I’ve always wanted to write on this building, solomon r. guggenheim museum since last year- but since it’s reflected in a lecture, I’ve decided today is the day.. be reminded that this guggenheim museum is different from guggenheim bilbao by frank gehry- this solomon r. guggenheim museum is located at new york, designed by the mighty o legendary frank lloyd wright
from the exterior, this museum looks like a giant white tea cup, with ribbon curled around the slightly cylindrical cup. this reflects the frank lloyd wright’s ‘organic architecture’ very well, a huge contrast with surroundings of Manhattan modern, international-style buildings, though in my eyes it might not be extremely ‘organic’, compared with other buildings with this term. wright designed this for 16 years and finally done in 1959, in fact it opened to public six months after frank lloyd wright’s death. it was before wright done 700 sketches, within 6 different sets of drawings for the building.
I know what is it in your mind right now, this is frank lloyd wright’s ‘last monument’
looking up from the museum ground floor.
nevertheless, this building gathered so much criticism from artists, with an art critic john canaday stating “A war between architecture and painting, in which both come out badly maimed.” the building has been designed as a “one great space on a continuous floor,” with a gigantic, uncoiling recessed space that spiralled outward as it rose, as a long continous ramps of one-quarter mile in length, sloping at 3%, in 6 stories and ends with a great rotunda of glass dome, 92 ft away from ground.
however, paintings were to be mounted along the slightly concave wall along the ramps, which is neither flat or vertical. paintings have to be tilted backwards, while it was said that lighting from the skylights, plus the reflection from the louvers- but instead, the rotunda with it’s overbright lighting, heavily shadowed the ramp by the cantilevered reinforced concrete structure..
on the other hand, wright dictates that the mounting of the paintings were as if ‘on the artist’s easel… the net result of such construction is greater repose.”
the result will be “an atmosphere of the unbroken wave—no meeting of the eye with angular or abrupt changes of form.” he added. however, painters opposed the idea of mounting their artworks at such way with 21 artists signed a letter to protest their works to be displayed at the museum as it will harm the painting canvases. even before that, the building proposal was called as “the snail,” an “indigestible hot cross bun,” a “washing machine,” and also “an inverted oatmeal dish.”
still, wright replied this museum would make the nearby “metropolitan museum of art looked as if it is a protestant barn”
spiralling ramp agenda; being one of the last works of frank lloyd wright, one critic added “less a museum than it is a monument to Frank Lloyd Wright.” originally the ramp was designed that the observers would have to take the elevator to the top most floor, and walking through the ramp, spiralling downwards along the paintings mounted on the walls. however, few elements of wright were never used as planned, the museum director planned that visitors would have to walk the ramp upwards
also, other good concept of wright was being cancelled out, quoted by this excerpt of time magazine
To fit the museum to his tastes, Ultra-modernist Sweeney had used flat white paint and light to cancel out a good many Wright concepts. Canvases were mounted unframed on rods projecting from the dazzling white wall. Bright, fluorescent lights were installed in the side skylights, canceling out Wright’s sunlight but creating a brilliant background wall of light. As a result, the paintings seem to hover weightlessly in luminous space. “We are not trying to show nature effects in sunlight, but paintings,” Sweeney stated. “This is the most spectacular museum interior architecturally in this country. But my job is to show off a magnificent collection to its fullest.” Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright, on hand for the opening, doubted that her husband would have shown up, even if he had been alive. “He was too great an artist,” she stated firmly, “to forgive the slightest transgression in a creative work.”
despite all the criticism on the solomon r. guggenheim museum, it was all but legend that wright left to us, as architects.
“The most beautiful building in America,” critic Emily Genauer in the New York Herald Tribune.
“A building that should be put in a museum to show how mad the 20th Century is,” the New York Daily Mirror.
“Mr. Wright’s greatest building, New York’s greatest building.” said another legend architect Philip Johnson
plus one; there was an addition by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects
plus two; the building became endangered by cracks of time and weather
recommended for further understanding, look up sketchup model at http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=f84d6f3ee04ec299a555edfb79661dcc
some interesting sections;
an architectural student from malaysia, studying in limkokwing university of creative technology, pursuing his degree in architectural science
