Required reading: With extensive new accommodation, above and below ground, Renzo Piano brings unity and order to the Morgan Library.J. Pierpont Morgan was a ruthless financial wizard with superb taste, whose monument--the library designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1906--was a surprisingly restrained product of America's first gilded age Gilded Age The years between the Civil War and World War I when institutions undertook financial manipulations that went virtually unchecked by government. This era produced many infamous activities in the security markets. . Still more astonishing a·ston·ish tr.v. as·ton·ished, as·ton·ish·ing, as·ton·ish·es To fill with sudden wonder or amazement. See Synonyms at surprise. in that country's latest era of obscene excess, the Morgan has been doubled in size without losing its distinctive personality. The Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (September 14 1937) is a world renowned Italian architect and Pritzker Architecture Prize winner. Biography Piano was born in Genoa, where he still maintains a home and office (Building Workshop). Building Workshop has wrought its customary magic in weaving together old and new, strengthening the sense of place, and opening up the new central court to views of the street on three sides. Visitors walking into this serene, light-filled atrium, or looking down from two upper-level balconies can savour the sensation of floating within a transparent bubble at the heart of the metropolis. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nearly all museums have a compulsion to expand, to display more of their holdings and find room for new acquisitions, but also to accommodate ever-greater crowds and boost revenue. A happy few, like the Frick, stay small and are cherished for doing so. In contrast, the Museum of Modern Art abandoned its early role as a tightly focused shrine of the avant garde, and turned itself into an overpoweringly o·ver·pow·er·ing adj. So strong as to be overwhelming: an overpowering need for solitude. o vast emporium with all the appeal of a convention centre. By choosing Piano, who cares as much for the sacred (contemplating art) as the profane (socialising, shopping and eating) and manages to keep the two kinds of space distinct, the Morgan avoided that fate. The institution badly needed more gallery and storage space for its 350 000-item collection of rare books, master drawings, and manuscripts that range from priceless medieval miniatures to musical scores and correspondence from Ernest Hemingway, plus a better performance space for its renowned concerts. It also wanted to appear less intimidating (Morgan's library was a hermetic hermetic /her·met·ic/ (her-met´ik) impervious to air. her·met·ic or her·met·i·cal adj. Completely sealed, especially against the escape or entry of air. strong-box, designed to exclude the hoi polloi and natural light) and to develop its role as an art museum. For the architects, the challenge was to find a footprint on which to build. The library, the 1850s Morgan family brownstone brownstone, red to brown variety of sandstone. Its unusual color is caused in some instances by the presence of red iron oxide which acts as a cement, binding the sand grains together. to the north, and the Classical-style annex that J. P.'s son added in 1928 were all listed properties, and the spaces between were cluttered with later additions. The Landmarks Commission would have opposed a tower. The solution was to clear the additions and to go down, blasting out the Manhattan schist to a depth of 18 metres to accommodate three levels of storage vaults, and a steeply raked auditorium. More than 50 per cent of the 13 800sqm complex is now located below ground. Three new pavilions have been inserted between the existing buildings: offices on 37th Street to the north, a 6m cube called the Thaw Gallery to the south, and a three-storey entry pavilion on Madison Avenue that, in its transparency, offers a symbolic welcome mat. New and old structures frame the 15m, glass-roofed courtyard, evoking an Italian piazzetta. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The lucidity of this plan, which grew organically from Piano's concept sketch, is matched by the lightness and precision of the architecture, and the strength and honesty of the materials. The steel panels and thin mouldings are painted white with an almost imperceptible rose tone that picks up on the Tennessee pink marble of the library and annex. Piano likens the high-transparency, low-iron glass to crystal. As in all his buildings, natural light is filtered by louvres that are oriented to the north, motorised Adj. 1. motorised - equipped with a motor or motors; "a motorized wheelchair" motored, motorized blinds, and white scrim scrim n. 1. A durable, loosely woven cotton or linen fabric used for curtains or upholstery lining or in industry. 2. A transparent fabric used as a drop in the theater to create special effects of lights or atmosphere. in the Thaw Gallery, whose proportions were inspired by those of a Renaissance studiolo. The hierarchy and interpenetration In`ter`pen`e`tra´tion n. 1. The act or process of penetrating between or within other substances; mutual penetration; also, the result of a process of interpenetration. Noun 1. of spaces, plus the glimpses of traffic and greenery (a public park to the south, a bamboo screen to block an apartment tower to the east) distil dis·till also dis·til v. dis·tilled also dis·tilled, dis·till·ing also dis·til·ling, dis·tills also dis·tils v.tr. 1. To subject (a substance) to distillation. 2. the energy and richness of New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . Each of the new structures is separated by glass from the old buildings, which have been meticulously restored. The planar roof of the atrium is linked to the cornice cornice (kôr`nĭs), molded or decorated projection that forms the crowning feature at the top of a building wall or other architectural element; specifically, the uppermost of the three principal members of the classic entablature, hence by of the library by a neoprene neoprene: see rubber. neoprene Any of a class of elastomers (rubberlike synthetic organic compounds of high molecular weight) made by polymerization of the monomer 2-chloro-1,3-butadiene and vulcanized (cross-linked, like rubber), by sulfur, seal. As project architect Giorgio Bianchi notes, 'they kiss but don't disturb'. A glazed lift and open stairwell stair·well n. A vertical shaft around which a staircase has been built. stairwell Noun a vertical shaft in a building that contains a staircase Noun 1. pull natural light from above into the service areas and subterranean theatre lobby. The steeply-raked 280-seat auditorium is panelled in cherry, with curved baffles above and on either side to achieve optimum acoustics for chamber music, though the hall will also host lectures and movies. The old entrance and reading room on 36th Street have been reconfigured to serve as a suite of three intimate galleries, with drawings and manuscripts flanking the former lobby, where Middle Eastern cylinder seals up to 5500 years old are displayed to brilliant effect. There's a new, third-level reading room and four new galleries. The cafe occupies a side of the courtyard, and a new restaurant and museum store are comfortably accommodated on the ground floor of the brownstone. The contrast in style between the period furnishings of the library and Morgan's study, with their scarlet brocade, velvet drapes drape v. draped, drap·ing, drapes v.tr. 1. To cover, dress, or hang with or as if with cloth in loose folds: draped the coffin with a flag; a robe that draped her figure. , and softly glowing Renaissance paintings, and the cool white volumes beyond, is as bracing as a leap from a sauna into an icy lake. In its harmony of scale and refinement of detail, the new respects the old without mimicry mimicry, in biology, the advantageous resemblance of one species to another, often unrelated, species or to a feature of its own environment. (When the latter results from pigmentation it is classed as protective coloration. . Each strengthens your appreciation of the other--a lesson that is badly needed in New York, where a former neglect of heritage has now given way to an obsessive protectionism. Robert Stern, the Quinlan Terry of American architecture, predictably found the Morgan plan too radical. Forty blocks up Madison, neighbours of the Whitney Museum successfully fought to save the skin of an unremarkable brownstone house with nothing behind it, preferring this Potemkin gesture to the elegant new entrance proposed by Piano as part of his recent remodelling scheme. There was a prolonged and anguished appeal to save Edward Durrell Stone's dysfunctional and abandoned museum at Columbus Circle, with its Venetian wallpaper facade, though reason finally triumphed and the building is now being transformed by Allied Works. Even as other major architects, including Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Kazuyo Sejima, Jean Nouvel and Enrique Norten, are adding to the city's legacy after a long drought, the retro spirit is strong. As an Italian, Piano is a veteran of these wars, and a master at finding an appropriate balance of history and invention. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] |
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