Oiio Architecture Office of New York and Athens has come up with a concept to extend Frank's Lloyd Wright's famous Guggenheim Museum in New York by extending its spiralling form up into the sky.
"What if we decided we needed a little more of Guggenheim?" question the architects, whose plans show a structure with almost three times as many floors as the iconic museum that was designed by Wright during the 1940s.
The tapered extension would continue the path of the Guggenheim's ramped rotunda gallery through an additional thirteen floors, finishing with a complete circular floor on the uppermost level. The domed glass roof would be removed from its current position and reconstructed over the new roof.
Above: proposed floor plans
Oiio Architecture Office names the project Guggenheim Extension Story, as a reference to the unlikelihood that any extension to the museum would ever really take place.
Above: proposed section
"Guggenheim museum has become so iconic, so emblematic and hermetic in our minds that it can no longer be touched by architects!" say the team, before adding: "Even if its own creator were to propose an alternation of its form, New Yorkers would suddenly feel as if they have lost a dear old friend."
Above: proposed elevation
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened to the public in 1959 and houses a collection of impressionist, modern and contemporary art. Another Guggenheim by architect Frank Gehry was completed in Bilbao, Spain, in the 1990s.
Above: concept diagrams
See more stories about museums and galleries on Dezeen, including the recently completed Louvre Lens by SANAA and Imrey Culbert.
Only if it’s mechanized to get higher or lower as dictaded by the exhibit.
Anyway, it looks like one of those collapsible travel cups.
Are exhibitions to be seen from bottom to top or top to bottom? Not sure I’ll make it all the way up.
*giggle*
So uber-mad. I love it. On balance though, best leave it alone.
The section shows the uselessness of the new dome as there is no space left to be able to see it from the ground floor.
I don’t know why this made it to Dezeen. On a side note, I like the softness and clarity of the drawings, but that’s about it.
Blah blah blah. This is obviously a project designed to be provocative and attract attention rather than actually provoke any useful architectural discourse.
Guggenheim on steroids! Please, no!
You can’t add to perfect and you can’t make it better! Rather, have a second building somewhere else.
What a truly awful idea. I wish designers and architects would just stop posting these trivial, vapid, self-generated publicity stunts. Failing that, I wish the design press would just stop covering them. They’re just validating bad behaviour.
A whirlwind swallows the icon.
Walk away and leave well alone!
I think it’s quite clever. The design does pose interesting questions about how to deal with architectural icons, authorship and authenticity.
Why is everyone so outraged?
In a way it’s rather respectful to the original design by literally extending the original concept into the sky – and hence closer to Frank Lloyd Wright himself who’s watching the spectacle from his fluffy little cloud.
One of the other comments suggested the interior space would become more like the Pantheon in Rome – is that a bad thing? I imagine an cathedral-like atrium, which would indeed be a lot darker than shown in the rendering.
The new floors at the top would create vast spaces, which would allow for the display of very different kinds of art – large-scale sculptures etc.
An interesting exercise in how to transform an existing structure using its internal logic and by doing so transforming the space into something completely new.
Obviously this is more of an ironic statement – with a rather miniscule prospect of ever being realised.
If anyone actually reads, they say right in the explanation that this would never happen and they have no desire to see it happen. It’s just architects having fun – everyone needs to calm down!
“The Guggenheim museum has become so iconic, so emblematic and hermetic in our minds that it can no longer be touched by architects!” say the team, before adding: “Even if its own creator were to propose an alternation of its form, New Yorkers would suddenly feel as if they have lost a dear old friend.”
New year – new stupid idea!
How many of us googled Oiio Architecture already?
I’m sorry. I can’t believe this is serious. Shall we facelift Lyberty Statue to match today’s plasticky women? What’s the point?
Can you make a change to the Mona Lisa, The Parthenon, The Sydney Opera House? Please, pay a little respect to the master, Frank Lloyd Wright.
It’s like iPhone 5. Um, Guggenheim5?!
This is a stupid thought experiment. In fact, it does the opposite of a thought experiment: when you read it, you actually get stupider. So stop making these stupid exercises to make everyone who reads it dumber.
OMG! This is horrible! They’ll have to re-film the opening gambit of Men In Black!
Disgusting! But a clever marketing strategy for a underemployed office with too much time left at the rendering machine. Another way to become (in)famous.
Oiio Architecture Office: STOP making such senseless things of optical pollution! :-P
Hey, this is America and bigger is always considered better. So why not add another, say, 19 floors? And ruin it all: the building, the neighborhood and whatever is left of some acceptable reputation for architects.
Well, that’s buggered the visual balance! Incidentally, would it even be physically possible to do this? I saw a concrete survey drawing of the Guggenheim once and it didn’t look healthy! Not to mention the fact that the foundations must have only been designed to carry what’s there now.
So basically they are turning the Guggenheim into an enlarged Styrofoam cup.
Please, NO!
Definitely no. It was bad enough when some self-proclaimed artist (Matthew Barney) draped cushioned padding over the balustrade wall and put dead pigeons in a cage in the roof a few years ago. Hope this is just a hoax.
Oh gosh! NO! I am a hardcore fan of FLW and I don’t think he would appreciated the concept. I would not like the new concept because the interior space provided a lot of balance visually. If deciding to expand the infinity ceiling, we will not be able to see it this far from the first floor. I think it would be very ugly if the light effects were changed. I think it is the best way to leave it alone. I understand that New York is well known for skyscrapers and why is it wrong to have some tiny buildings among the skyscrapers?
Excellent experiment in emotion verses intellect.
Hilariously bad. Might make a good article for The Onion, though.
Why was this even posted and why did someone take the time to make this?
Probably commissioned as a study to determine people’s reactions to the building before any “real” call for updates go out to tender.