guggenehem museum

1. GUGGENHEIM
MUSEUM

2. ARCHITECT : FRANK LIOYD WRIGHT
LOCATION : 1071 FIFTH AVENUE,
NEW YORK
DATE : 1956-1959
BUILDING TYPE : ART MUSEUM
CONST. STYLE : REINFORCED
CONCRETE
STYLE :CONTEMPERORY STYLE
ANNUAL VISITORS : 3 MILLONS
“ A great architect is not made by way
of a brain nearly so much as he is
made by way of a cultivated, enriched
heart.”
Frank Lloyd Wright

3. HISTORY :
1. Hilla von Rebay, the art advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim,
sent a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright asking him to design a new
building for Guggenheim’s Non-Objective Painting collection.
2. The desire of the client was to create a natural and organic
relationship between artworks and architecture: “…each of these
great masterpieces should be organized into space” since “(these
paintings) are order, creating order and are “sensitive” (and correcting
even) to space” , Hilla Rebay wrote in her commission letter to
Wright.
3. The new museum director who replaced Rebay in 1952. In the
meantime both Solomon R. Guggenheim, in 1949, and Wright, six
months before the museum opening in October 1959, had died.

4. DURING CONSTRUCTION :

5. PROBLEMS:
• The first problem was to find a
suitable plot of land, it is known
that Wright did not approve of
New York, a city that he viewed as
“overbuilt and overpopulated” and
lacking the close relationship with
nature that was the hallmark of his
architectural vision.
• the relationship between the
architect and the client, and
particularly with Hilla Rebay, was
often difficult.

6. INSPIRATION:
The inspiration was most likely
a previous design by Wright for
the unrealized Gordon Strong
Automobile Objective, a
panoramic overlook on
Sugarloaf Mountain that visitors
would reach by driving their
cars along a giant spiral ramp.

7. FLOWCHART :

8. GROUND FLOOR PLAN
MAIN ENTRY
GRAND GALLERY
RAMP
MAIN GALLERY
STAIRCASE

9. SECOND FLOOR PLAN

10. GEOMETRICAL SHAPES :
F L wright thought in
curves and straight lines
which is helding symbolic
significance.
Triangles - for structural
unity
Circles - suggested
infinity
Spire - aspiration
Spiral - organic process
Square - integrity
Rectangular form triangular form oval form square
form

11. SECTION OF MUSEUM :

12. BUILDING LAYOUT :
Twelve radial web walls divide the gallery
into 70 bays for viewing artwork.
A large glass dome covers the entire
rotunda, providing natural lighting inside
the gallery.
Skylights line each level of the rotunda,
providing natural light along the
periphery.
The gallery walls are 9’6” tall and slope
slightly outwards at 97 degrees from the
floor.
Designed to hold paintings, the tilt of the
gallery walls was intended to replicate

13. Glass dome with aluminum
frame
12 ribs, coinciding with the 12
radial “web walls”
The web walls connect at the
roof level forming hairpin beams
that support the massive central
skylight.
BUILDING COMPONENT AND SYSTEM :

14. INTERIOR :
With an approximate grade of 3 degrees, the ramp rises 11 feet every
full
revolution.
As it rises through six complete turns, the inside edge of the ramp
has a
decreasing radius and the outside edge turns on a greater and greater
radius.
The ramp width increases from 16 to 32 feet.
The expanded helix ramp is supported by only one line of columns
that runs the full 6-story building height.
At 30-degree intervals around the perimeter of the spiral,the
structure is stiffened by vertical webs.
At the bottom of the spiral, the main gallery floor covers a circular,

15. INTERIOR VIEW : ROTUNDA :

16. MATERIAL :
The Guggenheim is primarily
composed of reinforced concrete.
Normal weight cast in place concrete
is the material of the lower levels.
Light weight concrete is the material
of the interior radial walls and the
ramps.
The pairing of multiple types of
concrete caused visible cracks in the
façade.
Steel framed windows
Aluminum skylights

17. LOAD TRANSFER :
The loads are transferred from
the dome to the hairpin ribs,
which then transfer into the
web walls.
The loads from the floor slab
and cantilevered angled walls
also trace back to the web walls,
which act as shear walls and
transfer all loads to the
foundation.

18. DRAWBACKS:
There are almost no horizontal floors, with the exception of the
rotunda which Wright intended as a social and gathering space, not for
exhibition purposes.
 There are few planar walls on which paintings could be hung and the
reduced ceiling height inside the exhibition ramp makes it unsuitable
for displaying large artworks.
 Paintings usually must to be affixed to the inclined perimeter walls
with special steel rods (although Wright envisaged that they should be
mounted following the wall inclination).
 Furthermore many artists felt that their works were overpowered by
the architectural strength of the “container” and worried that their
artworks would not receive necessary “sympathetic” attention from the
visitors.

19. THANKYOU