lit both with natural light from the street, as well as hundreds of half-globe lamps hung from the ceiling. The materiality of the interior echoes the exterior granite facade with earthy materials of stone and wood, treated with Breuer’s masterful eye for juxtaposition.
interior spaces
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The interior spaces are collectively created to give deference to the art that lies inside them. Though the floors below grade are largely for art storage and back-of-house processes, Breuer’s addition of the sculpture garden allows sunlight to filter down into these spaces. The natural light, coupled with the enclosure of the courtyard, creates a space that is serene and distant from the rush of the surrounding city. This is one of the most unique spaces in the museum, and has a completely different experiential sense than the exterior of the Whitney.
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Moving up through the galleries, the design focuses on space and light, the two crucial aspects of any art museum. The concrete shell solves both of these at once- created a protected environment for the art on display while providing enough structure to span the galleries without columns. This, coupled with the distinctive coffered ceiling, makes for a totally flexible gallery space. The galleries’ display panels and installed lights can be moved at will, to create a unique layout for each exhibit that is shown in the space.
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Because the lighting for the spaces are all internal, windows were no longer required for light, freeing up their design to be incredibly expressive. Arguably the most distinct aspect of Breuer’s Whitney, the truncated pyramidal windows are angled to prevent direct sunlight affecting delicate works of art, but also providing views back into the city, giving visitors context of their surroundings while protecting them from the hectic streets below.
“It seems that almost everyone’s feelings have been violated by this brashly unconventional structure... Still, it fascinates.” Ada Louise Huxtable
reception | 1966
Even before it was completed, New Yorkers developed strong opinions on Breuer’s design for the Whitney. It’s dramatic form and austere material palette were not immediately appreciated by the general public. However, initial reviews from architectural critics appreciated the Whitney’s bold design and recognized it as a “superb” environment for art and those who come to view it.15 Describing the new Whitney as a “harshly handsome building” that “mass grows on one slowly, like a taste for olives or warm beer,” Ada Louise Huxtable nonetheless lauded Breuer’s design for its subtleties of design and detail. Though she also likened the sunken garden to a “jailyard,” Huxtable determined it to be a museological success in her critique for the New York Times in September of 1966.
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In his proposal for the design, Breuer asked: “What should a museum look like, a museum in Manhattan? Its form and its material should have identity and weight in the neighborhood of 50-story skyscrapers, of mile long bridges, in the midst of the dynamic jungle of our colorful city…. It should transform the vitality of the street into the sincerity and profundity of art.”16 Though it may have been “the most disliked building in New York”17, it seems that according to the critics of the day, Breuer’s design succeeded.
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In the 1980s, the Whitney Museum asked architect Michael Graves to design an expansion to Breuer’s Whitney. The first of his schemes, made public in 1985, was largely rejected by the public, who had grown affectionate toward Breuer’s design. Though it stands in contrast with the brownstones it abuts, “The brownstones help the Breuer building appear to exist in a world of its own.”18 Therefore, Graves’s proposal, which included the destruction of these brownstones and a post-modern addition which dwarfed Breuer’s design, was immediately decisive. Six months after the Whitney announced the expansion plans, Storefront for Art and Architecture held Before Whitney, an exhibition of alternative designs (shown at left), giving other architects the chance to explore the design challenge themselves. Though Graves made adjustments, submitting two more proposals before the end of the decade, the design was dropped from consideration. Following this failed attempt at expansion, the Whitney approached Rem Koolhaas, of OMA, in the 1990s to try his hand at the expansion design. OMA’s design left the brownstones alone, adding a structure above them. “They [the brownstones] were treated as an opportunity to display art within the scale of space for which it was created,” OMA said in its proposal. “The greatly expanded area for the permanent collection will be housed in the existing buildings. Pre-war art displayed in brownstones will recall the original West 8th Street Whitney. Post-war art, usually much bigger, would be displayed in the Breuer building.” This design was rejected
as well, and afterward, Renzo Piano proposed an elegant nine-story addition. The museum’s neighbors then filed suit to stop it, objecting to the city’s use of variances to achieve this height, and arguing that Piano’s tower had no place in a neighborhood of historic brownstones.19 This essentially ended the Whitney’s attempts to expand Breuer’s building, resulting in the new Whitney Museum (again designed by Renzo Piano), located in downtown Manhattan, along the High Line.
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reception | 1980s
“The Whitney is an idea, not a building.” a new whitney
The new Whitney was designed by architect Renzo Piano. Though it is much more massive in scale and footprint than Breuer’s Whitney, its material palette and use of glass makes the structure lighter in many ways. The idea of the sculpture courtyard from Breuer’s design is continued at each story of the new Whitney, with exterior patios featuring sculpture off of each gallery.
whitney.org
Though some of the formal gestures reference Breuer’s Whitney, Piano’s design is much more aware of its context and surroundings, and connects back to the city with its site at the base of the Highline in Lower Manhattan. The galleries also continue the open floor plan to give the most space to art exhibitions, but the new Whitney also has more space for engagement and public spaces. However, it has been criticized where Breuer’s design was praised for its scale to the human experience of viewing art. Regardless, it is the next iteration of Whitney museum and therefore is an interesting examination of a more contemporary art museum.
