sw/tch : Guggenheim museum competition
2018 entry
“I have found it hard to look a snail in the face since I stole the idea of his house—from his back”
- Frank Lloyd Wright; The Triumph of Frank Lloyd Wright by Aurthur Lubow -Smithsonian Magazine
- Frank Lloyd Wright; The Triumph of Frank Lloyd Wright by Aurthur Lubow -Smithsonian Magazine
This competition entry explores architectural concepts from the original Guggenheim and re-imagines them in a new form. These major design features include a unique relationship with the urban fabric, formal links to Nature and a Prescribed Circulation.
Most of the buildings lining 5th Avenue are beige ornamented boxes, gladly succumbing to the rule of the all-powerful New York City Block and relinquishing their agency to the excitement of Central Park. Until, that is, one reaches the Guggenheim. The Guggenheim’s spiral shape is iconic and captivating. The organic helical façade effectively snaps one from the repetition of traditional buildings and temporarily draws one’s attention from the beauty of the park to the beauty of its architecture. Certainly, the organic form of the building implies that it is apart of the park and apart of nature. This defiance of the city’s natural order in favor of Nature is even more striking in plan where the round gallery stands out strikingly within the rectangular city fabric. Guggenheim 2 seeks to defy the urban fabric and unite with nature as well, but takes a different approach. The building levitates itself off the ground in an act of defiance against the surround traditional urban context. A shallow flowing reflection pool springs up underneath, alluding to Central Park and conceptually pulling the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir across the street.
The most celebrated feature of the original Guggenheim is of course the continuous spiraling gallery. As opposed to an experience of meandering exploration offered by most art galleries, Frank Lloyd Wright’s gallery has a prescriptive forced experience. The ramp gives visitors a sense that there is a meaning and progression to the arrangement of the art; a curated experience with curated art. Helical Halls seeks to combine the idea of a sequential gallery experience with the spatial curatorial freedoms of a more traditional open space gallery. It is conceived of as sequence of galleries descending downwards in a spiral. As they spiral the galleries collide with one another, setting up a number of intriguing spatial conditions for guest to enjoy, as well as vantage points from which to view the exhibition.
Guests descend from an open public plaza into a subterranean lobby and are ushered to the top of the building in extra-large elevators. They then descend sequentially from one gallery to the next. This spiraling (helical) sequence, is reflected in the expressive pattern on the exterior façade where Fiberglass Reinforced Concrete Panels alternate size and pattern to emphasize the spiraling circulation. The spiraling cube shaped galleries give artists curators the option of creating a cohesive experience throughout the museum or dividing it thematically into separate exhibition halls. Just as in the Guggenheim, guests are as equally excited by the circulation as they are the exhibition, as they transverse suspended catwalks and peer through a maze art and architecture. Glass staircases lead visitors down though each gallery,
reorienting them with peaks of Central Park and reinforcing the building’s ever important link to nature.
reorienting them with peaks of Central Park and reinforcing the building’s ever important link to nature.