In 1989, the New York Times ran the headline: “The Whitney Paradox: To Add Is To Subtract.” Such was Paul Goldberger’s distaste for what Michael Graves had originally proposed to lie adjacent to Marcel Breuer‘s building. “The Breuer building is resistant to all attempts to bring it into an urban dialogue along the street, but that alone should not be a reason not to build a work of architecture that attempts, gently and powerfully, to coax it into speaking.”

The original Breuer building has been subject to a number of renovation proposals from Michael Graves, OMA, Renzo Piano, and even a public sketch competition. This ruination examines an alternative to the current Whitney at the end of the High Line, in which Renzo Piano’s proposal was approved with an additional alteration to the original Breuer building to establish a less internalized building, thus undermining the original monolithic form.

2019

Published in RETROSPECTA 43