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Footnotes 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.
Breuer, Marcel, and Tician Papachristou. Marcel Breuer: New Buildings and Projects. Praeger, 1970. Hyman, Isabelle, and Marcel Breuer. Marcel Breuer, Architect: the Career and the Buildings. H.N. Abrams, 2001. Mathias Remmele, Marcel Breuer Design and Architecture - An Introduction Gatje, Robert F., et al. Marcel Breuer, a Memoir. Monacelli Press, 2000. Syracuse Breuer Archive Gatje, Robert F., et al. Marcel Breuer, a Memoir. Monacelli Press, 2000. Huxtable, Ada Louise. “Harsh and Handsome.” New York Times, 8 Sept. 1966. Gatje, Robert F., et al. Marcel Breuer, a Memoir. Monacelli Press, 2000. Huxtable, Ada Louise. “Harsh and Handsome.” New York Times, 8 Sept. 1966. Architecture View; The Whitney Paradox: To Add Is To Subtract, Paul Goldberger, NYTimes, 1989 Jacobs, Karrie. “An Ode to Breuer’s Brutalist Whitney as the Museum Relocates to Its New Downtown Hub.” architectmagazine.com.
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“The museum was becoming a complex, cubist spatial sculpture, a place of contrasting experiences: a lobby characterized by flow and spatial excitement, in which architecture, large-scale public sculpture, and the city itself all seemed to convene� 00
Barry Bergdoll
03 basic form
distance from street
ANALYSIS Marcel Breuer’s design for the Whitney Museum of American Art is at once a looming, brutal structure and a serene environment. Though it’s exterior appears harsh to the passerby, the design was created with the intention of protecting its visitors from the rapidity of urban life, providing an intimate space through with to experience art. It’s use of materials fulfills both Breuer’s sculptural aspirations as well as spatial, deftly bringing sunlight through to the lower levels while simultaneously filtering the city. It’s galleries, while compact, consider the artist with every decision, allowing the building to be backgrounded against its contents. Even the circulation is intimate and direct, utilising an elevator as the main mode of transport from gallery to gallery, bringing one right up to the exhibits on display. In this way, Breuer’s Whitney is a contradiction of assumptions- creating delicate, light-filled public spaces coupled with generously high-ceilinged, flexible galleries, all tucked inside a monolithic shell. It is this contradiction that drew me to this building and its enigmatic design.
stepped facade
bridge across courtyard
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Final form
Entry detail. Photo by Leonid Furmansky.
the whitney + public space The Whitney, as an art museum, is at an interesting overlap between public and private space. In many ways, it is designed as a private public space. Situated just blocks from Manhattan’s Central Park, and considering its modest footprint, the Whitney is not poised as a hub of public activity. However, the role it takes on as a haven from the surrounding urban fabric, though small in scale, is effective. Museums have a long history of being intertwined in public spaces, and frequently become an extension of that space. The Whitney is situated along an axis with a few of Manhattan’s most notable art museums, and is therefore interesting to examine alongside them. Because of its small footprint, its impact on the larger public realm may be diminished, but as WIlliam Whyte stated in his book, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces,
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Manhattan . Diagram not to scale.
“I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the larger number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or even the larger number who feel better about the city center for knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we will look.”20 It is important not to overlook the impact that a good public space, no matter how small, can have on its surrounding urban climate. The Whitney’s public spaces, while not perfect, add dimension and vivacity to its site.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Richard Morris Hunt, 1902,
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Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1959
Centre Pompidou, Renzo Piano, 1977
museums + movement As previously mentioned, art museums have long been seen as a continuation of public space, flowing through a building. In looking at Breuer’s approach to this, an examination of the architectural implications of this continuation in other museums provides an interesting contrast. Particularly relevant to the Whitney is the Metropolitan Museum Of Art, situated just four blocks away. The Met has a more direct relationship with Central Park because of its proximity, and has a straightforward, linear approach to it’s gallery circulation, as was customary of museums at the time of its construction.
“The museum was becoming a complex, cubist spatial sculpture, a place of contrasting experiences: a lobby characterized by flow and spatial excitement, in which architecture, large-scale public sculpture, and the city itself all seemed to convene”
An equally inventive approach to circulation and the continuity of public space is exhibited in Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’ design for the Centre Pompidou in Paris. This museum uses a series of escalators to create a cohesive transition from the public plaza on the ground floor to the galleries above. This scheme, combined with the structural exoskeleton the museum is known for, allow for open, flexible floor plans.
