Defying Gravity
June 2008
The British Museum’s glass-covered Great Court, created by Sir Norman Foster, has a geometric structural surface. This pattern is apparent in other Foster designs: Hearst Tower in New York and his renowned Swiss Re London Headquarters, also known as the "Gherkin" for its rounded and tapered shape resembling a pickle. Andrew McClellan characterizes the design as a "transcendent global embrace…the domed courtyard unites visitors from disparate lands with elemental sculptures from the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Rome, India, Assyria, Europe (Celts) and Oceania (Easter Island)."
The classical structures housed under the Great Court glass roof are bathed in shadows. Covering an area of 6,000 square meters and weighing 800 tons, the glass roof is supported by 12 kilometers of steel. It is composed of 3,312 individual panels of glass, each one a unique triangle. The 3,312 panels of glass are screenprinted with small dots on 50 percent of their surface, a technique known as "fritting" that filters ultraviolet rays and reduces solar heat gain.
Museum architects sometimes charge themselves with creating designs that can serve as immediately recognizable symbols for the institution. An example of this approach is Robert A.M. Stern’s International Quilt Study Center and Museum, at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, which was dedicated in March 2008. The 2,300 quilts constiute the largest collection in the world, spanning four centuries of quilting. The stitched-together glass wall at the front elevation of the structure is a reference to the artworks and activities within. Although purposely designed as a quilt museum, the building’s precise forms, proportions and overall design would allow it to house any type of art. One effect of the architect’s design is to elevate a "folk art" form to the level of fine art. Maureen Ose, the museum’s communications coordinator, points out that quilts, just like more mainstream art media, tell stories of their place and time.
The Akron Art Museum embraces not only the 21st century but the 19th and 20th, as well. The original building is the city’s former main post office, a 21,000-square-foot brick and limestone structure designed in 1899 in the Italian Renaissance revival style. In the mid-1980s, when it was converted, it won awards for adaptive reuse as a museum.
In 2007, Coop Himmelblau Architects, a recognized Viennese firm founded by Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky, created the design for the spectacular glass and steel addition. The "Crystal" lobby—three stories of glass and steel in the new John S. and James L. Knight Building—soars toward the heavens, integrating shards of space and defying gravity. Prix reinforces my own sentiments about gravity and current design: "The dream of the architect is to get rid of gravity." A 52-foot cantilever floats over the "Gallery Box," while "Roof Cloud," a 327-foot-long steel cantilever, marries the old building, the street and the new building.
The Akron Art Museum addition is Coop Himmelblau’s first public project in the United States and received a 2005 American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum. "Although the new facility has a hefty lighting bill each month and could have been bigger, it is both functional and glamorous," says Mitchell Kahan, the museum’s director and CEO. "It is worth a special trip to view the collection of art from national, international and regional artists, folk artists and outsider artists, as well as masterpieces by Chuck Close and Donald Judd."
The new Institute of Contemporary Art at Boston, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Perry Dean Rogers Partners, and the Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava, employ different methods to achieve the same result, the one pioneered by Wright: defying gravity. The ICA, winner of the 2007 Harleston Parker Medal, features an almost solid rectangular museum box not only supported by a glass wall but also cantilevered over it. It forces visitors to suspend their disbelief and deal with the fact that you cannot see the underlying steel structure that supports the cantilever. They are constantly reminded that something massive hovers above.
The classical structures housed under the Great Court glass roof are bathed in shadows. Covering an area of 6,000 square meters and weighing 800 tons, the glass roof is supported by 12 kilometers of steel. It is composed of 3,312 individual panels of glass, each one a unique triangle. The 3,312 panels of glass are screenprinted with small dots on 50 percent of their surface, a technique known as "fritting" that filters ultraviolet rays and reduces solar heat gain.
Museum architects sometimes charge themselves with creating designs that can serve as immediately recognizable symbols for the institution. An example of this approach is Robert A.M. Stern’s International Quilt Study Center and Museum, at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, which was dedicated in March 2008. The 2,300 quilts constiute the largest collection in the world, spanning four centuries of quilting. The stitched-together glass wall at the front elevation of the structure is a reference to the artworks and activities within. Although purposely designed as a quilt museum, the building’s precise forms, proportions and overall design would allow it to house any type of art. One effect of the architect’s design is to elevate a "folk art" form to the level of fine art. Maureen Ose, the museum’s communications coordinator, points out that quilts, just like more mainstream art media, tell stories of their place and time.
The Akron Art Museum embraces not only the 21st century but the 19th and 20th, as well. The original building is the city’s former main post office, a 21,000-square-foot brick and limestone structure designed in 1899 in the Italian Renaissance revival style. In the mid-1980s, when it was converted, it won awards for adaptive reuse as a museum.
In 2007, Coop Himmelblau Architects, a recognized Viennese firm founded by Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky, created the design for the spectacular glass and steel addition. The "Crystal" lobby—three stories of glass and steel in the new John S. and James L. Knight Building—soars toward the heavens, integrating shards of space and defying gravity. Prix reinforces my own sentiments about gravity and current design: "The dream of the architect is to get rid of gravity." A 52-foot cantilever floats over the "Gallery Box," while "Roof Cloud," a 327-foot-long steel cantilever, marries the old building, the street and the new building.
The Akron Art Museum addition is Coop Himmelblau’s first public project in the United States and received a 2005 American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum. "Although the new facility has a hefty lighting bill each month and could have been bigger, it is both functional and glamorous," says Mitchell Kahan, the museum’s director and CEO. "It is worth a special trip to view the collection of art from national, international and regional artists, folk artists and outsider artists, as well as masterpieces by Chuck Close and Donald Judd."
The new Institute of Contemporary Art at Boston, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Perry Dean Rogers Partners, and the Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava, employ different methods to achieve the same result, the one pioneered by Wright: defying gravity. The ICA, winner of the 2007 Harleston Parker Medal, features an almost solid rectangular museum box not only supported by a glass wall but also cantilevered over it. It forces visitors to suspend their disbelief and deal with the fact that you cannot see the underlying steel structure that supports the cantilever. They are constantly reminded that something massive hovers above.
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