WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART (MET BREUER)

Abstract

Breuer’s Whitney Museum of Art is located on the island of Manhattan, New York, close to several very important museums: the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum, Franz Lloyd Wright’s best-known work. The origin of the project was influenced by the characteristics of the site, the geometry of the plot, the metaphors concomitant with the façade of the former Whitney Museum, the emulation of the aerial volatility of the Guggenheim Museum and the well-oiled layout of the functional programme, condensed into a main section that sinks below the earth line and seeks the roots of the design there. The original ground plan separates different architectures with respect to the programme, the structure and the morphology: transparency of the lower part of the façade against the opacity and massiveness of the volumes that advance towards the outside. The Mediterranean courtyard underlies the layout of the floor plan and the complex English courtyard provides the generating section and literally shapes the façades, which are contained by an abstract envelope and have encrypted content.