The Building | Whitney Museum of American Art Whitney Museum of American Art Wed–Thurs10:30 am–6 pm Fri–Sat10:30 am–10 pm Sun10:30 am–6 pm The perfect gift for any art enthusiast: Memberships start at just $85. Subscribe The Building Designed by architect Renzo Piano and situated between the High Line and the Hudson River, the Whitney's building in the Meatpacking District vastly increases the Museum’s exhibition and programming space, offering the most expansive display ever of its unsurpassed collection of modern and contemporary American art. Video Designed by architect Renzo Piano, the Whitney's building in the Meatpacking District includes approximately 50,000 square feet of indoor galleries and 13,000 square feet of outdoor exhibition space and terraces facing the High Line. An expansive gallery for special exhibitions is approximately 18,000 square feet in area, making it the largest column-free museum gallery in New York City. Additional exhibition space includes a lobby gallery (accessible free of charge), two floors for the permanent collection, and a special exhibitions gallery on the top floor. According to Mr.

Piano, “The design for the new museum emerges equally from a close study of the Whitney’s needs and from a response to this remarkable site. We wanted to draw on its vitality and at the same time enhance its rich character. The first big gesture, then, is the cantilevered entrance, which transforms the area outside the building into a large, sheltered public space. At this gathering place beneath the High Line, visitors will see through the building entrance and the large windows on the west side to the Hudson River beyond. Here, all at once, you have the water, the park, the powerful industrial structures and the exciting mix of people, brought together and focused by this new building and the experience of art.” The dramatically cantilevered entrance along Gansevoort Street shelters an 8,500-square-foot outdoor plaza or “largo,” a public gathering space steps away from the southern entrance to the High Line. The building also includes an education center offering state-of-the-art classrooms; a multi-use black box theater for film, video, and performance with an adjacent outdoor gallery; a 170-seat theater with stunning views of the Hudson River; and a Works on Paper Study Center, Conservation Lab, and Library Reading Room.

The classrooms, theater, and study center are all firsts for the Whitney. A retail shop on the ground-floor level contributes to the busy street life of the area. A ground-floor restaurant and top-floor cafe are operated by renowned restaurateur Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group. Mr. Piano’s design takes a strong and strikingly asymmetrical form—one that responds to the industrial character of the neighboring loft buildings and overhead railway while asserting a contemporary, sculptural presence. The upper stories of the building overlook the Hudson River on its west, and step back gracefully from the elevated High Line Park to its east. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is presenting exhibitions and educational programming at the Whitney’s uptown building for a period of eight years, with the possibility of extending the agreement for a longer term. Project Team Owner’s Rep: Gardiner & Theobald, Inc.

Design Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop Executive Architect: Cooper, Robertson & Partners MEP Engineer: Jaros, Baum & Bolles Lighting/Daylighting Engineer: Ove Arup & Partners Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates Construction Manager: Turner Construction, LLC Landscape Architect: Mathews Nielsen About Renzo Piano Renzo Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1937, into a family of builders. In his home city he has strong roots, sentimental and cultural, with its historic center, the port, the sea, and with his father's trade. During his time at university, the Milan Polytechnic, he worked in the studio of Franco Albini. He graduated in 1964 and then began to work with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters. Between 1965 and 1970 he traveled extensively in America and Britain. In 1971, he founded the studio Piano & Rogers with Richard Rogers, and together they won the competition for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the city where he now lives.

From the early 70s until the 90s, he collaborated with the engineer Peter Rice, forming Atelier Piano & Rice, between 1977 and 1981. Finally, in 1981, he established Renzo Piano Building Workshop, with a hundred people working in Paris, Genoa, and New York. The Neighborhood The building engages the Whitney directly with the bustling community of artists, galleries, educators, entrepreneurs, and residents of the Meatpacking District, Chelsea, and Greenwich Village, where the Museum was founded by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1930. The new Whitney is located in the Meatpacking District at 99 Gansevoort Street, at the southern entrance to the High Line. The Meatpacking District The Meatpacking District is a twenty-square-block neighborhood on the far West Side of Manhattan. Surrounding the meatpacking plants just north of Gansevoort Street are some of New York’s most notable restaurants, bars, fashion boutiques, clubs, and hotels. The neighborhood is bordered to the north and east by Chelsea, renowned for its art galleries, cultural organizations, and educational institutions.

To the south is the West Village and its nineteenth-century townhouses, charming streets, and unique shops. To the west is the Hudson River. The High Line The High Line is New York City’s newest and most unique public park. Located thirty feet above street level on a 1930s freight railway, the High Line runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to 34th Street in Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen. It features an integrated landscape combining meandering concrete pathways with naturalistic plantings. The Whitney has one of the most expansive member discount programs of any museum in New York City. Project History The Whitney presents its ULURP application at the City Planning Commission’s July 2008 public hearing. June 30, 2008 Manhattan Borough President Scott M.

Stringer recommends approval of the project’s ULURPapplication stating, “The application meets the required findings, satisfies important public policy goals, has the support of the affected community, and will facilitate the development of a highly anticipated new public park as well as enhance the ability of an important art institution to serve the public.” May 22, 2008 At its May 2008 board meeting, Community Board 2 unanimously votes to approve the Whitney’s new building project proposal and its associated zoning actions. May 15, 2008 The Zoning & Housing Committee of Community Board 2 unanimously votes in support of the Whitney’s new building project proposal and its associated zoning actions. The formal resolution thanks the Whitney “for starting this project by establishing a strong relationship with the surrounding community and Community Board.” May 5, 2008 The Whitney’s new building project receives certification from the New York City Planning Commission, beginning the formal zoning process of public review known asULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure) by the local Community Board, Borough President, Department of City Planning, and the City Council.

April 30, 2008 The Whitney releases the initial building designs at a public information session hosted by Community Board 2 . Support the New Whitney The campaign for the new Whitney goes far beyond the creation of a new museum facility that showcases and safeguards the Museum’s irreplaceable collection. It is an investment in future generations of artists and the growing audiences who will engage with their work. The campaign commenced quietly in January 2007 with extraordinary support from the Board of Trustees. The American Art Foundation, under President Leonard A. Lauder, launched the campaign with a transformational leadership gift of $125 million for endowment, helping to secure our future operations in the Museum downtown. The City of New York, whose partnership and commitment made it possible to purchase the land for the Museum, also appropriated funds for the construction of the new building. The State of New York provided significant and early support of the architectural design. The campaign’s success to date is also the result of the many individuals who have been so generous with their early support. With this extraordinary leadership start, the Museum broke ground on May 24, 2011 and began the transformation of the Whitney, and of the downtown cultural scene.

A project of this scale succeeds only when each of us does their part. Each gift brings us closer to realizing the new Whitney—a museum committed to art, artists, and audiences in dynamic interaction. This is an opportunity that comes but once in a generation. Please join in transforming one of our nation’s great museums and be a part of shaping the future of contemporary art in New York. $760 million (100%) of Project Goal Has Been Raised $665 million through fundraising $95 million through the sale of real estate assets on Madison Avenue Fundraising Goals New Building Project Costs ($422 million) Within over 200,000 square feet, the Museum has increased its gallery space by 60% and tripled its total space. Endowment ($225 million) Increasing the endowment is critical to securing the financial foundation of the Whitney’s new home. Capacity-Building ($113 million) Providing support to ensure dynamic artistic and educational programming is essential while building the Museum downtown.