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Another museum in close proximity to the Whitney, both in location and in era, is the Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. In the Guggenheim, the circulation through the galleries becomes extremely curated, with the entire building becoming an expression of movement through the space. Completed in 1959, the Guggenheim museum’s central feature is a spiraling ramp, climbing toward the sky, bringing the galleries with it as it slopes upward. Though this created a unique experience for visitors, the museum’s sloped floors and walls make the display of art quite difficult, and the spiral atrium competes visually with the exhibits.
an urban filter
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Breuer’s approach to circulation is somewhere between these ideas, using a large passenger elevator as the main access to each gallery floor. This design decision sits at the intersection of economy of space and direct interaction with artwork, maintaining the intimacy of scale while efficiently moving visitors to and fro. Though Breuer’s use of the elevator as the entry point to the Whitney’s galleries may seem to create a broken path through the building, this experience is offset by the path from the lobby down into the sunken courtyard. It is here that Breuer shows off his attention to detail, creating an stair that pairs rough hewn concrete with silky bronze. These “close-to-earth” materials, as Breuer called them, are aptly placed as one descends below grade to the garden below.
“The museum was becoming a complex, cubist spatial sculpture, a place of contrasting experiences: a lobby characterized by flow and spatial excitement, in which architecture, large-scale public sculpture, and the city itself all seemed to convene”
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“The museum was becoming a complex, cubist spatial sculpture, a place of contrasting experiences: a lobby characterized by flow and spatial excitement, in which architecture, large-scale public sculpture, and the city itself all seemed to convene� a serene escape The most public space of the Whitney is its sunken courtyard, originally designed as a sculpture garden but now used as a patio for the restaurant in the base of the building. The exterior and interior, divided by massive glass windows, feel as though they merge into one space. This experience is amplified by the double height space above the main dining area, echoing the open air courtyard by its side.
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The effect of the space is a sheltered, peaceful environment untouched by the roar of traffic or bustle of the sidewalk. The path over the bridge and down the staircase filters these things from the surrounding atmosphere, bringing visitors down into a sun-dappled, tree lined space, a serene escape from the street above.
space of art
One of the major drivers of Breuer’s design was designing spaces for art, particularly with the contemporary artists of the Whitney collection. Through his education and experience at the Bauhaus, Breuer was well acquainted with the work of modernist painters and sculptors, and even dabbled in painting himself. Because of this, the gallery spaces and sculpture garden are extremely precise and considerate in their flexibility for the art of the day. This was in unison with the Whitney’s own set of ideals about American art, and Breuer’s building became the backdrop for the Whitney museum biennial exhibitions, which over the years have helped bring some of America’s best known artists to prominence, as was the case with Georgia O’Keefe and Jackson Pollock.
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The biennial, though intended as a display of American contemporary art, is also an opportunity for artists, art, and the architecture of the museum to collide. Many artists have used the building as part of their artwork, including using one of Breuer’s distinct windows as a camera obscura. The biennials’ artworks have been influenced by Breuer’s sculptural design, as well as the legacy of the Whitney itself.
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Left: Sheila Hicks, Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column (2014). Photo by Rozalia Jovanovic. Top Right: Zoe Leonard, Camera Obscura. Photo by Bill Jacobson. Bottom Left: Robert Irwin, Scrim Veil - Black Rectangle (1977.) Bottom Right:(both): 2010 Biennial Photos by Sheldan Collins.
Footnotes 20.
Whyte, William Hollingsworth. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Project for Public Spaces, 1980.
forboding
engaging
fixed
flexible
confined
continuous
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narrow
open
An art museum should be an extension of the public sphere. In its current state, Breuer’s design has acknowledged this in some small ways, but its major public space, the sunken courtyard, is part of what distances it from its urban context. Instead, the public space of the museum should be intimately tied with the exterior experience of the space. Breuer’s design allowed for voluminous galleries with flexible walls, which was innovative at the design’s inception. A contemporary art museum should expand upon this with spaces for installations, performances, film screenings, and any other artistic media to be displayed and interacted with. This too should be tied closely with program to engage with viewers in new ways, whether it is through community engagement programs or through technological advancements. The sequence of gallery viewing at Breuer’s Whitney is restricted by the use of elevators to get between galleries. Though this streamlines circulation and creates a “pure” art-viewing experience, it fragments the experience of the museum. This provides opportunity for a new circulation system to be introduced, one that enhances the public aspirations of the museum and continues engagement with the surrounding urban fabric. As an improved circulation system would allow access back to the building’s surroundings, the facade should allow for this as well. Breuer’s Whitney strategically uses openings in its heavy façade to bring light and views to the people inside. Though there is richness in this constraint, it emphasizes the massive, cave-like structure. Increased access to daylight and more transparent materials not only could transform the interior experience, but make the entire museum more welcoming.
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critique
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"Art is an emotional experience. As an architect, what you have to do is to create a place where that emotion becomes more intense. It’s very important that, from time to time, you come back to reality and you put yourself in a relationship with the people around you, or the city." Renzo Piano
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PROPOSALS
As a product of its time, Breuer’s design of the Whitney Museum responded to its context, the program’s needs, and Breuer’s view of the future. This makes it a fascinating starting point for examining how an art museum should be designed for today, and how it can transform to fit the needs of its urban surroundings and community. Breuer’s Whitney is an example of a self-contained building, one which is indifferent to its context. It’s structure and material palette make it at once a forboding presence on the street and a sheltered intimate space for viewing art. While these attributes served the Whitney well for decades, at a certain point the restrictive nature of the building could no longer satisfy the needs of an ever-expanding contemporary collection.
Photographer unknown.
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How can an art museum engage its urban context, rather than shutting it out? Can an art museum satisfy it’s program’s requirements of flexibility and expansion?
sculpture garden
Breuer’s design of the sunken sculpture garden is the most overt public space in the museum, and has some relationship to its urban context. If the sculpture garden was expanded upon, it could become a ribbon of interaction with the public sphere and urban context. It would also allow for a smoother transition between galleries, and even could become a space for installations and exhibits itself.
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This concept expands on the old Whitney’s architectural engagement with its artists. Additionally, the new ribbon of sculpture and public space could reach out into the surrounding city at a larger scale to grow community involvement and impact the city as a whole.
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gallery kinetic
The Whitney’s galleries were designed both as rigid boxes and flexible, open plan space. With this proposal, the idea of gallery flexibility is expanded in scale. The galleries themselves become the flexible aspect of the musuem, becoming able to transform and activate the space between them. While the Whitney’s design leaves the space left over by the form of the galleries open, now it becomes programmable. Each variation and combination of gallery placement creates an opportunity for different uses, which can then change based on the exhibit being shown, the community’s needs, or special events or performances that may take place.
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the oculus
Although Breuer’s windows in the Whitney are incredibly precise in their relationship to the interior program and exterior context, they also emphasize the rigid and enclosing structure of the building. In contrast to this, using the main oculus as an idea for the whole museum can open up the museum and its contents to the public sphere. It becomes more welcoming and engaging to the surrounding community.
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This proposal plays with scale and light as ways to both frame the interior of the building and build a relationship with the street in a more transparent manner.
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spheres of influence
The Whitney was designed as almost a fortress of art, which created a unique experience for viewing art but left little room for expansion, leading to its new location designed by Renzo Piano. Though this solves the Whitney’s space issue for the time being, how will the Whitney evolve in the future?
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This proposal is an exploration of this issue, but also a statement to the public nature of the art museum. A number of qualities of contemporary art museum architecture and programming make what should be a more public experience inaccessible to many. In response, this concept imagines a way that a gallery or exhibition can expand its sphere of influence, both to its surrounding communities and to those much farther away.
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works cited Biddle, Flora Miller. The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made: a Family Memoir. Arcade, 2017. Breuer, Marcel, and Tician Papachristou. Marcel Breuer: New Buildings and Projects. Praeger, 1970. Fazzare, Elizabeth. “Courting Controversy: 50 Years on, the Breuer Building Endures as the Ultimate Brutalist Icon - Architizer Journal.” Architizer, 27 Sept. 2016, architizer.com/blog/inspiration/industry/marcel-breuers-whitney/. Gatje, Robert F., et al. Marcel Breuer, a Memoir. Monacelli Press, 2000. Goldberger, Paul. Architecture View; The Whitney Paradox: To Add Is To Subtract, NYTimes, 1989. Huxtable, Ada Louise. “Harsh and Handsome.” New York Times, 8 Sept. 1966. “History of the Whitney.” Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, www.whitney.org/about/history Hyman, Isabelle, and Marcel Breuer. Marcel Breuer, Architect: the Career and the Buildings. H.N. Abrams, 2001. Jacobs, Karrie. “An Ode to Breuer’s Brutalist Whitney as the Museum Relocates to Its New Downtown Hub.” Architectmagazine.com, 12 Sept. 2014, www.architectmagazine.com/design/an-ode-to-breuers-brutalist-whitney-as-the-museum-relocates-to-its-new-downtown-hub_o. Kimmelman, Michael. “A New Whitney.” New York Times, 19 Apr. 2015. Sullivan, Dan. “Whitney Museum Has Gala Opening.” New York Times, 28 Sept. 1966. Vegesack, Alexander von., and Mathias Remmele. Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture. Vitra Design Museum, 2003.
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Whyte, William Hollingsworth. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Project for Public Spaces, 1980.