Contract - June 2015 - 92

connections are elegant, as in any Piano-designed
museum. Heart pine flooring, which was reused
from two separate factories in the Northeast
and the South, gives each floor an intentionally
weathered, imperfect look.
The fifth floor features 18,000 square feet
of columnless gallery space-the largest of its kind
in New York-but the impact of that openness is not
realized in the initial exhibition in which the interior
is divided by numerous hanging walls for art. Still,
patrons are drawn to either end of the fifth floor,
where floor-to-ceiling glass and comfortable seating
offer views of the Hudson River and New Jersey
to the west and the city to the east.
That vista of the city is also the focus of
the outdoor terraces. Four levels of terraces are
accessible from the gallery floors on the eastern
edge of the building and can be traversed via
outdoor stairs. The terraces, which can
accommodate large outdoor sculptures, visually
and metaphorically connect the patrons to the
surrounding context. That was the intent, according
to Scott Newman, FAIA, a principal with Cooper
Robertson who worked closely with Piano. "Making
visual connections among the art, the city, and

across the river contextualizes the display rather
than distracts from it," Newman told Contract. "The
quality of the natural light and the ability to display
art outside on stepped elevated terraces enhances
the visitor experience."
On the third floor, the museum includes
a theater and performance space with a picture
window facing the Hudson River. Offices and
meeting areas for curators, conservators, and
preparators all have enviable views and are located
along the north and northwestern portions of upper
floors, within close proximity to the galleries.
"The offices and staff areas were designed to reinforce
the museum's commitment to artists and art,"
Newman says. "Design of the workspaces also
reflects that essential relationship with a vocabulary
of simple materials, such as plywood, and the
straightforward expression of building elements,
such as structural cross-bracing."
Designed for resilience
During construction, the museum and its design
team encountered what, in hindsight, was a
near-disaster: Hurricane Sandy. The storm struck
in fall 2012 when the steel framing was up, but

the building was not yet enclosed. While the ground
floor and the outdoor plaza had been designed
to consider the FEMA 500-year flood elevation,
the storm surge swept over that level and filled
the open basement with more than six million
gallons of water, according to Newman. "Since
the project was in a relatively early stage of
construction, we were able to redesign and renovate
the building with new flood protection elements to
harden the building against future storms and still
maintain the overall schedule," Newman says. "Given
the location, we had planned for the art to be
exhibited and stored on floor five and higher, so our
planning assumptions proved consistent with best
practices for resilient museum design."
Resilient. Pragmatically, that may be the
best word to describe the Whitney Museum design
in the context of severe storm possibilities. But
it is also apt in portraying this 84-year-old museum's
relationship to the changing, complicated city,
and the evolving view of what excellence in museum
design is today. Appropriately, it is a resilient
museum of American art. c

Curatorial offices along the
northwest edge of the museum
have portal-like windows with
views of the Hudson River and
New Jersey. Simple materials,
such as plywood, are used to
demarcate workspaces. The
two-level curatorial library
(far left) has upper-level
stacks and areas for meetings
or study one level below.

92

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Contract - June 2015

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