The Guggenheim Effect

The Guggenheim Effect: Retrofitting Culture A Proposal For An Audaciously Different Architecture Competition J.Wilson

seashell ziggurat

of another kind

Atlantic Flyway

1943 - 1958: 15 years, 700 sketches, 6 sets of working drawings

look up

“temple of the spirit� the promenade adapt to a new purpose

descend color relief shapes consolation brushstrokes empathy size scale process American elm

1959-

comfort for looking, seeing, feeling

the inherent plasticity of organic forms

energy use intensity

community/ context

beliefs traditions behaviors

an act of showing some trait or quality

non-objective

Society has never been stable. Times are ever changing, and as they change they bring ever new challenges. Sometimes a challenge so great that culture must undergo a significant adaptation to meet it. Climate change and the project of sustainability have proven to be the great challenge of our time. Culture must adapt to this new purpose.

Culture is the task of meaningful architecture - the shaping and production of shared behaviors, beliefs, ideas. Contemporary practice, marked by a pervasive inertia and resistance to change, is unable to effect the cultural change demanded by the world’s present challenges. Architectural practice must adapt to this new purpose.

This calls for audacity. But audacity here does not mean adventurous form-making or the pursuit of a distinctive idiom. Here audacity means cultivating a radically alternative conception of architecture. It means conceiving of a building as a dynamic, “living” machine - an ecology that is actively changing, evolving and “learning” throughout its lifetime. It means recognizing that a building never exists as a finished object or static work of art, but an ongoing performance, a participant in culture. It means each building is an ongoing project, a process of tests and lessons, a work of design that is executed throughout a long-term relationship between it and the architect.

Architects must reconceive architectural performance. Architecture cannot be merely sustainable, it must be restorative. This means much more than achieving energy efficiency and restoring natural systems. Architecture must also restore a culture of deeper meaning, awareness and empathy - a culture of resilient and sustainable values - a social identity of shared responsibility and cooperation. Most essentially, architecture must restore a connection between the culture of the built environment and the culture of nature.

An art museum, a primary form of cultural architecture, has the greatest capacity to operate on culture. The Solomon R. Guggenheim, 55 years old and world-renowned, has an even larger potential for significantly influencing culture over its lifetime. The task now is to retrofit architecture in order to retrofit culture.

Brief Competitors are asked to research and design the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s next 55 years of life and to craft a long-term retrofit plan for the building that addresses both quantitative and qualitative aspects of performance and program.

How will the musuem achieve net-positive energy and net-positive water? / How will it contribute to air quality? / How will it promote health and wellness? / How will it strengthen community? / How will it participate in the management of stormwater? / How will it advocate for equity and fairness? / How will it contribute to food production? / How will it educate and inform? / What lessons will it teach?/ How will it dialogue with surrounding nature? / How will it preserve beauty? / How will it protect the vulnerable and endangered? / How will it respond to the rhythms of weather? / How will it provide relief, consolation, comfort? / What traditions will it preserve? / How will it embrace uncertainty? / How will it adapt to future challenges? / What values and beliefs will it instill?

WILSON & McAlistair’s