alumni Spotlight
By Linda Hedman Beyus
h Andy Klemmer ’75 guides clients through a design-to-build project.
Form and Function When the renovation of New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum wrapped in 1992, Andy Klemmer ’75 celebrated the milestone from the top of the Frank Lloyd Wright landmark.
“That is something I learned at Taft,” Klemmer laughs, “roof climbing.” A carpenter by trade, Klemmer had just closed his contracting business when “happenstance” brought him
to the Guggenheim project. From his rooftop office overlooking Fifth Avenue, Klemmer served as a facilitator of sorts, ensuring that the work was executed in a way that maintained the museum’s program, was driven by the quality of the design and that met the project budget and schedule. Happenstance aside, his background served him well. “The practicality of building, the interrelatedness of parts, the management, thinking and planning are the same whether you are building a home kitchen, a catering kitchen or an entire restaurant,” Klemmer says. “It’s just the scale that changes.” And the scale changed again when, from the same perch atop the Guggenheim, Klemmer was tapped to help direct a $100 million museum project in Bilbao, Spain. Designed by architect Frank Gehry, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao features a central glass atrium that references the New York Guggenheim’s rotunda. Renowned architect Philip Johnson called the limestone, glass and titanium structure “the greatest building of our time.”