Ways To Give The Whitney is tremendously grateful to its donors, whose support will help maintain the vitality, renown, and success of the Whitney as the defining museum of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American art for generations to come. For more information about the campaign and donor opportunities, please contact: Whitney Museum of American Art Campaign Office View more 12 displayed of 260 Featured Videos Whitney Stories: Renzo Piano Renzo Piano, architect of the Whitney’s new home, articulates the philosophy behind the building’s design. To activate closed captioning on this video, play the video. A CC button will appear on the player controls, and will give you the option to display captions in English. For more information, visit the accessibility page . Whitney Stories: Donna De Salvo In this Whitney Stories video, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs Donna De Salvo discusses how the curatorial process informed the building’s architecture, and notes a hope for the future: that artists will reinvent its aspirational spaces in the years to come. To activate closed captioning on this video, play the video. A CC button will appear on the player controls, and will give you the option to display captions in English.

For more information, visit the accessibility page . Time-Lapse: Building the New Whitney October 2011–April 2014. The Whitney’s new building opened to the public on May 1, 2015. Watch it rise from the ground up in this time-lapse video. Under Construction: The Whitney Museum's new HQ by Renzo Piano in New York | Wallpaper* Under Construction: The Whitney Museum's new HQ by Renzo Piano in New York Under Construction: The Whitney Museum's new HQ by Renzo Piano in New York Architecture / 16 Oct 2013 / By By Ellie Stathaki Whatsapp The Whitney Museum of America's new HQ, designed by Renzo Piano, is currently under construction in New York's Meatpacking District. Photography: Timothy Schenck The new building will become the museum's main base from spring 2015. Image courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson & Partners Seen here from the High Line, the new Whitney will offer unprecedented space for the museum's exhibitions and programs.

Image courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson & Partners The structure spans 220,000sq ft and nine stories that will include the city's largest column-free art gallery spaces, an education centre, theatre, a conservation lab and a library and reading rooms. Photography: Timothy Schenck The new building's strong, asymmetrical form generates a wealth of terraces, looking towards Manhattan, which will be used as outdoor galleries. Photography: Timothy Schenck The building's ground level will be glass-enclosed and visually transparent, to merge with its immediate surroundings and welcome in passers by. Photography: Timothy Schenck Construction is well underway on the new home for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York's vibrant Meatpacking District. The new building, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano , will become the museum's main base from spring 2015, when the whole collection will move from its existing HQ - the iconic, Marcel Breuer-designed building it has occupied since 1966 on Madison Avenue. The new Whitney will offer 'unprecedented space for the museum's exhibitions and programs', say the institution's representatives.

The structure spans 220,000sq ft and nine stories that will include the city's largest column-free art gallery spaces, an education centre, theatre, a conservation lab and a library and reading rooms. Two of the floors will be fully devoted to the Whitney's permanent collection (a vast 20,000 works). In his design for the museum, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect put an emphasis on the outside spaces and the building's connection with the local community. Its strong, asymmetrical form generates a wealth of terraces, looking towards Manhattan, which will be used as outdoor galleries. At the same time, the whole ground level will be glass-enclosed and visually transparent, to merge with its immediate surroundings and welcome in passers-by. A tilt upwards on the building's main volume on the ground level's ceiling was another strategic move to ensure the ground floor also gets plenty of natural light. 'We are creating an environment in which visitors will be encouraged to connect deeply with art through an irreplaceable first-hand experience', says Adam D, Weinberg, the museum's Alice Pratt Brown Director. With construction more than half way complete at the new Whitney, plans have also been hatched for its old premises.

The Breuer Building will be leased to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a period of eight years, once the Whitney has moved to its new state-of-the-art home. New York | The Whitney Museum new home by Renzo Piano By RICCARDO BIANCHINI - April 28, 2015 The Whitney building near completion. Photo by Timothy Schenck The new NY home of the Whitney Museum by Renzo Piano The Whitney Museum of America Art is housed since 1966 in a building, designed by the celebrated modernist architect Marcel Breuer, which over time has become one of uptown Manhattan’s landmarks. But, after almost half century, and with the Whitney’s collection growing from 2,000 to over 19,000 pieces, the old stone-clad construction has reached its physical limits and some years ago it was decided that the museum needed a new, larger home. After some vicissitudes, in 2008 the Italian architect Renzo Piano was selected for the design and its effort is now close to completion.

Whitney recently announced indeed the museum’s new home to open its door on May 1st 2015, in coincidence with the largest exhibition of works from the Whitney’s collection ever made (see details at the end of the page). top, middle left and bottom: photos © Nic Lehoux; middle right: photo © Karin Jobst The location of the building is quite impressive; from the upper east side the Whitney will relocate to lower Manhattan, on a plot of land overlooking the Hudson river in the Meatpacking District. The museum will be located right at the end of the High Line raised linear park, actually forming its southern incipit. The urban park, following a redevelopment started in 2006 on a design by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has rapidly become one of the most popular green urban spaces and recreational areas in the city, stretching for more than 1 mile across Manhattan’s West Side at an average height of 25 feet over the street level.

The Meatpacking district takes its name from the several food-related activities, mainly slaughterhouses and meat-packing facilities, that, along with other industrial activities, characterized the neighbourhood from late 19th century to the 1970s. Many of them were located there also due to the presence of the elevated freight railway that now supports the High Line park. Since the 1990s the district, after a period of decline, is more and more becoming the site of famous fashion boutiques and art-related galleries and one of the most trendsetting neighbourhoods in New York. Top: The south edge of the High Line before the museum realisation, photo by Mike Boucher Middle: photo by Timothy Schenck Bottom: the High Line, photos by Urban Land Institute The Piano’s design looks for a relationship with the old Meatpacking’s industrial character. Thus the new building is not a steady monument but a highly dynamic, asymmetrical construction. On its main entrance side, the museum shape is defined by protruding boxes, slipped on one another, with an impressive cantilevered volume which forms a large sheltered public space before the museum entrance, in direct visual connection with the adjoining High Line southern edge.

The new 9-storey building features an overall exhibition space of 63,000 square feet, 50,000 indoor and 13,000 outdoor, the latter mainly represented by terraces overlooking the Hudson. An education facility, a study centre, two theatres and various services to the public, including a 6,000 square feet lobby, a restaurant, a café and a retail-shop, as well as storage spaces and offices will also be part of the new museum. As usual for Piano, a particular attention is reserved to sustainability. The adoption of reconditioned timber as flooring material, the use of natural lighting controlled through an advanced shading system, the introduction of LED-based lighting (quite innovative for an art museum) and state-of-the-art cooling and heating solutions will made the Whitney one of the fist museums in NYC to be LEED-certified.

from top to bottom: photograph © Nic Lehoux: sketches of the project by RPBW, photograph © Nic Lehoux; rendering images by RPBW and, bottom: Photograph © Nic Lehoux As mentioned earlier, the new Whitney opens in Spring 2015 with an impressive inaugural exhibition featuring many of the masterpieces forming the museum permanent collection, the most important in the world exclusively dedicated to 20th and 21st century American artists. All the exhibition galleries of the new museum will be involved, on a total floor area of over 60,000 square feet. More on the Whitney museum website at: Whitney’s Inaugural exhibition, installation views; photographs © Nic Lehoux Article by Riccardo Bianchini, Inexhibit Where is this?

