Architects and Artists Re-imagine New York's Guggenheim Museum

"Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum" exhibits nearly 200 reinventions of the building's rotunda.

Sheila Kim -- Interior Design, 2/15/2010 12:00:00 AM

Controversial when it opened in 1959, New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, today is a revered architectural work that continues to inspire the current crop of architects. One of its most elegant features is its large rotunda, formed by a helical spiral and capped with a skylight. But what if all that empty space that Wright dangled underneath the skylight and in the face of the art and design world were to be filled? How could it be re-imagined? That’s what the museum posed nearly 200 artists, designers, and architects for its exhibition, “Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum.”



Both a celebration of the building’s 50th anniversary and a self-reflexive folly, the show includes projects by such celebrated figures as Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread, Toyo Ito, Matthew Ritchie, Sarah Sze, Richard Meier, andf Daniel Libeskind. Picture wilderness, complete with a creek, lush plant life, and birds; a giant spiral affording visitors a different sloping walkway; or a circus safety net that museum-goers could jump down to. The reinventions run the gamut all the way to the fantastical; peruse them through April 28, 2010.



Want to get your hands on one of these custom artworks? Most of them will be offered in a silent auction benefit on March 4 to help support museum programming.

Images from top: Experiencing the Void by Julien De Smedt Architects (JDS); Untitled by Alyson Shotz; New Roof, Berlin Olympic Stadium by Paul Pfeiffer; Flow Show by WORKac; FLW in His Element by Saunders Architecture. All images courtesy the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum.