Albright-Knox Table of Contents................. Albright-Knox Official Home Page
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Buffalo State College's Rockwell Hall in background |
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H.H. Richardson's Buffalo Psychiatric Center's famous twin towers in background |
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In 1957, responding to the need to expand
the Albright Art Gallery, knowledgeable local inhabitants suggested reviving E.B.
Green's 1942 plans for extending the Gallery, but these were thought unsuitable.
Seymour H. Knox, the Academy's president and a great benefactor of the Gallery, purportedly
discussed the project with Martha Jackson, a New York art gallery owner and former
Buffalo resident. Jackson suggested Skidmore, Owings
and Merrill and, in particular, architect Gordon
Bunshaft. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the largest architectural partnership
in the world, had in 1956 a staff consisting of over 700 people, 200 of whom were
draftsmen, while ninety-four were registered architects. The essential approach in
design and construction was and is based on the team principle, with a full partner
supervising each project. In advocating somewhat anonymous design teams, rather than
a more personalized approach, the firm responded to Walter Gropius' call for modern
production methods in achieving architecture without egotism.
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Bunshaft's Lever House |
Bunshaft's first great success was Lever House (1951-52), the first really modern
International Style corporate headquarters in New York. Lever House set the standard
in American architecture for at least five years, and was the model for much of the
urban glass-box architecture during the 1950s.
By 1955 Gordon Bunshaft had received the First Prize for architecture from the National
Academy of Design and was chief of design in Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's New York
office. But it was his Connecticut General Building, with its sleek glass facade,
that most impressed the directors of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy.
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill received the commission and Bunshaft was chosen as
the partner in charge of design for the Gallery's new addition, which was completed
by the winter of 1961. Formal dedication ceremonies extended over an entire week
in January 1962 and included symposia, concerts, dinners of public and private celebration
and a grand ball held at the Country Club of Buffalo.
The Addition
The marble and glass wing added to the south of the original building is a splendid expression of high International Style. The "black box" houses the auditorium, while to the north is situated an open air sculpture garden, around which are grouped offices, exhibition space, and a restaurant. Sleek and restrained, Bunshaft's new wing echoes the main lines and proportions of the older building and at the same time establishes an austere contrast with its predecessor's ornateness.
The interior of the new wing, which doubles the total available floor space for
exhibitions to about 40,000 square feet, was planned on a linear grid. The ceilings
of the long galleries on the east-west sides of the structure continue on the same
plane while the floor drops to a lower level, providing a clear uninterrupted view
through the length of the new wing. Recessed incandescent lighting bathes the walls
in soft, even light without shadows. The inner sculpture garden, entirely surrounded
by glass walls which echo Green's dignified sculpture court above, provides an intimate
space for viewing small outdoor sculpture.
The gray-smoked glass of the auditorium, which has only two visible columnar
supports, appears black during the daytime, emphasizing the contrast between it and
the Vermont marble that clads the ground floor level.
Like much of the work of Skidmore, Owings, Merrill, the entrance to the building
is de-emphasized in an effort to maintain the smoothness of the exterior and to increase
the sculptural feel of the building. Museums need obvious entrances, however, and
a small, clear glass box was added as the design of the Gallery's addition evolved.
It forms an entrance vestibule that helps to maintain environmental stability inside
the building. In plan, the black box of the auditorium is trapezoidal in shape rather
than square. It also ends before the termination of the ground-floor roof, thus creating
an extension that adds an extra dimension to the elevations. This contrast in horizontal
and vertical plans is similar to Bunshaft's classic achievement in the Lever House,
which also has an open central court.
Bunshaft's addition to the Gallery works because it both separates and combines the
old and the new in a balanced relationship. The white exterior walls of the addition
lead from the base of the original facade to distance the box from Green's work.
The addition continues the tradition of the International Style, a movement that
changed forever the skylines of cities throughout the world, but which has, since
the 1970s, experienced a critical backlash in the form of Post-Modern architecture,
a more decorative style that often quotes various historical periods in unorthodox
ways. The "greenhouse brutalism" of contemporary architects like I.M. Pei,
Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo has been chosen in recent years for major additions
to museums such as the National Gallery, Washington, D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York. It would be difficult to imagine, however, such recent architectural
styles in direct combination with the reverent work of Edward B. Green. Bunshaft's
addition is modest and restrained and complements, rather than competes with, Green's
design.
- Text from "The Gallery Architects: Edward B. Green and Gordon Bunshaft," by John Douglas Sanford
