Space is at a premium when it comes to museums. Only the best of the best of a museum’s collection gets the prime real estate that is displayed to the public. In fact, it is estimated that only 2% to 4% of a museum’s collection is actually shown to guests.
As museums try to show more of their collections to visitors, many contemporary designs are beginning to incorporate the exterior of the building as a gallery. Now, you aren’t going to see the Louvre plastering the Mona Lisa onto the side of the building like a wanted poster anytime soon, but museums are starting to realize art installations specifically designed for the exterior of a building can prove to be quite valuable.
Buildings have made use of their exterior walls as a display in the past. Chicago’s Tribune Tower is covered with over 150 historically significant artifacts from around the world that are built into the structure’s limestone wall.
Col. Robert McCormick brought back the first piece from a church that was shelled in Belgium during World War I. Upon returning to Chicago, he then told his correspondents around the world to obtain pieces of famous buildings and bring them back.
Embedded in Tribune Tower’s limestone walls are pieces of the Greek Parthenon, the Roman Colosseum, London’s Houses of Parliament, and dozens more, all permanently on display for passersby.
One of the artifacts embedded in Tribune Tower's limestone exterior. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain.
While these artifacts aren’t necessarily art installations, the exterior walls have still been transformed into a display.
The Whitney Museum of American Art, however, took this idea one step further by actually designing the building with specific solutions to best utilize exterior wall space as a gallery.
As a new white paper, Exterior as Gallery, from the New York-based Cooper Robertson outlines, the new Whitney Museum of American has facades that face Manhattan’s popular High Line park and the Hudson River, making them ideal viewing galleries.
Works of art can be anchored to the building’s terraces or suspended from the facades. A combination of vertical anchor points on the façade and a grid of horizontal points on the terraces allows for the installation of two- and three-dimensional artwork that can be viewed from multiple angles and levels. In total, there are four art terraces connected by an exterior stair leading from one to the other.
For displaying pieces from the façade, the design team used a standard system of bolts that can be tethered to or removed and replaced with eye hooks or other hardware to enable the museum to attach a screen, stretch a canvas, or suspend a super-scale object from the side of the building, according to the white paper. The façade was also reinforced to accommodate the addition of a 600-pound pull load.
The terraces required a different solution in order to display art and to keep it secured, especially in instances of high winds. A cylinder is bolted to a base plate that is then fastened to the structure below. Each cylinder is filled with foamed-in-place insulation. These cylindrical anchors align with the beams of the building’s rigorous structural grid in order not to exceed weight limitations. The terraces also have technology consolidation points for displays that require electricity and other AV needs.
If these additions prove successful, odds are, the Whitney Museum of American Art won’t be the last museum to apply these strategies.
Read the entire Cooper Robertson Exterior as Gallery white paper, here.
Related Stories
| Jul 19, 2013
Reconstruction Sector Architecture Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Stantec, HOK, HDR top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the largest reconstruction architecture and architecture/engineering firms in the U.S.
| Jul 19, 2013
Renovation, adaptive reuse stay strong, providing fertile ground for growth [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Increasingly, owners recognize that existing buildings represent a considerable resource in embodied energy, which can often be leveraged for lower front-end costs and a faster turnaround than new construction.
| Jul 2, 2013
LEED v4 gets green light, will launch this fall
The U.S. Green Building Council membership has voted to adopt LEED v4, the next update to the world’s premier green building rating system.
| Jul 1, 2013
Report: Global construction market to reach $15 trillion by 2025
A new report released today forecasts the volume of construction output will grow by more than 70% to $15 trillion worldwide by 2025.
| Jun 28, 2013
Building owners cite BIM/VDC as 'most exciting trend' in facilities management, says Mortenson report
A recent survey of more than 60 building owners and facility management professionals by Mortenson Construction shows that BIM/VDC is top of mind among owner professionals.
| Jun 25, 2013
Mirvish, Gehry revise plans for triad of Toronto towers
A trio of mixed-use towers planned for an urban redevelopment project in Toronto has been redesigned by planners David Mirvish and Frank Gehry. The plan was announced last October but has recently been substantially revised.
| Jun 25, 2013
DC commission approves Gehry's redesign for Eisenhower memorial
Frank Gehry's updated for a new Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial in Washington, D.C., has been approved by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, reports the Washington Post. The commission voted unanimously to approve the $110 million project, which has been gestating for 14 years.
| Jun 5, 2013
USGBC: Free LEED certification for projects in new markets
In an effort to accelerate sustainable development around the world, the U.S. Green Building Council is offering free LEED certification to the first projects to certify in the 112 countries where LEED has yet to take root.
| Jun 3, 2013
Construction spending inches upward in April
The U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that construction spending during April 2013 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $860.8 billion, 0.4 percent above the revised March estimate of $857.7 billion.
| May 21, 2013
7 tile trends for 2013: Touch-sensitive glazes, metallic tones among top styles
Tile of Spain consultant and ceramic tile expert Ryan Fasan presented his "What's Trending in Tile" roundup at the Coverings 2013 show in Atlanta earlier this month. Here's an overview of Fasan's emerging tile trends for 2013.