Fondazione Renzo Piano: Whitney Museum

The Whitney Museum built itself a new home in downtown Manhattan's Meatpacking District. Open to the public on May 1st, 2015, the project substantially enlarged the Whitney's exhibition and programming space. 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 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 4,650 sq. meters of gallery space is distributed over levels five, six, seven and eight, the fifth level boasting a 1670 sq. meters, column-free gallery - making it the largest open-plan museum gallery in New York City. A text at the end of the book provides the reader with a "behind the scenes" view. A conception of the museum that starts from the work of art to arrive at the architectural project. A journey that takes the reader through time and space during its realization.

“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.

All text in both Italian and English. Not available in any other languages.