Modernism and the circulation experience, MACBA, Guggenheim Case Studies

Claudia Petre

Modernism and the Circulation Experience

This essay aims to illustrate the importance laid by the Modernist Movement upon the problem of space continuity as a promenade experience throughout the building. The engagement of one’s body movements and sensorial perception in a connection between the exterior and the interior spaces also between art and architecture, are the exploration areas for this essay, within two iconic Modern Art museums: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum and Richard Meier’s Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona.

To begin with, the chosen buildings belong to two famous American architects that have been having a great influence over the development of the Modern Architecture worldwide, being renowned for creating spaces both powerful and sensitive – landmarks of the cities they are built in.

The first subject to be analyzed is the Guggenheim Museum (1959) designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1857-1959) an iconic Modern Architect who created throughout his lifetime an American organic and distinctive architectural style. During his time working under the assistance of Louis Sullivan, Wright developed his own ideas and understanding of architecture and later on, founded his own firm and style – Prairie School which strove for an "organic architecture"1. Moreover, he proposed a spacious and exuberant architecture that would be born from within, from the inside outward. 2 His mentor, Louis Sullivan had a great influence over the development of Wright’s style and principles. In his book, “Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography” he states: “Now why not let the walls ceilings floors become seen as component parts of each other, their surfaces flowing into each other to get continuity as a whole, eliminating all constructed 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_School [accessed 11th April 2016] 2 Hilary Ballon, Luis Carranza, Neil Levine, Scott W. Perkins, The Guggenheim, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum, (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2009, p-26

features just as Louis Sullivan had eliminated background in his ornament in favor of integral sense of the whole.” (311) This idea of continuity of construction elements and space can be understood better in his well-known work, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where the building can be experienced as a whole space, “it is all one thing, all an integral, not part put to part” 4 and “the occupant’s movement (position) is critical to the experience of the spatial order (composition).”5 Wright thought about the architectural context of New York as being chaotic and congested, with lack of nature and boxy style-less buildings, the majority of them imitating the European Classical tradition. 6 In this environment, Wright aimed to create a masterpiece that would be a landmark, containing a non-objective art universe within its organic innovative forms. 7

Firstly, Wright’s initial aspiration was to create a close to pilgrimage journey towards the building that would be located in a natural landscape, even on the top of a hill, as it were a “temple of spirit”. However, after long negotiations between the architect and the commissioner, the final site for the building had been settled on a big plot of land framed by three crowded streets, facing the Central Park of New York, in a neighborhood of high rise apartment and office buildings.8

3 Wright, Frank Lloyd, Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobibiograhy, Pomegranate Communications Inc,US, 2005, p-95 4 Ballon, p-29 5 McCarter, Robert, Frank Lloyd Wright, Phaidon Press, 1997, p-367 6 Ballon, p-29 7 Wright, Modern Architecture ed. by Levine, NeilPrinceton University Press, 2008, p-17 8 Ballon, p-31

9

location of Guggenheim Museum

Nonetheless, Wright didn’t give up to his desire of creating a separate and serene world for the art, simultaneously creating a sense of continuity of the streets. At that time, it was to be the boldest American attempt to create a sculpturally free architecture of reinforced concrete, with a very smooth and carefully constructed white painted appearance. “No matter where the eye fell, the concrete’s perfect smoothness sustained an image of abstraction consistent with the nonobjective art along its ramp side.” 10 Moreover, the inspiration for a ramp that would connect all the levels into a continuous journey appeared in the context of rising usage of the ramp for the car parking buildings.

9 Google Earth [accessed 9 April 2016] 10 Ballon, p-31

The first construction of this kind was designed by Albert Kahn in year 1909 for the Ford Motor Company Garages near Detroit, which Wright recalled knowing about it in the 1930’s from the architect himself. 11 Another important inspiration for the Guggenheim museum was the exterior form of the ancient ziggurat which “alludes to the modern structural capacity of cantilevered steelreinforced concrete to create a continuous space unlike that of the ancient inwardstepping temples of solid stone tiers”12. Combined with the organic element revealed by the shape of a shell, Wright succeeded in designing a masterpiece “a continuous rebirth in new planes without losing contact with former ones” as Frederick J. Kiesler regards it.

13 The future building was expected to give birth to a revolution regarding the museum design approach as it would not contain “traditional ‘easel paintings’, therefore had to be organized into space in an unprecedented way. (…) new unity between beholder, painting and architecture”. 14 So it was.

