100 things: 003 - the guggenheim, nyc
more properly the solomon r guggenheim museum, because, you know, he gave the money to build it. i call it the gugg. :D (altho i don't know who besides me calls it that.) it was designed by frank lloyd wright, who got the commission in 1943 and died a few months before the building was finally finished and opened to the public in 1959. (he was ninety-one.)
...ignore the fact that the building is the same color as the sky. >.< the weather was not fabulous the last time i was there. wright planned for it to be a spiral from the beginning. i love the mid-century-modern, vaguely wrightian typeface they used for the name of the museum.
the skylight probably leaks, or used to, because wright buildings tend to leak. it's a curse.
the building is a giant spiral inside, like an immense ramp. (one of its earliest influences was a planetarium that was never actually built but which wright designed so that people could drive their cars all the way up, as if it was a round parking garage.) (he really liked cars.) the skylight, which i guess is more of a domelight, overlooks the atrium.
looking up at the bump. :D i think but am not sure that emergency exit stairs and possibly bathrooms and water fountains and mechanical/electrical spaces are behind the bump-out. i've never actually seen building plans, tho, so this is totally a random guess because i can't think why else the inner spiral would bulge out like that. well, maybe wright had a design reason besides "i need somewhere to hide the utilities".
you can see the entrance ramp which takes you up to the start of the gallery space. years and years ago i saw a history of motorcycles exhibit there, and i imagine the curator(s) just rolled the bikes inside the building and up the ramp and around the spiral until they were in the right spot in the gallery. i took these pictures in 2009, tho, when they had a wright retrospective for the museum's fiftieth anniversary. i'm not sure which project that is in the giant photo you can see behind the ramp.
the guggenheim made it onto a googledoodle for wright's birthday. it looks a little bit like an alien spaceship, i think, with the tail of the g swinging under it like that.
there's also a guggenheim in bilbao, spain, which was designed by frank gehry and is clad in titanium. i am not a fan. and while the nyc guggenheim isn't my favorite wright building - altho i don't think i actually have a favorite wright building - it's essentially a giant nautilus that you can display art (or motorcycles :D ) in, and that's pretty cool.
...ignore the fact that the building is the same color as the sky. >.< the weather was not fabulous the last time i was there. wright planned for it to be a spiral from the beginning. i love the mid-century-modern, vaguely wrightian typeface they used for the name of the museum.
the skylight probably leaks, or used to, because wright buildings tend to leak. it's a curse.
the building is a giant spiral inside, like an immense ramp. (one of its earliest influences was a planetarium that was never actually built but which wright designed so that people could drive their cars all the way up, as if it was a round parking garage.) (he really liked cars.) the skylight, which i guess is more of a domelight, overlooks the atrium.
looking up at the bump. :D i think but am not sure that emergency exit stairs and possibly bathrooms and water fountains and mechanical/electrical spaces are behind the bump-out. i've never actually seen building plans, tho, so this is totally a random guess because i can't think why else the inner spiral would bulge out like that. well, maybe wright had a design reason besides "i need somewhere to hide the utilities".
you can see the entrance ramp which takes you up to the start of the gallery space. years and years ago i saw a history of motorcycles exhibit there, and i imagine the curator(s) just rolled the bikes inside the building and up the ramp and around the spiral until they were in the right spot in the gallery. i took these pictures in 2009, tho, when they had a wright retrospective for the museum's fiftieth anniversary. i'm not sure which project that is in the giant photo you can see behind the ramp.
the guggenheim made it onto a googledoodle for wright's birthday. it looks a little bit like an alien spaceship, i think, with the tail of the g swinging under it like that.
there's also a guggenheim in bilbao, spain, which was designed by frank gehry and is clad in titanium. i am not a fan. and while the nyc guggenheim isn't my favorite wright building - altho i don't think i actually have a favorite wright building - it's essentially a giant nautilus that you can display art (or motorcycles :D ) in, and that's pretty cool.