Find it through MYMUSEM search Whitney Museum of American Art: Renzo Piano's It building - Telegraph Art Women's Style Property & Architecture Whitney Museum of American Art: Renzo Piano's It building Renzo Piano has designed a spectacular new home for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York – and a handbag to match By Sheryl Garratt May 09, 2015 08:30 "I want to salute Renzo Piano for designing this building from the inside out as much as the outside in, putting art and the artists first" New York’s new Whitney Museum of American Art New York’s new Whitney Museum of American Art Renzo Piano in his Paris office Enlarge Renzo Piano in his Paris office "I had a conference with Richard in London, the two old bad boys, together again. But I still feel the same. I refuse to believe I am 77!" "When you finish a building you hope for it exactly what you hope for with your children.

You hope the building will be happy" The Whitney bag, created in collaboration with MaxMara The Whitney bag, created in collaboration with MaxMara The pintucks in the Whitney handbag mirror the ribbing on the museum’s facade The pintucks in the Whitney handbag mirror the ribbing on the museum’s facade The bag appeared in various colours in MaxMara’s Whitney-inspired pre-fall 2015 collection Enlarge The bag appeared in various colours in MaxMara’s Whitney-inspired pre-fall 2015 collection It’s not beautiful, Renzo Piano’s latest building. Sandwiched between a busy highway, the High Line (an old elevated train track that has been turned into a green walkway and public park) and the few remaining cold-storage facilities that gave Manhattan’s Meatpacking District its name, the new home for the Whitney Museum of American Art is not a landmark that instantly pleases the eye. All awkward angles and irregular shapes, it is given some harmony by pale ribs of steel cladding and planes of smooth concrete blocks, but in a line-up of great contemporary buildings – or even of Piano’s best buildings – it would definitely be the wallflower, judged from the outside.

Which is fine, because in this case, it really is what’s inside that counts. Talking to me on the phone from his office in Genoa the week before its opening, Piano described the nine-floor $422 million building as ‘a machine for art’, and it is from the inside that you really start to appreciate the huge, light-filled temple to creativity he has made. "The building was conceived primarily to provide artists with inspirational spaces, to imagine what they can possibly do here," the museum’s director, Adam Weinberg, said on the opening day last month. "It offers us opportunities that we’ve never had before: larger, more flexible galleries in which to show art; outdoor terraces for performance and sculptures; theatres for lectures, performances, panels, installations. I want to salute Renzo Piano for designing this building from the inside out as much as the outside in, putting art and the artists first." Piano and his team have positioned windows to provide stunning views across the Hudson river towards New Jersey from the upper floors, with equally panoramic views over Manhattan on the opposite side. There are also side vistas down towards the glittering new Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty, and outdoor spaces that help tie the museum to the surrounding area.

Performances on the roomy third-floor terrace, for instance, will be easily seen and heard both from the High Line one storey below it, and from the street below that. It is at street level that you best appreciate how beautifully the building has been designed to fit the site. It shrinks to half the size of the upper storeys, its walls all floor-to-ceiling glass. This lobby will be free to enter, allowing passers-by to use the restaurant or shop and view the art on display here. But what Piano has also done is create a public square between the museum and the steps leading up to the High Line, widening a previously narrow street to open up glorious new views of the water. Piano famously has no fixed style, designing according to the site and the purpose of the building, but creating new public spaces has always been central to his work. That is why his biggest London building, the Shard, is so surprising. It dominates the capital’s skyline while remaining inaccessible to most Londoners: only the elite can afford to stay in its expensive hotel rooms and dine in its upmarket restaurants; it costs £30 even to enjoy the views from the top.

When I say this, he insists I shouldn’t judge until the project – which includes the redevelopment of the busy London Bridge railway station and its surrounding area – is complete. "We are still working on the station," he explains. "It will be another two or three years. We wanted the building not to touch ground, so that it doesn’t take the land selfishly, and the land is given back to the community in some way. I think this is part of the story." Piano was born in the Italian port of Genoa to a builder father. His breakthrough as an architect came in 1971, when he won a competition to design a new arts hub in Paris with his then partner, Richard Rogers . The inside-out design of the Pompidou Centre , with its elevators and utilities all visible on the exterior, caused a stir when it opened in 1977, establishing the duo as the new bad boys of architecture.

He laughs when I point out that he is now part of the establishment, entrusted with huge projects such as a new campus for Columbia University in New York, a film museum for Los Angeles, a national library for Greece and a palais de justice in the suburbs of Paris, as well as major projects across China and India. Rogers has become a lord, and Piano has been honoured in Italy with the similarly lofty title of senator, and although they no longer work together, the two men have remained friends. "Not long ago, I had a conference with Richard in London," Piano says. "The two old bad boys, together again. It was really funny: him a lord, me a senator. But I still feel the same. I refuse to believe I am 77!" Architects tend to start their best work at a point when many other professionals are coming to the end of their careers, and Piano is busier than ever, dividing his month between his offices in Genoa, New York and Paris – where his second wife and younger children live. He has four children, ranging in age from 15 to 50. He considers his buildings to be like family too, and says he likes to check in on them.

He lives close to the Pompidou Centre, and still pops in regularly. "I go there every month, for lunch or just to visit," he says. "It’s about affection. You have to see whether they are happy or not. I’m not romantic, but it is true that when you finish a building you hope for it exactly what you hope for with your children. You hope the building will be happy. Which means making people happy." Retirement isn’t something he ever considers, he insists. "Why should I? I enjoy it. This is the only thing I can do, and I can’t stop. It’s such a complicated profession that it takes a long time to learn. So for the first 60 years, you are learning. Then you should have another 60 years to work. But that’s a bit difficult." At the opening, Piano declared in a generous, witty speech that "it takes a thousand people to make a building". Leading that number is Elisabetta Trezzani, the partner in Renzo Piano Building Works who heads the New York office, just opposite the Whitney.

She started work on the museum project in 2005, when its board was already battered by numerous unsuccessful attempts to extend their existing building further uptown. She was there through the selection of the site and the 2009 recession that almost derailed the project, and finally oversaw the building work. I had assumed the biggest challenge her team faced was the massive fifth-floor gallery, offering the largest display space in New York without a single interrupting column. She says that is not so difficult with good engineers and enough money. For her, the biggest technical challenge was the steel cladding, made of panels 8mm thick and up to 22m tall, some of them curved and twisted to fit the building. Only one company, in Germany, was able to manufacture them. Then special containers had to be made to ship them over and a machine designed to hold them straight while they were fitted to the sides of the building, to give it a distinctive ribbed look. Watching from the window of her office while the panels were hoisted into place – twisting and buckling in the wind – was, she says with a laugh, one of the more heart-stopping moments.