11 Ballon, p-32 12 Ballon, p-38 13 Ballon, p-38 14 Ballon, p-38

15

The niche entrance

16

circulation diagram, ground level

15 http://www.flickriver.com/photos/32224170@N03/3352079215/ [accessed 5 Apr 2016] 16 Personal sketch

The journey begins with a horizontal bay creating depth and shadow, a low exterior space acting as a niche of the sidewalk, announces the presence of the main visitor entrance. One has to walk through this dark void contrasting with the perfectly finished white surfaces in order to reach the main revolving glass doors. The organic shapes of the plant jardinières in both the right and left side of the entrance act as guidance lines for the possible visitors coming from the sidewalk, inviting them inside, towards the mysterious space that lays in the shadows. Defined in this manner, the low niche creates depth within city’s flat facades and seems to get narrower towards the entrance as it is absorbing one’s body inside. After passing through the shadow, the visitor steps inside another dark space, an inside extension of the niche, with the same low ceiling, enclosed in sides by rectangle room and by the reception desk on the right side. “Once again, Wright has brought us through a small, low, dark entrance sequence, and released us into a large, high, bright interior volume (…) defined by its own astonishing spiral geometry.”17 18

The main entrance

17 Ballon, p-39

From this space onwards, the visitor is attracted by the cascade of light visible in front of him, announcing the existence of a much taller and wider space above, that would possibly open up towards the sky. Stepping forward into the atrium space, the mystery reveals itself unfolded by the apparent floating spiral, an “unbreaking wave where “one floor flows into another instead of the usual superimposition of stratified layers”. The natural instinct of one arriving in this space is to desire to emerge up, towards the light, in an almost pilgrimage-like journey. 19

20

The main space seen from below the low entrance

18 http://www.interestingamerica.com/2011-04-14_Guggenheim_Museum_NY_by_Grigonis_42.html [accessed 10 Apr 2016] 19 Ballon, p-39 20 http://www.robertodemicheli.com/album_test/slidenav.php?folder=Architecture/&file=slides/IMG_7344P.jpg [accessed 5 Apr 2016]

Furthermore, the outer opaque enclosure acts as a protection for the inner world where a quarter of a mile long spiral, featuring seventy-four bays, revolves around the central open space, “continuously expanding, like a seashell (…) wrapping new galleries around the old.”21 The gallery ramp itself was designed so to integrate into a single structural form all requirements of display, with the result that the building as a whole becomes “the expanded frame for the works of art each thus framed by the ‘environment’.” 22 Furthermore, the inner circulation zone is illuminated from the central space while the outer enclosure wall is lit by a continuous band of mat glass that also separates the stories both on the inside, but more visible on the outside. The niches created act as frames for the artworks where a painting would not be hug on the exterior wall but would seem to float above its tilted surface.

23

The gallery spaces, the circulation ramp

21 McCarter, p 375 22 Ballon, p-42 23 Google Earth, [accessed 10 Apr 2016]

Additionally, engaging in the spiral journey in a space flooded by the white light from center void, one has the possibility of experiencing the openness to the atrium court that provides constant views across the space to works of art both preceding and succeeding one’s own position in the circuit, creating a powerful sense of orientation. 24 The visitor can engage with the artwork in three different ways: form up-close within the intimate frame space, from the inner area of the ramp and from across the entire width of the space.

25

Everything can be seen from the spiral ramp

24 Ballon, p-42 25 http://www.shafe.co.uk/frank_lloyd_wright-_guggenheim_museum-_new_york-_interior_1955-59/ [accessed 10 April 2016]

The journey doesn’t have a specifying final point. At the end of the ramp, in a space animated by the moods of the light, just below the sky, the promenade continues in the opposite direction, descending towards the starting point in an endlessly loop. After walking down the spiral in a movement attracted by the force of gravity, one could relax grabbing some refreshments in the museum atrium at the ground floor, where a social area was initially intended to be. 26

26 Ballon, p-44

27

The final space

Moving on, the second subject to be analyzed is The Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (1995) designed by Richard Meier (1934 – present) a famous Contemporary American Architect renowned for his clear yet meaningful buildings around the world.

Meier’s work is instantly recognizable and internationally respected due to his landmark: simple white rectangular volumes with modernist inspiration and to the high quality of the designs, from large scale down to the smallest details. Using a limited palette of materials and treating light as the most fundamental element, thoughtful, elegant contemporary architecture is created, an architecture that exceeds the clients’ expectations for beauty and form and fulfills complex programmatic and operational needs.28 “When I am asked what I believe in, I say that I believe in architecture.

