The GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright
Review by Robert Green AIA

He continues, "Once again Wright has brought us through a small, low, dark entrance sequence and released us into a large, high, bright interior volume--this last a true world unto itself, defined by its own astonishing spiral geometry, its means of support not visible upon entry, seeming to grow up from the ground in one continuous curve. While we recall that the spiral expands as it rises on the exterior, inside we find that it diminishes as it rises, not only producing the largest floors at the top but creating a perspective effect that makes the central space seem even taller than it actually is, hindering our efforts to under-stand its structure and dimension. The skylight, circular in plan and divided into twelve segments, is the width of the lowest spiral floor, allowing copious light to cascade into the space from above, washing the sides of the concrete ramp walls and emphasizing the darker voids or slots between them."

Mr. McCarter says, "The twelve thin concrete piers set in a radial pattern in plan, which support and structure the spiral in its rise towards the skylight, were carefully retracted by Wright from the inner edge of the central volume and placed along the outer wall of the spiral, reappearing to view only when they reach the top, where they bend inward to become the skylight's structuring ribs. This both requires circulation up and down the ramp to occur at its inner edge, so that the visitors can overlook the main space, and withdraws the vertical

structural supports from the view upon entry, allowing us to believe for at least a moment that the concrete spiral may in fact be self-supporting. These thin concrete piers act to frame the view of the paintings hung on the outside wall..." They divide the outside walls of the ramp into distinct hanging spaces, and yet do not block the view of the paintings in each space from other spaces or from across the museum. And these wing walls are the only structural supports that we can see within the great open space.

When the Museum was completed there was a hue and cry from artists and critics with many loving the building and many hating it, some of those even desiring it be torn down. Additionally, a new director had been on the scene for several months, and he had not liked the architecture nor the architect. And once Frank Lloyd Wright died, this director had no one who would keep him from making many destructive changes. Eliminated was the band of clerestory windows, with supplemental lighting, which continuously circled the exterior along the top of each ramped gallery, lighting the paintings from above. Why this was taken out who can fathom?