It was Trezzani who took the call when the Italian fashion house MaxMara , which was sponsoring the opening party, rang with a strange request. Would Renzo Piano Building Works like to design a handbag with them, to celebrate the museum’s opening? At first Trezzani and Piano were hesitant. "We’ve never done anything like that, so we didn’t know how to do it," Trezzani says. "But then we thought it was the kind of special project we would probably never do again. So we said, if we do it, we want it to be a collaboration because we need your expertise, and we can try to pick out the elements of the Whitney that we think could be an inspiration for the bag." She smiles. "Also, me being a woman probably helped a little bit, because Renzo only had a general idea, at the beginning, what a bag for a woman needed to be!" They eventually decided to echo the Whitney’s steel ribbing on the sides of the handbag, only in leather. "We wanted to do something very detailed and well done, and MaxMara were great to work with. It was fun for me," Trezzani adds.

MaxMara’s relationship with the Whitney goes back way before the new building was conceived. The company’s founder, Achille Maramotti, was a keen collector of art, a passion shared by his son Luigi, who is now the company’s chairman. Luigi lived in New York during the 1970s and 1980s, and over the years ties had been strengthened as the Maramotti family lent pieces from their collection for Whitney shows, or helped with fundraising events. So when the museum called to ask them to sponsor the opening-night party, they agreed immediately, especially as the project also involved Italy’s greatest architect. "It was the perfect storm for us," Maramotti says. "It made sense." Fashion, he says, is always exploring ideas about society, about modernity, pushing at the borders of what is acceptable. "But artists are doing that first, and probably better than fashion designers. We ultimately have to make something that somebody will buy and wear, but for an artist it’s different.

It’s a necessity to express himself, and he would do it anyway, even if there were no buyers." Like many big names in architecture, Piano has crossed paths with the fashion business before, designing a flagship store for Hermès in Tokyo in the 1980s that still looks glitteringly impressive today. For him, the main difference between his industry and the fashion world is speed. "What is great about fashion is that it reflects the moment. It’s like taking a picture of a moment," he says. "Fashion relies on the short-term. Architecture is long-term. It’s about cities, longevity. That’s why architects need time to be accepted, to be loved. It’s not instant. Architecture often becomes loved when it is adopted by the city – when you go to the church, to the theatre, the university, the concert hall and it becomes part of your daily life. The great thing about fashion is that it is fun, an expression of joy, instant and ephemeral." MaxMara, however, doesn’t really focus on the ephemeral. Its hallmark is timeless classics, pieces that will last and remain stylish, that can be passed from mother to daughter.

The label’s creative director is Ian Griffiths, a genial Briton who has worked with the family for 27 years. He talks about the Whitney bag as a future classic, something he hopes the brand will still be making in 20 years’ time. It is easy to believe he is right. A limited edition of 250 in the same pale grey as the museum’s steel exterior sold out on the first day, but it is a striking, elegant bag in any colour – boxy in shape and roomy enough for all your daily needs without being weighted down by heavy hardware that makes it impossible to carry that long. The Whitney’s ribbing is represented as pintucks in the leather, which posed a challenge for the label’s leather workshop. "The pintucks were extremely difficult," Griffiths says. "And this is where working with an Italian company is so great. Our craftsmen in Tuscany use techniques that have been perfected over generations, but they are also very open to new ideas." Just before the museum opened its first show in the new building to the public, I was given a private tour with Griffiths and a handful of other journalists.

The result of three years of discussion among the curatorial team, America Is Hard To See is an unflinching and intellectually rigorous survey of 115 years of American art. It is also full of surprises, juxtaposing familiar pieces by renowned artists with less well-known works. Many of the choices are brave – a large, bold piece by Donald Moffett attacking President Reagan’s failure to recognise the Aids epidemic, for instance, or a collection of harrowing works depicting lynchings. "I don’t think there can be many institutions that would be prepared to be so direct about an issue like that," Griffiths says. "It explores facets of the American psyche as you would a person, and in any personality there are good and bad aspects." His pre-fall collection for MaxMara is all Whitney-inspired, coming out of conversations with the head curator, Donna De Salvo. "I didn’t just want to start from a piece of art that was in the collection. What are you going to get out of that – scarves with a print inspired by Jasper Johns?

It seems a bit shallow and random." Instead, he read the American artist and intellectual Robert Smithson’s musings on memory, which led him to research the rich artistic and cultural history of the area around the museum, including his own memories of visiting the Roxy, a club that in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a playground for artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as the singers Debbie Harry and Madonna. He also read Smithson’s thoughts on urban entropy, the idea that, inevitably, an urban space will degenerate back into a natural state. He connected this to the growing trend for rewilding and the creation of the High Line. Then he saw a 2008 installation by Fritz Haeg in the Whitney’s archive representing the return of animals that once would have lived in Manhattan such as the bald eagle, the barn owl and the eastern mud turtle – which, in turn, led to bold animal prints in his collection. Given all of this, it is probably no surprise that Griffiths is also a professor, teaching fashion at Kingston University in London.

At the age of 18, he thought he wanted to be an architect and did a year of study before he realised it wasn’t for him and switched to a fashion course. Still, he stayed in touch with friends he made in that year, most of whom qualified as architects. "I met up with some of them last weekend," he says. "I said, OK, you completed the course and I didn’t. But which of us is working with Renzo Piano?" The new Whitney Museum of American Art opened to the public on May 1. America Is Hard To See runs until September 27. The Whitney bag, from £740, is available in the museum shop and MaxMara stores Whitney Museum of American Art | 2015-05-16 | Architectural Record Building Type Studies Projects Museums & Arts Centers Whitney Museum of American Art Talk of the Town: After failed attempts to add on to its iconic uptown venue, the Whitney Builds a new home that reaches out to its neighbors. On the west the building offers views of busy West Street and the Hudson River.

Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto A grand cantilever on Gansevoort Street protects the main entry and the wide plaza that Piano calls the largo. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto On the east, the building overlooks the High Line. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto A grand cantilever on Gansevoort Street protects the main entry and the wide plaza that Piano calls the largo. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto The flatter north elevation has an industrial look that tries to acknowledge the blue-collar roots of the Meatpacking District. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto Enclosed by precast-concrete panels and suspended from steel cables, the main stair provides access to all floors. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto Reclaimed pine floors in the galleries are sprung, so dance and other performances can take place throughout the museum. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto Steel stairs allow visitors to go from one outdoor art terrace to another. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto On the other gallery floors, daylight comes in only at the narrow east and west ends. One of Frank Stella's black paintings and a sculpture and painting by Ellsworth Kelly benefit from their placement in one of these spaces.

Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto The only top-lit gallery is on the eighth floor where sawtooth skylights provide the kind of diffuse glow for which Piano is known. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto Renzo Piano's sketch of the new Whitney's south elevation. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto Renzo Piano's sketch of his unrealized proposal to add onto the Whitney's Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto View from the Hudson River. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto View from the outdoor stairs. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto View of the outdoor stairs and the High Line. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto Library on the seventh floor. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto West gallery on the fifth floor. Photograph © Jeff Goldberg/Esto Image courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop Image courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop Image courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop Image courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop May 16, 2015 Time-lapse courtesy of EarthCam, Inc. Some buildings look best from afar.

Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Center towers, for example, worked beautifully as supertall exclamation points on the Manhattan skyline, but never connected to the human spirit at ground level. Renzo Piano's new building for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York does the opposite, failing to strike an inspiring pose for those at a distance but welcoming the public with a graceful entry plaza and transparent lobby. And like certain Hollywood stars, it has its good side and its less photogenic profile. Approach it from the east and you'll find a lively addition to the supercharged Meatpacking District, one that steps back from the nearby High Line while capturing the elevated park's energy with a series of terraces and outdoor stairs. Come from the north, though—either on the High Line or along Washington Street—and your first impression will be of a boxy composition that's vaguely industrial (smokestacks, exposed mechanicals, metal siding), if lacking the muscle or grit of a real factory. In its Marcel Breuer–designed Brutalist building on East 75th Street, the Whitney had struggled for 30 years to expand.

Schemes to add to Breuer's notoriously idiosyncratic 1966 structure—first by Michael Graves, then Rem Koolhaas, and finally Piano—were all shot down by neighbors and preservationists. When New York City offered it a site at the south end of the High Line at a below-market price, the museum decided to move. The new location isn't far from where Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney established the Whitney Studio in Greenwich Village in 1914 and offers the chance to become part of a neighborhood that has been radically transformed in recent years by the huge success of the High Line and an influx of art galleries just to the north in Chelsea. (The Whitney is leasing the Breuer building to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which will install its 20th century and contemporary galleries there starting in March 2016. After eight years, the Whitney has the option of either extending the lease or taking back the property.) When Breuer got the job to design the Whitney, he reportedly asked, “What should a museum look like, a museum in Manhattan? . . .

What does it express, what is its architectural message?” In response to those questions, he created a fortified retreat for art, where visitors crossed a concrete bridge to get away from the cacophony of the city. Piano and his team at Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) took a different approach, connecting their building to the bustle of the Meatpacking District with outdoor spaces for art on the street level and on all of the gallery floors (5, 6, 7, and 8). Overlooking the High Line, the art terraces above the ground floor are linked by outdoor stairs, so visitors can circulate through the gallery floors while connecting on each level with the city. “In my first sketch of the project,” says Piano, “I drew a building that flirts with the High Line and talks to the city.” At 220,000 square feet, the new Whitney is significantly larger than the 85,000-square-foot Breuer building, but has just 17,000 square feet of additional indoor gallery space (now 50,000, versus 33,000, square feet).

What it gains is the full set of educational, curatorial, and conservation facilities that museums expect today. It now has a multiuse black-box theater for film, video, and performance, a 170-seat theater, a works-on-paper study center, a library reading room, and 13,000 square feet of outdoor terraces for art, café tables, and seating. It also boasts the largest column-free museum gallery space in the city: 18,000 square feet for temporary exhibitions on the fifth floor. And, unlike its old location on the Upper East Side, this one offers the chance of future expansion. Directly to the north, the city owns a two-story wholesale meat center and has given the Whitney the right of first offer when that building's lease comes up in 15 years. A strength of Piano's Whitney is its clear organization: galleries on the south side, curatorial and support spaces on the north, and an exposed precast-concrete core running through the middle that contains vertical circulation and mechanical ducts. Elevators face the main entrance on the ground floor and, as in the Breuer building, open directly onto the galleries upstairs.

It will be hard for anyone—even the navigationally challenged—to get lost here. Stabilized laterally by its concrete core, the building uses a steel frame for vertical loads and required cross bracing only at the southwest corner. RPBW wrapped most of the structure in vertical ribbons of 0.3-inch-thick 3.3-foot-wide steel, which curve subtly at the edges where the body of the building tucks in, such as along Gansevoort Street at the large cantilever that protects the main entrance to the museum. Resting on slender steel columns and enclosed on the ground floor by glass on three sides, the building seems to hover above Gansevoort. The lobby's ceiling angles up to greet the High Line next door, adding to the streamlining effect of the vertical ribbons and cantilevered torso above the entry. “I wanted the building to fly above the street,” says Piano. Running along Gansevoort from the High Line to the museum entrance, a wide plaza or largo provides a congenial outdoor space for visitors to wait in line, partially protected by the building's cantilever. Uptown, the Whitney drew fewer than 400,000 visitors a year.

The High Line attracts 5.5 million people a year, and many of them will want to check out the museum. The Whitney, which declines to forecast how many visitors will show up, may find itself packed even in its larger facility. With glass on three sides and an open plan that incorporates a freestanding shop, the lobby emphasizes transparency. So, pedestrians on the street can see what's happening inside and museumgoers can enjoy views of the Hudson River, and—in the other direction —they can look through a glass wall separating the lobby from a ground-floor restaurant and see all the action at the entrance to the High Line. Piano says he purposely avoided imitating Breuer's design, but there are echoes of the uptown building in his Whitney: a main stair enclosed in concrete (though precast and suspended on steel cables here), stone flooring in the lobby, and an extra-wide elevator that can handle either people or art.

(The interior surfaces of the large elevator and three adjacent smaller ones serve as canvases for a commissioned artwork by Richard Artschwager, who died in 2013.) The one thing Piano says he took from the Breuer building was “the unpretentious spirit of its spaces,” explaining, “We didn't want it to be snobby.” In the galleries, wood flooring made from reclaimed heart pine timbers shows scars from its previous life and gives a humble note to the spaces. Overhead, RPBW created a system of gridded ceilings with tracks for lights and others for temporary walls to attach to. After testing out various ceiling heights, the museum ended up asking for basically the same ones they had uptown—17½ feet for galleries on the fifth and sixth floors and 15 feet on the seventh floor. While curators' offices and conservation labs enjoy plenty of daylight and views through generous north glazing, the galleries on floors 5 through 7 have glass on just the narrow east and west sides, so light at eye level doesn't interfere with viewing the art.

Only the top-floor special-projects gallery, which is just 4,500 square feet, gets bathed in natural illumination, thanks to sawtooth skylights equipped with mechanized shades. So the magic Piano has worked at places like the Menil Collection in Houston and the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, which have mostly top-lit galleries, is missing from most of the indoor art spaces at the Whitney. In the east and west galleries that do get daylight and big views of the river and the city, the spaces and the art look fantastic. The huge temporary-exhibitions gallery on the fifth floor, which was so impressive on a walk-through during construction, is less so now that it is carved up by partitions for the current show, America Is Hard to See, an expansive presentation of nearly 650 works from the museum's permanent collection. In the future, though, the Whitney may use the gallery as one big space for special exhibitions or installations, and the public will get to experience what an 18,000-square-foot, column-free room is like. What defines the new Whitney are the remarkable outdoor spaces for enjoying art.

