Guggenheim NY

I was in J. J. as a student in the seventies and like most other colleges of architecture at the time, 'Fountainhead' was much talked about novel of the day. Howard Roark is a typical Ayn Rand hero, but the philosophy he talks about is all borrowed from Frank Lloyd Wright. (FLW)How many students of architecture saw FLW as a hero is a moot point-we were all zapped by the character build-up of the hero by Ayn Rand.

The problem with Ayn Rand or for that matter anybody who wrote about FLW is a problem of straight-jacketing. FLW was a genius, bracketing him into an 'ism' is meaningless. I have seen him listed as a part of 'Art & crafts' because he fits very well in the chronology, and his prairie houses praised as a return to the craft tradition. I have also seen him described as the father of the modern movement-celebrating the machine age. For those who are aware that 'Arts & crafts' was a movement based on nostalgia and was opposed to the changes brought in by industrialisation would see the contradiction here. There has been-to the best of my knowledge-very little attempt by historians to clarify this confusion.

When I visited Guggenheim Museum in New York, all this came back to me, when I tried to explain my son Pranav (who is an IT Consultant & not an architect), the importance of this particular building in the history of architecture. We had just been to Buffalo, where we visited the 'Martin House' by FLW, and the contrast in the actual form of the two buildings by FLW could not be greater.

It is very difficult to perceive that the Guggenheim Museum is designed by the same person who did the prairie houses, but this is true of most of the work of FLW. If we compare this with his contemporaries & even the great architects of the later period, most of them are known to be fond of certain configurations of built form/detailing/colour/texture & so on, which they have repeated from one project to another. What somebody would call a 'signature tune'. FLW seems to be content without any such thing.

What struck me however, was the universal character of the form of Guggenheim. Here (rarely for FLW) was a building conceived purely as an art form-independent of the context. It looks now completely in contrast with its surroundings. If you discount the great central park (which you can not see for the compound wall anyway), all the buildings in the layout are strictly rectangular, the layout itself is the typical grid-iron of all American cities, and even the terrain is reasonably level, so there is no change of scene. It would seem that FLW was consciously seeking a contrast but knowing that he tried with the octagon first, his curves must have come in as design development and not as a basic idea of contrasting form of curved shell.

Incidentally, when I visited Guggenheim, they were celebrating 50th anniversary of the building (It was built in 1959), and had put up the exhibition of FLW's work in the Museum. It contained drawings, photographs & models and many small sketches & perspectives done by FLW. They had also on display many working drawings done in FLW's office.

The building is a continuous curved ramp making up a total of five levels, with a huge skylight on top-and what I wanted to check is whether the continuous ramp makes viewing of objects difficult. It does. Though the diameter is very large, there is a sensation of a slope which is not convenient at all when you are trying to view an object of art-or for that matter any exhibit.
This of-course is not the only problem with the building. The floor slopes up to make way for a skylight below-making approach to the exhibits awkward-but this may have been a good thing too-preventing public access to the exhibits.

But the curved wall does pose a problem for exhibits like paintings which are flat and anchoring them to the wall is an issue. I was told by a gentle curator that for each exhibition they drill holes in the curved wall anew, and after the exhibition make it up by cement plaster. Which means that a part of wall is destroyed & touched up again for each new exhibition & this has been going on for the last fifty years. It is a wonder that the building shell has survived all this for so long. And it is not only a question of physical damage to the building-it is criminal to treat so sacred a building in such a cruel fashion.

I put this to the curator, and he accepted the fact but shrugged his shoulders in the typical American fashion and said that you must deal with the situation in the best practical fashion. i was wondering why they could not fit in permanent nails so that the walls need not be drilled for every new exhibition, but the idea seemed foreign to him. (It was-I talked to the Asian guard there, who concurred with me-it is only Asians, who seem to see the presence of God in the inanimate!)

The skylight in the centre was too big, and I was wondering the effect of heat built-up. The museum is now air conditioned and they have solved the problem of heat built up by covering the sky-light from top. Not only that, they have also covered the strip of skylight all along the external wall (which gives a distinct shape to the building) and have placed artificial lighting below for the exhibits. This makes the original design redundant, but then skylight is not a good thing for any museum exhibit. The quality of light changes throughout the day, and you can not direct the light to the painting anyway. It could only serve as a general purpose lighting. Even this general purpose lighting, if done in excess, defeats the purpose of the museum-in many museums of this kind you can not see the exhibits properly.

On the other side, the parapet wall is a bit low considering the height-it feels unsafe near the edge. Moreover, the parapet curves outward to confirm with the overall design pattern of each upper floor coming in a bit, which enhances the feeling.

How can the building be a monument to the modern architecture with all these defects? Or is it? Is it a metaphor for all the 20th century buildings obsessed with the form and not the function? And this too, in building designed by FLW? Are we reading the signs right?

I know the building is criticised for these and many such flaws and still stands a testimony to the philosophy of FLW. Like the Chandigarh Assembly building-it paved the way for a new aesthetics for modern architecture. The question is-if it does all this-what do you read in the building now as a student of architecture? I think we need a more detailed discussion on the meaning of Guggenheim Museum in the present context.