The Whitney Museum of American Art on Gansevoort Street, which opened in 2015, fulfilling the growing needs of Whitney, was designed by Renzo Piano. This structure is one of the less abstract and the less organic Museums of this century, but definitely, it’s got more than what a camera can capture. Rather than crafting photogenic facades, the architects have focused on weaving the museum as part of the Meatpacking District in constant dialogue with the urban fabric for the benefit of the community.
The Centre Pompidou, one of the renowned works of Renzo Piano, highlights his affinity for high–tech style, exposing services and circulation elements and embodying public spaces on the ground floor. Even in the case of the Whitney Museum, Renzo Piano incorporates his signature style with a transparent ground floor interface, emphasizing the museum as a public building and encouraging public interaction with the building. Furthermore, the circulation elements, including lifts and stairs, were located in a visually clear zone. The Museum received LEED Gold Certification for its advanced environmentally friendly envelope design, green roofs, and mechanical and electrical solutions.
From Row Houses in Greenwich Village to the Breuer building and finally, Paino’s Whitney Museum NYC
Paino’s Whitney on Gansevoort is not the first dedicated building in the history of the Whitney, as it boasts a rich history with a myriad of host structures. Initially, it was Mrs. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s passion for art that led to the development of an art club, a space for artists to collaborate and discuss approximately in the 1920s, paving the way for establishing a museum in 1930 in three-row houses of the Greenwich Village.
As the collections grew to approximately 2000 artworks, a new facility was needed to house them. Subsequently, the Breuer building on Madison Avenue, designed by Michal Breuer, was opened in 1961 to house the growing collections.
But gradually the artworks outgrew the Breuer building as well. Now, the Whitney is home to almost 19000 modern and contemporary American artworks. This is one of the primary reasons for the inception of Paino’s Whitney Museum, which opened in 2015.
From Inception to Site Selection of the Whitney Museum
Architect Renzo Piano clarified to David Plick in an interview that the project was initially conceived to be only an expansion project. The clients and the architects intended to merely add more gallery space to the Breuer Building in Uptown.
However, during the design stages, it seemed as if the expansion project was inefficient as, despite high building costs and complicated solutions, it didn’t provide enough gallery space. Thus, a need to identify a new site to build a new structure to continue the legacy was found.
The clients approached the architects again with three sites located in Chelsea, as they wanted to shift the location Downtown, where Mrs. Whitney had laid the foundation for the museum. Renzo Piano found the site on Gansevoort Street to be the best, especially attracted by the Highline – a repurposed elevated urban park.
Whitney Museum: Inspiration, Concept, and Form Development
The character of the site and its surroundings is quite complex. For instance, the expanse of the highway and Hudson River on the west is in complete juxtaposition with the coziness of the streets in the fragmented Chelsea city on the east. Further, the industrial language of the Highline, the layered architectural past of the Meatpacking District, and the changing nature of the site all only added to the complication.
From the textured site on Gansevoort, the Highline that borders the museum, and the street life, to the Breuer building, the legacy of the Whitney Museum, and its Artworks, everything offers plenty of instances to steal inspiration from.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the building’s form is nothing but a direct response to the site it sits in, the buildings, the streets, and the river it overlooks. The building appears different when viewed from different sides.
This eight-story structure is an asymmetrical composition of several blocks – some taller, some flat, some with angular facades, and others smaller than the one sitting below – stacked one above the other in a staggered fashion, mimicking large steps offering plenty of outdoor space.
The facade is clad in steel and glass, reflecting the industrial nature of the site. With the Hudson River as its backdrop, the outdoor terraces, steel hand railings, and external stairs make the building not only look like an anchored ship but also offer a spatial experience similar to that on cruise ships when occupying the outdoor galleries.
Reading and responding to the surroundings
Intending to reduce the massiveness of the form, reflect the fragmentation of Chelsea city, and allow the sunlight to hit the Highline, the step-like configuration descending towards the east was adopted. Protruding steel terraces with exposed steel I-beam staircase are featured on the east façade, aligning with the language of the Highline sitting in front of it. In a way, the Highline merges with the cascading museum terraces when viewed from a distance.