The museum plans not just to place sculpture on the terraces and on the largo, but to invite artists to project video works on its facades and mount performances on its steel stairs. “We want to use the building as the material for art, not just a site for art,” says Adam Weinberg, the museum's director. “We see the building as an instrument to be played.” With its exterior stairs animating its city side, the Whitney nods to Piano's first big commission—the Pompidou Center, which whisks visitors up one facade on clear-tube-enclosed escalators. The Whitney doesn't shock the way the Pompidou did when it opened in Paris in 1977 and doesn't represent a bold new direction in architecture. But it combines the maturity of an architect who has been honing his craft for five decades with a jolt of big-city energy. People Renzo Piano Building Workshop - Projects - Selected Projects Jerome L. Greene Science Center for Mind Brain Behavior 2007-in progress Jerome L. Greene Science Center for Mind Brain Behavior, New York, U.S.A Renzo Piano Building Workshop teamed up with SOM on the master plan of Columbia University’s new Manhattanville Campus.

The first phase of the Harlem development is on site, and will include four buildings designed by RPBW: the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, the Lenfest Center for the Arts, the Forum, and the School of International and Public Affairs. Columbia University has always been an urban institution. The new campus will be a place of research and knowledge production integrated with the city, in close contact with its social reality, street culture and energy. The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort 2007-2015 The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort, New York, U.S.A The Whitney Museum is building itself a new home in downtown Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Opened on May 1st, 2015, the project substantially enlarges the Whitney’s exhibition and programming space, enabling the first comprehensive view of the Museum’s growing collection, which today comprises more than 19,000 works of modern and contemporary American art. Harvard Art Museums renovation and expansion 2006-2014 Harvard Art Museums renovation and expansion, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A Harvard University’s three art museums – the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger and the Arthur M.

Sackler – are being consolidated into one reorganized and upgraded facility, Harvard Art Museums, on the current site of the Fogg Museum on Quincy Street. The restored historic courtyard of the Fogg Museum will be at the heart of 200,00 sq. ft (18,500 sq.m) of new museum space. Pathé Foundation 2006-2014 Pathé Foundation, Paris, France The art of inserting a new building into an historic city block means engaging in an open, physical dialogue with the existing city buildings. Building onto a structure also presents an opportunity for a wideranging renovation project, a reclaiming of space. The new headquarters of the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé is an unexpected presence, a curved volume glimpsed floating in the middle of a courtyard, anchored on just a few supports. It is complimented by a group of birch trees, a floral island set in the dense mineral context of the city. Kimbell Art Museum Expansion 2007-2013 Kimbell Art Museum Expansion, Fort Worth, U.S.A The Kimbell Art Museum’s original building was designed by Louis Kahn in 1972.

The new building by Renzo Piano Building Workshop was recently inaugurated and establishes a close, respectful and frank dialogue with this powerful yet delicate older building. The new Renzo Piano Pavilion (named by the building’s owner) accommodates the museum’s growing exhibition and education programmes, allowing the original Kahn building to revert to the display of the museum’s permanent collection. MUSE 2002-2013 MUSE Museo delle Scienze, Trento, Italy The Quartiere delle Albere district, the site of a former Michelin factory, is now a new part of the city of Trento. This transformed post-industrial brownfield site now shares many characteristics with Trento’s urban fabric – the clear hierarchy of the design, its functional stratification and an overall similarity in the size of buildings and materials used for their construction. This urban renewal project has reconnected the city to its natural context, which in Trento is defined by the nearby Adige River and Monte Bondone. This new district, for a long time physically separated from the city centre by the railway, now feels psychologically closer. Quartiere delle Albere is home to MuSe, the new Science Museum, serving to reinforce the cultural identity of this area of Trento.

Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art 2006-2012 Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway Tjuvholmen is a new cultural quarter located to the south-west of Oslo’s city centre. Integrating art and leisure, the complex combines the Astrup Fearnley Museum and an office building, with a new public sculpture park, swimming beach and waterside promenade. As a continuation of the redevelopment of the Aker Brygge area of the city, site of former shipyards, Tjuvholmen has a privileged location right on the water’s edge, with views out over the fjord and back to the city centre. Auditorium del Parco 2010-2012 Auditorium del Parco, L'Aquila, Italy The Auditorium in L’Aquila was built as a temporary substitute to replace the Castello Spagnolo concert hall, gravely damaged in the 2009 earthquake. A group of three cubes, it is a simple design that tests the efficiency and expressiveness of spaces that were generated by need and necessity. Claudio Abbado proclaimed it “a building of great symbolic value”.

He was one of the first people to realise that it could be a very long time before the city would be back to normal and that building a place to protect musical traditions would be a positive way to start the healing process. Renovation and expansion of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 2005-2012 Renovation and expansion of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, U.S.A Boston’s original Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum opened in 1903 at Fenway Court, a Venetian-style palazzo built by the patroness to showcasehouse her substantial collection of over 2,500 works of fine and decorative art, including tapestries, furniture, manuscripts and textiles, from Europe, Asia, the Islamic world and America. London Bridge Tower 2000-2012 London Bridge Tower, London, United Kingdom The London Bridge Tower, also known as the Shard, is a 72-storey, mixed-use tower located beside London Bridge Station on the south bank of the river Thames. This project was a response to the urban vision of London Mayor Ken Livingstone and to his policy of encouraging high-density development at key transport nodes in London.

This sort of sustainable urban extension relies on the proximity of public transportation, discourages car use and helps to reduce traffic congestion in the city. Ronchamp Gatehouse and Monastery 2006-2011 Ronchamp Gatehouse and Monastery, Ronchamp, France The Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp was designed by Le Corbusier and is one the 20th-century’s most important works of architecture. For years now it has been a heavily frequented site of international cultural tourism, so much so that the site needed urgent attention in order to restore the spirtual and religious dimension originally intended for Ronchamp by its architect. In a wider effort to improve the area, the Œuvre Notre Dame du Haut commissioned Renzo Piano Building Workshop to design a convent for the Poor Clare sisters, as well as a small new building to welcome visitors, the Porterie. Hugging the hill’s slope, the new buildings are protected architecture with a resolved interior featuring large picture windows that frame the woods and its light. Central St. Giles Court Mixed-use Development 2002-2010 Central St.

Giles Court Mixed-use Development, London, United Kingdom Situated between Covent Garden and New Oxford Street in central London, the Central St Giles development replaces a massive, unloved, impenetrable block of former government offices, with a permeable, vibrant, sculptural mix of volumes containing offices, apartments, restaurants and retail. Central St Giles fits well with its urban context, responding to the shapes and colours that surround it. California Academy of Sciences 2000-2008 California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, U.S.A Designing a great cultural and scientific institution in San Francisco, a city with a strong collective vocation for the environment, also meant finding a language that expressed this shared vision of the present in an immediate way. Through the evocative spaces of the Museum of Natural History, the large green roof that breathes and the successful coexistence of outreach activities and research, the new headquarters of the California Academy of Sciences wanted, using architecture, to convey their passion for knowledge of nature and the fact that the earth is fragile.

