Modern Architecture: Museums and Monuments

Modern Architecture: Museums and
Monuments

Monumental museums

Museum construction reached new heights at the end of the twentieth century.These buildings drew on diverse styling elements, ranging from the objects the museums were intended to house to the surrounding environment to history itself. Starting in the 1980s and carrying into the 1990s, Europe, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, the United States commissioned new architectural treasures to house artistic jewels. One of the most significant projects was American architect I. M. Pei's work for the Louvre in Paris, France. In the first phase, completed in 1989, Pei erected the famous modernistic glass pyramid as a new entrance amid the nineteenth-century architecture of the Cour Napoleon. The second phase, completed in 1993, encompassed the Richelieu wing. Pei, who was tapped for the project by French president François-Maurice Mitterrand, doubled the Louvres exhibition space with his renovation of the three-story Richelieu wing. He also invited criticism by combining the museum with an underground shopping gallery, but the elegant new commercial area features an inverted Pei pyramid, echoing the one outside and allowing light to bathe the beige limestone walls. Pei arranged the exhibition rooms to allow art to be displayed in a succession of schools and periods, and he provided windows to help orient visitors. Pei also designed the lighting system for the painting departments, which allowed a mixture of natural and electric light.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Pei, who admitted a preference for jazz, also designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum on the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio. His cantilevered, asymmetrical design features distinctive geometric shapes: a pyramid atrium, a concrete rectangular tower, and a trapezoid-shaped structure that juts out over the lake. The main exhibition space is one level below the ground floor, while the Hall of Fame is one level above. A circulation tower connects all levels. The metal and glass exterior mirrors the hard edge of rock music, while the interior white and gray color scheme allows objects in the museum collection to stand out. Pei claimed in Time (4 September 1995) that "the music has that youthful energy. It has to come through in this building."

San Francisco MOMA

Meanwhile, on the West Coast the trustees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hired Swiss native Mario Botta to design a new structure to house their collection. The five-story building, which opened on 18 January 1995, features a textured brick veneer and an almost windowless design, though a central oculus, which from the exterior appears in the form of a truncated cylinder, brings a generous amount of light into the structure, particularly the top-lit galleries on the upper floor.

Holocaust Memorial and Museum

The United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C., opened in 1993 after more than a dozen years in planning and construction. Architect James Ingo Freed, who grew up in Nazi Germany but fled to the United States in 1939, designed the building. Freed, from Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, sought to use the fabric of the building to convey the frightening nature of Nazi death camps. The bland façade hints at chilling efficiency. The rough brick in the Hall of Witness suggests the walled-in camps, while metal strapping reminds visitors of a crematorium. On the other hand, the Hall of Remembrance, which is almost detached from the main structure, provides a space for contemplation—with cutout glimpses of the Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington memorials.

American Heritage Center

Architect Antoine Predock drew on local heritage to design the American Heritage Center in Laramie, Wyoming, which was completed in 1993. Reminiscent of American Indian tepees, the axis of the structure is aligned with two summits, Medicine Bow Peak and Pilot's Knob. The cone and its base house the American Heritage Center. A long, terraced structure with a flat roof trails the cone and houses the University of Wyoming Art Museum. Predock said this "consciously monumental landscape abstraction represents a symbol for future campus growth … and a statement of the powerful spirit of Wyoming."

Gehry in Spain

The $100 million Guggenheim Museum opened in Bilbao, Spain, on 19 October 1997 and set the architectural world talking. Designed by American architect Frank O. Gehry, the glass and titanium museum rises distinctively from the nineteenth-century buildings that define the rest of Bilbao. The structure covers 250,000 square feet, with 112,000 square feet dedicated to exhibition space. It is twice as big as the Guggenheim museums in New York City. Built over four years and financed by the Basque government, the museum was expected to draw five hundred thousand new visitors to the region annually. The museum won accolades from architects as well as the public. Architect Philip Johnson dubbed the museum "the greatest building of our time." The hulking structure on the bank of the Nervión River is clad in shimmering, but thin, titanium panels that seem to make portions of the museum ripple in the wind. Although its otherworldly appearance seems out of synch with the rest of the old city, Gehry drew on Bilbao's history for his design. Shipbuilding yards, loading docks, cranes, and warehouses line the river, and the museum evokes Bilbao's cityscape and history. The abstract metal "sails" and "hulls" echo local maritime traditions, although some have likened the structure to other objects, including a mermaid, water-fall, or fish. Gehry wrote during the early design stages: "To be at the bend of a working river intersected by a large bridge and connecting urban fabric of a fairly dense city to the river's edge with a place for modern art is my idea of heaven." The interior of the museum soars as well. The central atrium is seventeen stories high and features white Sheetrock, plate glass hung on steel, and titanium. Catwalks, open stairs, walkways, and glass-enclosed elevators branch off into galleries that encircle the atrium on three levels. One of these galleries is one-and-a-quarter times larger than a football field, yet is completely free of structural columns; the gallery was built to house a 104-foot-long, 13-foot-tall sculpture titled "snake" by Richard Serra. Gehry designed a variety of exhibition spaces, from classical, square-shaped galleries for modest-scale pieces to free-form areas for larger works of art. The smaller galleries feature limestone blocks, which he said related to the city in both their scale and material; Gehry chose metals for the free-form galleries, which he said relates to the river.