Architecture is the mother of the arts. I like to believe that architecture connects the

27 http://blogs.guggenheim.org/checklist/ten-stunning-architectural-views-guggenheims-chief-photographer/ [accessed 10 April 2016] 28 <http://www.richardmeier.com/?page_id=8642> [accessed 5 April 2016]

present with the past and the tangible with the intangible.” 29 Richard Meier states in the Pritzker Award acceptance speech.

30

The context for the MACBA is a lively European city – Barcelona, in a time of great transformations especially in the old historic center, ‘El Raval’, which the municipality expressed a desire to revitalize. An understanding of the phenomena of creating powerful constructions in poor and crowded neighborhood lead to the municipality’s commissioning international architects to help adopt this plan. 31“Meier responded to this challenge by constructing a classical building: a classic of modernity, a direct descendant of the modern movement in architecture in which Barcelona participated

29 'Richard Meier Pritzker Award Acceptance Speech', 1984 30 https://www.spanishcontemporaryart.gallery/macba-museum-barcelona/ 31 Dennis and Dollens, Richard Meier's Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, First Edition ednThe Monacelli Press, 1998, p-10

with much enthusiasm.”32 Local media named the museum “the pearl amongst the old architecture and narrow streets just a few blocks from Gothic center of Barcelona”. 33

34

MACBA location

A regression in scale from the wide dimension of the city extents can be understood to have had a great influence over the design. Big boulevards, traffic jams, big city rush vibe, decreasing slowly to the neighboring areas of the museum – a maze consisting of cramped old blocks and dwelling buildings with narrow and crowded pedestrian streets and alleys, down to the plaza opened by the museum itself, a wide space that acts as an enclave into the city fabric.35 The crowded and noisy alleys, the unending social interaction within the rusted old walls of the neighborhood hosting all sorts of social activities are reflected in the inhabitants’ 32 Dennis and Dollens, p-10 33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_Museum_of_Contemporary_Art [accessed 5 April 2016] 34 Google Earth, [accessed 5 Apr 2016] 35 Blaser, Werner, Richard Meier: Details, First Edition, EdnBirkhäuser, 1996, p-132

character, having an ability to furthermore give life to a new space. This was the case of MACBA. “It’s a place where people come together a social place as well a place for contemplation” as Richard Meier stated in New York Times.36

Approaching the Placa del Angles one can grasp through the narrow framed views of the other buildings, “a luminous inner-city harbor of stone”, an immaculate white stripe reflecting the light, the rest of the building remaining mostly obscured.

“The plaza actually flows continuously around the museum and even connects main and secondary spaces as it reaches under the museum’s bridge”. When visitors walk across this plaza they will recognize architectural power and quality even if they might not know it’s Richard Meier.37

38

Approaching the museum

The dark colour pavement and the other constructions that are set back framing the central void create a perfect scene for a white geometry that reflects the warm Spanish sun. The gray ramp acts as a powerful base and runs along the south glazed façade offering a quick overlook inside the main central space creating simultaneously a social 36 Dennis and Dollens, p-12 37 Dennis and Dollens, p-13 38 Dennis and Dollens, p-44

place where the visitors can relax and enjoy the young inhabitants’ skateboarding competitions.

39

Furthermore, the cityscape finds its shelter reflected in a delicate manner by the big aquarium green glazed screen, where an open space is traversed by a white connecting ramp. Light and art animate the heavenly white interior sustained by a sequence of overlapping layers of elements in a sequence of balcony screen – glass screen – ramp and dividing screen that frames the city – a tall void - a row of columns – a walkway and galleries that acts as a background for this play. “Metaphorically, MACBA has no real façade plane at this point of its composition”.40

39 http://www.barcelona-metropolitan.com/locations/museu-d'art-contemporani-de-barcelona-macba-museumcontemporary-art-barcelona/ 40 Dennis and Dollens, p-14

After walking the low exterior ramp, the visitor steps forward to enter the museum under a projected exterior wall-screen, proceeding into “a partially glazed cylinder whose space curves into a U turn leading to a serpentine reception desk”. 41 “The architecture positions the walker to view the hall of ramps, a seven story space dominated by seven columns and the zigzagging ramps.” 42 Additionally, the structural frame made out of columns and wall parts acts as a frame “holding inclined ramps while the entire composition is suspended between the ceiling and the floor” making the ramp the most powerful and dominant element inside and even outside creating a “light filtering device”43.