Chicago Art Institute – The Modern Wing 2000-2009 Chicago Art Institute – The Modern Wing, Chicago, U.S.A The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, a 25,000 sq m expansion that houses collections of European contemporary art, also unifies and completes the cultural and urban campus of the Art Institute. The New York Times Building 2000-2007 The New York Times Building, New York, U.S.A A new headquarters for the “New York Times” newspaper was commissioned via invited competition in 2000. Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s winning design opens up a neglected corner of Manhattan opposite the Port Authority, with a 52-storey building whose themes of permeability and transparency express the intrinsic link between the newspaper and the city. Renovation and Expansion of the Morgan Library 2000-2006 Renovation and Expansion of the Morgan Library, New York, U.S.A Creating additional space for the Morgan Library in the heart of Manhattan was a particular challenge. This elegant group of buildings, a ‘village of memory’ is surrounded by the dense urban fabric of New York City, a seemingly solid physical barrier around the site.

Rather than building upwards, Renzo Piano Building Workshop decided to dig downwards into the hard rock to build a sort of underground vault in which to house the library’s rare book collection. With surgical precision, new steel and glass units were inserted in and amongst the existing buildings. Maison Hermès 1998-2006 Maison Hermès, Tokyo, Japan Celebrated French fashion house Hermès commissioned Renzo Piano to design a building for their Japanese headquarters in 1998. Its location at the heart of Tokyo’s densely built, neon-lit Ginza shopping district, and the stringent building regulations regarding earthquakes and fire, have influenced a compact and unique building with a distinctive glass facade. The building contains a shop, offices, an exhibition space and access to the underground station below Harumi Avenue. High Museum Expansion 1999-2005 High Museum Expansion, Atlanta, U.S.A The High Museum was founded in 1905 and was then expanded by Richard Meier in 1983.

To respond to the fast growth of its art collections and the increasing number of visitors, the museum decided on a new expansion programme, which would almost double the museum’s surface area, up to 312,000 sq ft. Zentrum Paul Klee 1999-2005 Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland The complex nature of the shapes and articulations of the body of work of German-Swiss artist Paul Klee is reflected in the architecture of the Zentrum. The museum is part and parcel of the rolling hills and blends in with the natural landscape of the countryside outside of Bern. Its curved roof made of long steel beams welded together one by one, houses one of the most extensive monographic collections in the world. Lingotto Factory Conversion 1983-2003 Lingotto Factory Conversion, Torino, Italy Built in the 1920s for Fiat, Lingotto was the largest and most modern car manufacturing plant in Europe, both architecturally and in terms of car production. The 500m-long, five-storey building, had a volume of one million cubic metres, and was equipped with a rooftop test track.

Lingotto was the first example of modular construction in reinforced concrete, based on the repetition of three elements: pillars, beams and floors. The factory was closed in 1982. In 1984, Fiat S.p.A. announced a competition and, in 1985, commissioned the Renzo Piano Building Workshop to convert the building. The project aimed to revive the building by transforming it into a multipurpose centre while maintaining its architectural identity. Potsdamer Platz 1992-2000 Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany Following a competition won in 1992, the dormant wasteland of Potsdamer Platz in the newly reunified capital of Germany, Berlin, was entirely renovated based on an Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed masterplan. It wasn’t long before the new architecture and fresh vitality triggered by this mixed-use development gave the entire area a new inner energy, reconnecting areas of the city long separated by the Berlin wall. This new centre is defined by two environmental features typical of the Berlin urban scene: green space and water.

Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center 1991-1998 Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center, Noumea, New Caledonia Erected in honour of the New Caledonian political leader assassinated in 1989, the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre pays homage to Kanak culture and draws on local building traditions and expertise by intertwining the ancient and the modern. Beyeler Foundation Museum 1992-1997 Beyeler Foundation Museum, Riehen, Switzerland The Beyeler Foundation museum came into being when arts patron and collector Ernst Beyeler decided to share his extraordinary art collection with the public. It was built in the park of the 18th-century Villa Berower, which houses the museum’s offices and a restaurant. Beyeler wanted the art to be lit entirely by natural light and the museum to be immersed in the surrounding greenery. Kansai International Airport Terminal 1988-1994 Kansai International Airport Terminal, Osaka, Japan Kansai airport is located on a specially built island in the Bay of Osaka.

The terminal is 1.7km long, with 42 boarding gates, and can handle 100,000 passengers a day. Its long and light structure was designed to withstand the violent earthquakes that often affect this region of Japan. The Menil Collection 1982-1986 The Menil Collection, Houston, U.S.A The museum houses the art collection of Dominique and John de Menil – more than 10,000 works of ancient, African and surrealist modern art. Apart from the spaces dedicated to these works, the building also houses a picture frame workshop and a studio for art restoration and study. The pavilion has more than 2,800 sq m of galleries and public space. Located in the park of a 1920’s residential neighbourhood, the museum building has the same proportions and uses the same building materials as the surrounding houses. IBM Travelling Pavillion 1983-1986 IBM Travelling Pavillion, Paris, France In 1983, IBM devised a travelling exhibition to promote advances in computer technology for telecommunications.

Reinforcing their message that workstations could be virtually located anywhere, this temporary structure was designed to be assembled, exhibit for a month, and then dismantled at each of its 20 European destinations including Lyon, London, Rome, Milan… Centre Georges Pompidou 1971-1977 Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France An immediate architectural icon of Paris, the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (Centre Pompidou, or Beaubourg) is a vast multidisciplinary structure, a culture factory that preserves and exhibits important modern art collections. It is a place where the many strands of contemporary culture intertwine: art, design, literature, music and cinema. The centre is like a huge spaceship made of glass, steel and coloured tubing that landed unexpectedly in the heart of the Paris, and where it would very quickly set deep roots. Otranto Urban Regeneration Workshop 1979 Otranto Urban Regeneration Workshop, Otranto, Italy The Laboratorio di Quartiere, or District Workshop, was a UNESCO-supported project aimed at the renovation of historic town centres through a mechanism to safeguard their physical aspect: a permanent worksite.

The project in Otranto was used to test the feasibility of using local artisans to restore an ancient town centre. The plan allowed residents to remain in their homes and actively participate in the restoration work, thanks to the use of compact, non-invasive and innovative technology. Although the workshop left the town once its mission had been completed, as an independent studio, its work could continue as a travelling model to be adapted based on its sensitivity to the context in which it was activated. The concept of building on what is already there, of being willing to listen, and patiently renovating and repairing the fabric of a town is an idea which is just as valid today for the outskirts of a town as its centre. The Whitney Museum of American Art at Gansevoort / Renzo Piano Building Workshop | ArchDaily The Whitney Museum of American Art at Gansevoort / Renzo Piano Building Workshop The Whitney Museum of American Art at Gansevoort / Renzo Piano Building Workshop 09:00 - 13 May, 2015 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014, United States Partners in Charge Partner in Charge Cooper Robertson Scott Newman, FAIA Loading...