Leveraging the chance of being viewed from the wider perspective of the Hudson River and cars on the highway, the west façade shows some depth. The West façade is a balanced arrangement of obliquely angled faces of the building and the slender tall block that hosts the staircase that runs through the height of the building. Besides, the west façade also features the glass box overlooking Hudson from which the tall multifaceted opaque block adjoined by a slender tall glass curtain wall rises.
The Architects have responded to the changing nature of the surroundings by allocating space in the North for future expansion instead of building on the whole plot area, unlike the Breuer building, where expansion was impossible. Further, the northern façade is raw, exposing the technical elements in honor of the industrial past of the Meatpacking district.
Similarly, in an attempt to reflect the heaviness of the large buildings on the Southern side of the Museum, the architects have left the museum’s southern facade opaque. This, in turn, protects the building from the harsh sunlight. Each façade tells a different story, similar to the context.
Spatial Components and Circulation in the Museum
Visitors enter the building through a ‘largo,’ an outdoor public plaza partially shaded by the cantilevered ceiling above. According to the architect, it was essential to draw the public towards the building and set the ground floor aside for the community, unlike in the Breuer building. Hence, the ground floor features a bakery, a souvenir shop, and a lobby, all encased in a glass box, enhancing the visual and physical permeability.
As the museum is spread both vertically and horizontally and contains both public and administration or service zones, it is essential to draw a clear boundary without intimidating the visitors. To solve this problem, the architects have cleverly allocated the core containing elevators and stairs in the center of the building splitting the building into the curatorial and administrative zones on the north and the gallery and public zones on the south. This further ensures that the vertical circulation is visible from the entrance.
The galleries are the heart of any museum, and Piano’s Whitney boasts a range of galleries spread across the third, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth floors, besides outdoor galleries. The permanent collections are exhibited on the sixth and seventh floors with an extension of outdoor terraces that feature exhibits in addition to providing exclusive views of the Highline, Meatpacking District, and Hudson River. The gallery on the third floor is relatively small.
The exhibition space on the topmost floor is the only gallery that is notably naturally lit due to the sawtooth skylights. This studio gallery is also connected to a café, the open-air galleries, and staircases that connect to the open-air galleries above and below. One of the incredible spaces in the Museum is the art display zone on the fifth floor. It covers a massive area of 18,000 square feet, but not a single column interrupts the space!
In addition to permanent exhibition spaces to host over 20,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, videos, and artifacts, the museum serves a complete cultural, educational, and curatorial ensemble.
The Museum features a 170-seat theater, classrooms, an education center, seminar rooms, and a library on the third floor. Offices and other supporting spaces, such as the packing and unpacking room, storage, multiuse black box, etc., are spread throughout the building’s height on all floors.
Making up the Museum’s Mass – Glass, Steel, and Concrete
The composite steel and concrete structure allowed for long-span gallery spaces throughout the building, while the concrete core strengthened the building laterally. Specifically, a truss system was employed to realize the column-free gallery on the fifth floor.
The building was envisioned three-dimensionally to create the steel sheets and panels for the multifaceted and inclined blocks of the museum. The glazed façades supported by steel stick systems adorned the facades of the museum. The precast panels and steel panels for cladding were hung from the top and braced laterally on each floor.
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Renzo Piano on the Design of Whitney
“The design for the new museum emerges equally from a close study of the Whitney’s needs and from a response to this remarkable site. We wanted to draw on its vitality and, at the same time, enhance its rich character. The first big gesture, then, is the cantilevered entrance, which transforms the area outside the building into a large, sheltered public space.
At this gathering place beneath the High Line, visitors will see through the building entrance and the large windows on the west side to the Hudson River beyond. Here, all at once, you have the water, the park, the powerful industrial structures, and the exciting mix of people, brought together and focused by this new building and the experience of art.” says Renzo Piano.
Whitney Museum Project Details:
Project Name: The Whitney Museum of American Art
Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop & Cooper Robertson
Client: The Whitney Museum of American Art
Location: Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC
Photography: Nic Lehoux and Jeff Goldberg/Esto
Video: The Whitney Museum of American Art
Drawings: Renzo Piano Building Workshop
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