Meiers J. Paul Getty Center

Perched on a 710-acre hilltop above the San Diego Freeway in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, the J. Paul Getty Center is a modern masterpiece by Richard Meier. After whittling down a list of thirty-three architects to just three finalists, a committee for the Getty Trust hired Meier—one of the chief U.S. exponents of late modernist classicism—in 1984. Meier said, "I think what the Getty selection committee particularly liked were my ideas about opacity and transparency, about the making of space, about the relationship between public space and more quiet space, and about the importance of natural light for more ceremonial spaces and subdued light for gallery spaces." After thirteen years of work, the Getty Center opened on 16 December 1997. The $1 billion project earned the distinction of being one of the most expensive arts complexes ever built; some calculations put it as the most costly structure ever built in the United States. Yet, the Getty Center did not capture headlines for its price tag; its importance both for architecture and for the arts garnered most of the attention. The center, which has nearly one million square feet of space, is a collection of six separate units on a ridge. Terraces and plazas link the structures, helping to create a campus that resembles, in a modernist way, an Italian hill town. The buildings are clad in Italian travertine and porcelain-enameled aluminum. In the 3 November 1997 issue of Time, Meier proposed that people "think of it as a small college campus with different departments, some more visible than others—not a museum but an institution in which art predominates." The separate units house art, archival facili-ties, high-tech conservation and research, and educational programs. When it was completed, Meier said: "As 1 walk around the Getty now and see the play of light on different surfaces, the way in which the light changes, the way in which the light affects the quality of the architecture, and the way in which the architecture heightens one's awareness of the light, I think, this is phenomenal. This really works."

Memorials

As the century drew to a close, people sought to memorialize some of the important individuals and events of earlier times. They turned to several architects to immortalize the leaders and events that marked past eras. Each architect brought distinct designs to monuments built or planned in the 1990s. W. Kent Cooper, William P. Lecky, Frank C. Gaylord, and Louis Nelson collaborated on the Korean War Veterans Memorial, which was unveiled in Washington, D.C., in July 1995. The memorial, located south of the reflecting pool and opposite the Vietnam memorial, features a granite wall that runs along the site. The wall has images of doctors, pilots, seamen, and troops sandblasted into the surface. The FDR Memorial, designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, was dedicated in May 1997. An open gallery depicts scenes from the four terms (1933-1945) that Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as president. There are ten sculptures, both freestanding and bas-relief, and twenty-three slabs inscribed with Roosevelt's words. The memorial, however, prompted debate because the three sculptures of FDR did not show the wheelchair, leg braces, canes, and crutches on which he had depended. Disabled Americans protested the omission, while others pointed out that FDR found it necessary to hide these devices in the 1930s and early 1940s. The Women in Military Service to America Memorial was dedicated 18 October 1997 at the Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Designed by Weiss/Manfredi Architects of New York City, the structure completed an existing, decorative retaining wall designed in 1927 by McKim, Mead & White at the end of Memorial Bridge. As part of the redesign, the architects had women's names etched onto skylights; shadows of the names were cast on vertical marble panels that line the interior space.

Future Projects

Plans were laid in the 1990s for several other memorials. John R. Collins and Alison J. Towers, husband and wife and principals at Towers Collins Architects, won, in 1997, the national design competition out of 554 entries for an American Indian memorial planned for Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana. Their design called for a circular earthen berm with a gathering space in the middle. Meanwhile, the Commission of Fine Arts in 1998 approved the design for a World War II Memorial. Architect Friedrich St. Florian envisioned granite arches and arms of stone and metal that frame an interior plaza. The National Japanese American Memorial Foundation broke ground in October 1999 for a memorial near the U.S. Capitol to honor the patriotism of Japanese Americans and those who were interned during World War II. Architect Davis Buckley, who designed the memorial, called for a granite wall detailing Japanese immigration to the United States and two bronze Japanese cranes entwined in barbed wire. Groundwork for a memorial to slain civilrights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was well under way in 1999, as the Washington-Alexandria Center for Architecture called for design submissions for a monument under the theme "The Man—the Movement—the Message." Winners were announced in 2000.

Sources:

Christopher John Farley, "Forever RockinV Time, 146 (4 September 1995): 62-63.

Charles Gandee, "Spanish Conquest," Vogue, 187 (October 1997): 370-373, 434.

David Hill, "Husband and Wife Design New Little Bighorn Memorial," Architectural Record, 185 (June 1997): 33.

Robert Hughes, "Bravo! Bravo!" Time, 150 (3 November 1997): 98-105.

Philip Jodidio, New Forms: Architecture in the 1990s (Köln & New York: Taschen, 1997), pp. 163,166.

"Korean War Remembered," Architectural Record, 183 (August 1995): 15.

Lance Morrow, "Never Forget," Time, 141 (26 April 1993): 56-57.

"News Briefs," Architectural Record, 187 (October 1999): 69.

Clifford A. Pearson, "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleve-land," Architectural Record, 182 (September 1994): 32.

James S. Russell, "Permanent Witness," Architectural Record, 181 (July 1993): 59-67.

Thomas A. Sancton, "Pe's Palace of Art," Time, 142 (29 November 1993): 68-70.

Ellen Sands, "Commission Holds Its Fire and Approves World War II Memorial," Architectural Record, 186 (July 1998): 36.

Sands, "Memorial Uses Glass and Light to Honor Women in the Military," Architectural Record, 185 (November 1997): 41.

Sands, "MLK Is Next for D.C.," Architectural Record, 187 (April 1999): 53.

Hugh Sidey; "Where's His Wheelchair?" Time, 145 (6 March 1995): 105.

"U.S. Holocaust Museum Challenges Literal Architectural Interpretations of History," Architectural Record, 181 (Mav 1993): 27.