Design Team K.Schorn, T.Stewart, S.Ishida (partner), A.Garritano, F.Giacobello, I.Guzman, G.Melinotov, L. Priano, L.Stuart, C. Chabaud, J.Jones, G.Fanara, M.Fleming, D.Piano, J.Pejkovic CAD operator Thomas Wittrock, AIA, LEED AP Sr Technical Manager Cooper Robertson Thomas Holzmann Greg Weithman, AIA Design Team Cooper Robertson Kieran Trihey, AIA, LEED AP, Weifang Lin, AIA, LEED AP, Erin Flynn, RA, LEED AP, Christopher Payne, AIA, LEED AP, Annalisa Guzzini, Eric Ball, Atara Margolies, LEED AP, German Carmona, Jenelle Kelpe, Marlena Lacher, Eric Boorstyn, Jeremy Boon-Bordenave Interiors Cooper Robertson Save this picture! © Timothy Schenck The Whitney Museum is building itself a new home in downtown Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

Due to open in 2015, the project will substantially enlarge the Whitney’s exhibition and programming space, enabling the first comprehensive view of the Museum’s growing collection, which today comprises more than 19,000 works of modern and contemporary American art. Save this picture! © Karin Jobst Founded in 1930, the Whitney moved to its current Madison Avenue home, designed by Marcel Breuer, in 1966. At the time, its collection numbered some 2,000 pieces of 20th-century American art, so its nearly 100-fold expansion needs space to flourish. The new museum is to be situated in New York ’s vibrant Meatpacking District. Fronting onto Gansevoort Street, the site lies between the Hudson and the High Line, Manhattan’s recently completed elevated urban park, built on a disused elevated spur of the 1930s New York Central Railroad.

+36 Clad in pale blue-grey steel panels, the new, eight-storey building is powerfully asymmetrical, with the bulk of the full-height museum to the west, Hudson-side, with tiers of lighter terraces and glazed walkways stepping down to the High Line, embracing it into the project. Save this picture! Renzo Piano’s Sketch The Museum is entered via a dramatically cantilevered ‘largo’, a public space that serves as a kind of decompression chamber between street and museum, a shared space, with views to the Hudson and the High Line entrance just a few steps away. Accessed from the ‘largo’, the main entrance lobby also serves as a public gallery – of free-entry exhibition space. Level three houses a 170-retractible seat theatre with double-height views over the Hudson River, along with technical spaces and offices. Save this picture! © Nic Lehoux Some 50,000 sq. ft (4 650 sq. m) of gallery space is distributed over levels five, six, seven and eight, the fifth level boasting a 18,000 sq ft (1670 sq.

m), column-free gallery – making it the largest open-plan museum gallery in New York City. This gallery is reserved for temporary exhibitions and its expansive volume will enable the display of really large works of contemporary art. The permanent collection is exhibited on two floors, level six and seven. These two floors also step back towards the west to create 13,000 sq ft (1 200 sq. m) of outdoor sculpture terraces. Save this picture! © Nic Lehoux Museum offices, education centre, conservation laboratories and library reading room are situated north of the building’s core on levels three to seven, including a multi-use theatre for film, video and performance on level five. Finally, on the top floor is the ‘studio’ gallery and a café, naturally lit by a skylight system in saw-tooth configuration. Renzo Piano Building Workshop - Projects - By Type - The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 New York, U.S.A Ph.

Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux 2007-2015 The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort New York, U.S.A The Whitney Museum is building itself a new home in downtown Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Opened on May 1st, 2015, the project substantially enlarges the Whitney’s exhibition and programming space, enabling the first comprehensive view of the Museum’s growing collection, which today comprises more than 19,000 works of modern and contemporary American art.

Save this project More Info Founded in 1930, the Whitney moved to its current Madison Avenue home, designed by Marcel Breuer, in 1966. At the time, its collection numbered some 2,000 pieces of 20th-century American art, so its nearly 100-fold expansion needs space to flourish. The new museum is to be situated in New York’s vibrant Meatpacking District. Fronting onto Gansevoort Street, the site lies between the Hudson and the High Line, Manhattan’s recently completed elevated urban park, built on a disused elevated spur of the 1930s New York Central Railroad. Clad in pale blue-grey enamel steel panels, the new, eight-storey building is powerfully asymmetrical, with the bulk of the full-height museum to the west, Hudson-side, with tiers of lighter terraces and glazed walkways stepping down to the High Line, embracing it into the project. The Museum is entered via a dramatically cantilevered plaza, or ‘largo’, a public space that serves as a kind of decompression chamber between street and museum, a shared space, with views to the Hudson and the High Line entrance just a few steps away.

Accessed from the ‘largo’, the main entrance lobby also serves as a public gallery – nearly a thousand square feet (100 sq. m) of free-entry exhibition space. Level three houses a 170-retractible seat theatre with double-height views over the Hudson River, along with technical spaces and offices. Some 50,000 sq. ft (4 650 sq. m) of gallery space is distributed over levels five, six, seven and eight, the fifth level boasting a 18,000 sq ft (1670 sq. m), column-free gallery – making it the largest open-plan museum gallery in New York City. This gallery is reserved for temporary exhibitions and its expansive volume will enable the display of really large works of contemporary art. The permanent collection is exhibited on two floors, level six and seven. These two floors also step back towards the west to create 13,000 sq ft (1 200 sq. m) of outdoor sculpture terraces.

Museum offices, education centre, conservation laboratories and library reading room are situated north of the building’s core on levels three to seven, including a multi-use theatre for film, video and performance on level five. Finally, on the top floor is the ‘studio’ gallery and a café, naturally lit by a skylight system in saw-tooth configuration. The new Whitney opened on May 1st, 2015. New Building for Whitney Museum of American Art set to open on May 1st 15 days lefts before the official opening of the new Whitney Museum scheduled on May 1st. Situated between the High Line and the Hudson River in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, the new building will substantially enlarge the Whitney’s exhibition and programming space, enabling the first comprehensive view of the Museum’s growing collection, which today comprises more than 19,000 works of modern and contemporary American art. According to Pritzker Prize-wining architect Renzo Piano, “The design for the new museum emerges equally from a close study of the Whitney’s needs and from a response to this remarkable site. We wanted to draw on its vitality and at the same time enhance its rich character." Some 50,000 sq.

ft of gallery space is distributed over levels five, six, seven and eight, the fifth level boasting a 18,000 sq. ft, column-free gallery – making it the largest open-plan museum gallery in New York City. This gallery is reserved for temporary exhibitions and its expansive volume will enable the display of really large works of contemporary art. The permanent collection is exhibited on two floors, level six and seven. These two floors also step back towards the west to create 13,000 sq ft of outdoor sculpture terraces. Museum offices, education centre, conservation laboratories and library reading room are situated north of the building’s core on levels three to seven, including a multi-use theatre for film, video and performance on level five. “We are creating an environment in which visitors will be encouraged to connect deeply with art through an irreplaceable first-hand experience” said Adam D. Weinberg, The Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director. See the project here :

Question: Renzo Piano is the architect of a new main building, due to open in 2015, for the Whitney Museum of American Art in the meatpacking district of which city?
Answer: NEW YORK