Here’s the earlier piece on the Piano’s remake of the Morgan. The PDF is here, click “read more” to comment and read.

salud,

-fish

The newly expanded Morgan Library grew on me. At first glance, I found Renzo Piano’s additions to be eye-rollingly typical: white and boxy. The new foyer is extremely boxy, and generally white. Yeah, there’s some nice wood flooring and paneling, but the boxiness and the whiteness dominated my perceptions as I made my way inside.

It was a perfect Spring day, and natural light had completely filled the central atrium. The Morgan was days away from its official public opening, and I had managed to secure a press pass for the pre-opening speeches and ceremony. The people around me were far richer and older than myself, for the most part, and I ducked and dodged past them on my way to my first stop: the new gallery, located downstairs.

In this small gallery, opposite the new Gilder Lehrman concert hall, a display of models and drawings from the Piano’s studio went through the chronology of the renovation. The largest model clearly illustrated what I had suspected: the new bits were all fantastically boxy¹ and had formally little to do with the Morgan’s original clutch of squat Beaux-Arts structures. I can’t wait to hear this guy speak, I thought at this point; it’ll be a hilarious fountain of recycled modernist clichés.

On my way upstairs to the main atrium, however, I began to notice the details around me. The floors were made of richly stained oak, which seamlessly matched the floor in the two central elevators. These elevators, in fact, floated dramatically through the core of the atrium, but their infrastructure had been carefully hidden: no cables or counterweights could be seen dangling anywhere. I could see all the way to the upper floors, which were lit by fresh light from outside².

Most of the steel structural elements were clearly visible, and almost all of them were painted a warm white. Steel joinery details like rivets were neither elaborately obfuscated, but they certainly weren’t garish, and their visual presence reinforced the rhythms of the transparent ceiling grids and beams.

OK, so maybe it’s more than typical boxiness, I thought. But what really got me was the spatial fluidity which the new construction was integrated with the old stuff. At first glance, it was easy to write the expansion off as discordant, particularly when I focused on the façade and the form. But the newly-defined spaces mesh perfectly with the original buildings, contrasting when appropriate³ but primarily dovetailing, delicately, with the space given. My early formal impressions of the Morgan gave way to a sense of balance and aplomb pervading the interlocking old and new spaces. This sense became more and more tangible as I spent more time in the Morgan, making my way through the crowds of socialites and moguls, taking it all in.

Originally, the Morgan Library was not so welcoming, it seems. Erected mostly before 1900, the original stone buildings were generally closed off from outside light. Heavy detailing and expensive wood paneling dominated the interiors. They were constructed with Morgan himself in mind, rather than a public audience. Many visitors’ accounts of the original buildings mention the image of rich white men smoking cigars as one that is conjured by the museum; the intimate and exclusive nature of the space made interlopers out of visitors⁴.

Piano’s expansion is twofold: his design digs deep into the earth, generating new space for a rigorously climate-controlled archive, as well as a small theatre. With these functional components safely buried, he can safely let the sunlight in upstairs. The brilliant atrium was built to functionally recall a piazza, a sort of space that, as Piano indicated in his speech, is fundamentally less commercial and more considerate of community than a plaza.

The opening ceremony itself was on the resplendent side of things, with speeches by Mike Bloomberg, the mayor; Charles Pierce, the director of the Morgan Library and a direct decendant of J. Pierpont Morgan himself; and all the salmon puffs you could eat. But Piano presented himself humbly. He prefaced his talk by intoning, what is there that I can say? The building is here for you to experience. He referred to the underground archives as “buried treasures,” and expounded on the honesty of the material choices and detailing decisions. Mercifully, he eschewed stock-standard architectural verbiage⁵ when speaking of his atrium, and instead spoke plainly about how it was a determinedly public place for New Yorkers to congregate.

I, for one, believed him. The act of building in New York is a true test of an architect’s mettle: if one tries too hard to reprogram the carefully apportioned city blocks, one ends up with an object, as is the case with Sir Norman Foster’s Hearst Magazine Building, or Santiago Calatrava’s forthcoming downtown transportation hub. Piano’s renovation subtly slips in between the existing features of the block the Morgan occupies, and does so respectfully, and (dare I add) with grace.

1. … and, one would presume, white. This model was made of unvarnished balsa wood, leaving color to the imagination. [back]

2. Much has been said about the quotidian nature of the exterior vistas Piano has reframed, particularly as compared to the recent MoMA renovation. I am of the opinion that these straightforward urban views are positive features, rather than detractors; see my final comment about New York block-reprogramming. [back]

3. The most notable contrast (and a large part of what I found initially off-putting) was that of material; however, aping the existent structures would have been extraordinarily tacky… think about it. [back]

4. Having never visited the pre-Piano Morgan, I get the impression that it came across as a rich old man’s personal playpen. Not as eccentric as the Forbes galleries, perhaps, but still freakishly patrician enough to likely rank low on the average New Yorker’s list of cultural destinations. [back]

5. E.g. “soaring”, “expressive”, “dazzling”, “dramatic”, et cetera, ad nauseum. Just google for “Nicolai Ouroussoff” if you want more. [back]

another good writeup from the architect’s newspaper: http://www.archpaper.com/features/200607morgan.htm