The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has been the core of academic research and studies at several architecture universities in India. Students from top architecture colleges in India get a chance to visit “The Guggenheim”, as it is popularly called, in New York City. For architects, the Guggenheim museum is a temple of architectural innovations and structural designs.
Located at 1071 Fifth Avenue, corner of East 89th Street, in Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighbourhood, the Guggenheim museum is a prized monument of New York and the US. It is built by architectural legend, Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed and developed over one thousand breathtaking structures in less than 70 years across the United States.
The Guggenheim is Frank Lloyd’s only art museum as is the permanent home to a wide-ranging and ever-expanding collection of modern and contemporary architectures, featuring some of the best exhibitions for architects throughout the year. Here are the top five best architecture innovations ever exhibited at the Guggenheim art museum.
#1 Arata Isozaki’s Rotunda Transformation
Japenese architect Arata Isozaki gave a minimalistic approach to the ramps of the rotunda in the Guggenheim museum. Being the architect of the Guggenheim SoHo, which is a branch of the Guggenheim Museum located in South Manhattan, he established some dramatic moments in the rotunda by designing the four statuesque banners. These sculptural banners were able to vertically slice through the ramps of the rotunda. These banners were supported by smooth white vitrines, and this system has a cohesion that helped in displaying a variety of architectural works.
#2 Gae Aulenti’s Italian Metamorphosis
Gae Aulenti, the prolific architect from Italy, is best known for her conversion of a train station into the main hall of the well-known Paris museum called Musée d’Orsay. At the Guggenheim, she designed and developed a huge sculptural installation called The Italian Metamorphosis. This structure made up of multiple triangular wire-frame structures. It was built in a way that it projected into the museum’s central open space or void. When visitors walked up the rotunda’s ramps, the shapes of this structure appeared to transform as their visuals tend to overlap and collapse simultaneously.
#3 Moving Pictures by Lise Anne Couture and Hina Rashid
Architects Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture, who gained popularity for their Asymptote Architecture, had experimented with some playful materials while designing their project called the Moving Pictures. This project was Guggenheim’s unique architectural exhibition that displayed works of video, film, and photography. The architects added tall, inclined walls on the top ramp of the museum. These walls were clad with blue pyramid foam, which appeared bright at both, day and night. This structure also created a miniature cave-like theatre and transformed the bay galleries of the Guggenheim museum.
#4 Brazil Body and Soul by Jean Nouvel
French architect, Jean Nouvel developed his dramatic piece of architectural design called, the Brazil Body and Soul. This work involved painting the rotunda and revamping it into an all-black model. The architect also installed a huge light projection overlooking the space. The most remarkable object in the architecture was an 18th–century cedar altarpiece, carved and glided as a monument. It loomed over the floor of the rotunda. It was big enough to touch halfway to the oculus of the Guggenheim.
#5 Bays by Meejin Yoon and Enrique Norton
The materials used by Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture in their work (Moving Picture) provided an ascending bold design and soundproofing acoustics, which were later employed by architects, Enrique Norton and Meejin Yoon. Norton was popular for the Ten Arquitectos while Yoon is known for Höweler + Yoon. Collectively, their work at the Guggenheim was called The Aztec Empire. It enveloped the bays of the museum, creating snake-like walls that accommodated artefacts of varying sizes. The design of this work required a high-range lighting and humidity control. The coverings were absorbing the light as well as the sound, which effectively made the Guggenheim museum “mute”.
The above five distinctive architectural works of these popular interior designers and architects delivered highly functional systems of structures at the Guggenheim. These installations produced a range of holistic atmospheres that supported the display of other diverse artefacts and art projects.
