Frank Lloyd Wright - Solomon R. Guggenheim Musem

In 1943, Wright was commissioned to design a museum to house the Solomon R. Guggehiem Collection of Non-Objective Painting. Construction of the building began in 1956 and was incomplete at the time of Wright's death in 1959. The many delays in implementing the plan included the building moratorium imposed by World War II, the difficulty of finding a suitable site in Manhatten, and problems in obtaining construction permits from New York City officials. The spiral form that characterized the design from the earliest stage went through several versions; with tiers of the same size, or growing progressively smaller toward the top, or expanding in size as the building rose.

The choice of the expanding spiral made the best use of the available site and combined structural and spatial principles toward which Wright had worked throughout his career. The primary construction material is concrete, both sprayed and poured into forms. Inside the building, a shallow spiraling ramp follows the curvilinear form of the exterior and provides display space for the artworks. Wright said, the Guggenheim Museum is "one great space on a single continuous floor. The eye encounters no abrupt change, but is gently led and treated as if at the edge of a shore watching an unbreaking wave ... one floor flowing into another instead of the usual superimposition of stratified layers. The whole is cast in concrete, more an eggshell in form than a crisscross brick structure."

Guggenheim Museum drawing by Frank Lloyd Wright

For more information about the Guggenheim Museum
www.guggenheim.org