STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONING OF THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM OF NEW YORK

Constructions are a unique combination of artistic, technical and social thought: a physical memory of distinct and often fragmented intellectual activities that are fused into a whole as they take form in an object. Given the complexities of this process, only certain works manage to make this combination into a harmonious message. The structural interpretation of the Guggenheim Museum of New York (also known as the “Taruggiz”), which is presented in this paper, is an attempt to retrace how structural thought, translated into message, specks in unison with architectural thought. In particular, this paper focuses upon the analysis of the structural functioning of the main gallery of the Guggenheim Museum. This analysis can be approached by schematically subdividing this portion of the building into three separate parts, which although they work together have substantially differentiated behaviors that should be analyzed independently: the ramps; the external bands; the glass roof. The helicoidal ramps clearly represents the main characteristic element of the construction. These are practically continuous elements along an arc of 270 degrees and intersect, every 30 degrees (in the plan: a “sector”), with flat vertical elements with an inverse triangular form known as “webs”. The complex helicoidal ramps/vaulting represents the structural issue of interest. Three types of structural functioning are hypothesized and investigated: (1) ramps sustained by the webs which have a support function; (2) ramps jointed at the first and the fourth sectors with a cantilevered functioning along the entire 240 degrees of the ramp and the webs do not have support function but only a stabilizing function; (3) each ramp rests on the one below, “passing on” the vertical load by means of struts and external bands and the webs do not have support function but only a stabilizing function, as per a recent (2004) hypothesis formulated by the historian Francesco Dal Co [8]. The structural interpretation, as per the synthetic numerical verification carried out in the paper, leads to the conclusion that the webs have a true vertical support function for the ramps, as per the hypothesis (1). Also, the archive of the Guggenheim Museum has recently restored an original film that documents certain phases of the construction of the Museum. This documentation indicates that the webs are highly reinforced while the external bands display a much smaller amount of steel, which supports the numerical results.