The ramp looks at the city on one side and to the galleries on the opposite side44 being situated in the midst of their meeting, in a huge void bathed in superb white casted light. The choice of using a low wall as a railing “reinforces the long inclines as pathways and makes both the ramps and the wall-frame that holds them the interior’s dominant force.”45

46

Diagram of elements

The exhibition spaces are connected through a bridge to the circular office and exhibition volume, the space flowing uninterrupted providing “curvilinear spaces that 41 Dennis and Dollens, p-14 42 Dennis and Dollens, p-14 43 Dennis and Dollens, p-15 44 Blaser, p-136 45 Dennis and Dollens, p-16 46 Personal sketch

counterbalance some of the rectilinear ones in the main space.â&#x20AC;? 47 Moreover, the floors of the pathways connecting the exhibition rooms feature areas made out of transparent glass blocks that create a play of shapes and shadows for the viewer that stands below them.

48

Circulation

47 Dennis and Dollens, p-16 48 Personal sketch

diagram

49

The

interior main space

Furthermore, the major gallery spaces are large and open â&#x20AC;&#x153;offering a multitude of opportunities to experience the works of artâ&#x20AC;? 50 and a wide range of possibilities in which they can be arranged, in order to accommodate both small and intimate temporary galleries as well as famous, monumental ones. 51

49 Dennis and Dollens, p-64 50 Flagge, Ingeborg and Oliver G Hamm, Richard Meier in Europe, Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1997, p-169 51 Dennis and Dollens, p-18

52

Exhibition space

After wandering around the clear exhibition spaces defined by walls that seem to hoover somewhere between the ground and the roof, without touching any of them, the visitor finally reaches the ending point of the journey: a floating bridge where only a glass screen and a wide space sits between its body and the city. Standing there, high above the ground, facing the plaza through the huge layer of glass, one can realize the conscious manner assumed by Meier of displaying a building and its interior spaces as a work of art towards the city it sits in. 53

52 Dennis and Dollens, p-73 53 Dennis and Dollens, p-22

54

The last space of the journey

To sum up, the two architects presented have different approaches regarding the problem of the circulation experience inside a museum, MACBA “captures its walkers in an architectural device that is the rectilinear counterpoint to Wright’s coiled Guggenheim’s ramp.”55 For Meier, the separation of spaces is essential, a sequential 54 Dennis and Dollens, p-80 55 Dennis and Dollens, p-23

experience of exhibited art in discrete spatial layers as in the older transition of floor to floor and room by room museums is optimal, whereas Wright wanted to supersede this idea creating a single continuous space that gathers both the exhibition and the circulation. Of Wight’s Guggenheim museum, Meier wrote: “The ramp is made to double as a gallery, including a propelling motion that is inappropriate to contemplative viewing.

The sloping floor plane, ceilings, and walls are not only uncomfortable but, by suppressing the right-angle datum, make the display of paintings especially difficult.” 56

In conclusion, both buildings stand as major masterpieces of the 20 th century, creating unique experiences over similar themes although very different in terms of site context: an exploration journey into the Modern Art universe, on the one hand in the context of the rapid developing New York and on the other hand, in a Barcelona infamous old neighborhood.

56 Ballon, p-132

Bibliography

Blaser, Werner, Richard Meier: Details, First Edition, EdnBirkhäuser, 1996

Cassara, Silvio, Richard Meier: Works and Projects, Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1998

Dennis and Dollens, Richard Meier's Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, First Edition ednThe Monacelli Press, 1998

Flagge, Ingeborg and Oliver G Hamm, Richard Meier in Europe, Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1997

Hilary Ballon, Luis Carranza, Neil Levine, Scott W. Perkins, The Guggenheim, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum, (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2009

Https://En.Wikipedia.Org/Wiki/Prairie_School,

McCarter, Robert, Frank Lloyd Wright, Phaidon Press, 1997, p. 367

Richard Meier, GA Document Extra, issue 08, 1997

'Richard Meier Pritzker Award Acceptance Speech', 1984

Sanderson, Arlene, 'Wright Sites: A Guide to Frank Lloyd Wright Public Spaces', New York, USA: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996

Wright, Frank Lloyd, Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobibiograhy, Pomegranate Communications Inc,US, 2005

Wright, Modern Architecture ed. by Levine, NeilPrinceton University Press, 2008

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_School

http://www.richardmeier.com/?page_id=8642

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_Museum_of_Contemporary_Art