Piano plays Harvard by Peter Pennoyer

After almost twenty years of failed plans and intellectual plane. As Zaha Hadid, who speaks false starts, has recently com- of “the idea of explosion and fragmentation” bined the collections of its three museums—the and “fluid spatialities,” has said: “Every build- Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Arthur M. ing must have a central idea.” Sackler—into one new building designed by These ideas often defy logic. Elizabeth Renzo Piano Building Workshop and its local Diller, the renowned architect/artist, speaks partner, the design firm Payette. The Harvard of “productive nihilism” in projects “done Art Museums, known as ham, include ample through a form of subtraction, or obstruction, galleries, studios for the conservation center, au- or interference in a world that we naturally ditoriums, classrooms, viewing rooms, and even sleepwalk through.” Wolfgang Prix, the cel- the Naumburg Room, a hidden-away Jacobean ebrated deconstructivist, believes that “the new hall reconstructed as a lounge for faculty, staff, architecture has to create space for concepts and students. ham’s opening, six years after the and ideas that haven’t been thought of yet.” doors to the original Fogg were closed, has re- Some even suggest that their clients (or mu- united the University with its treasury of art in seum boards) not try to understand their ideas. a building that fulfills the needs of its programs. Daniel Libeskind’s website once proclaimed, This new collection of museums under one glass “Architecture is a spiritual domain, a realm roof, known as the lantern, will support scholar- that can not be visualized, an area of invisible ship, teaching, conservation, and exhibitions for a presence since it deals with the unspeakable.” very long time to come, but its functional success In this atmosphere of incoherent, self- comes in the guise of a building that discloses proclaimed brilliance, Renzo Piano stands the influence of ideas that, while accepted as the out as an architect who expresses a sound, basis of making museums today, do not always clear, and almost modest approach to his lead to good architecture. practice. As an architect who is passionate Novel ideas go hand in hand with actual about construction (his is a family of build- designs as the calling cards of the top echelon ers), he has developed a practice that is in of architects today. Museums entrust this level equal parts about designing and making. At of the profession not just to make buildings this intersection of architecture and construc- that work, but also often to make landmarks tion, Piano’s firm is able to achieve ingenious that reflect each institution’s quest for that solutions to practical challenges inherent in fleeting cutting edge of culture. Other than his designs often relating to the mechanics Frank Gehry, who for better or worse has el- of bringing light into architecture. In the evated his brand of intuitive genius to an art early and much-heralded Menil Collection form, many top architects today want you to in Houston, he devised an elegant system know that their designs are to be judged on an of louvers that modulate daylight and make

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the galleries luminous. In Houston and cal agency that fiercely protects existing his- throughout his extensive body of work, the torical Cambridge but for much of its life architecture is mostly orthogonal. Structural has endorsed modernism for new buildings and expressive elements are often one and the and additions. same. Piano’s columns and beams are fully The preservation of the shell of the Fogg exposed—not hidden behind finishes. The is a fundamental strength of the project. The resulting simplicity of his buildings—the main façade on Quincy Street is centered on absence of what one critic has called “the Sever Quadrangle on the east side of Harvard crash-landed-and-about-to-explode look in Yard directly facing H. H. Richardson’s Sever modern architecture”—makes his work seem Hall. This axial arrangement made the Fogg calm in an era fraught by willful showman- a significant extension of the Georgian Re- ship. But this simplicity and directness have vival brick architecture that became the lingua inherent limitations inasmuch as Piano’s work franca of the Harvard campus with McKim, is often based on stock-in-trade formulas and Mead & White’s designs for thirteen of the misconceptions about how we experience ar- Harvard Yard gates, the Harvard Union, and chitecture, which disclose a lack of connection Robinson Hall. Shepley Bulfinch were fol- with the essential strand of humanism that lowing a style that is still the indelible archi- underlies great buildings. tectural emblem of Harvard University and One of the formulas that aligns with Piano’s doing so just ten years before Walter Gropius approach is the widespread and institutional- descended on the Graduate School of Design ized bias against designing to create a mean- to take his place in the struggle to purge his- ingful relationship between old and new. This tory from the curriculum. attitude reflects the orthodoxy of preservation Despite the fact that the original entrance policy and practice first expounded in The maintains its purpose, an increasingly rare Venice Charter of 1964 that called for new outcome in contemporary museum additions, architecture to “bear a contemporary stamp.” how Piano treats the Fogg suggests that pres- As codified in the Secretary of the Interior’s ervation was not completely welcome. From Standards and adopted by many preservation inside Harvard Yard, standing on the steps agencies, not under Federal control, this ap- of , the façade appears untouched proach evolved into a mandate where con- and the large glass roof, a truncated hipped trast trumps context. Piano, typically, respects form, makes a pleasantly diaphanous appear- this policy, here making a new building that ance at a comfortable scale, but a closer view is explicitly foreign to its context and barely reveals the conflict between old and new: acknowledges its neighbors. the steps to the entrance remain, but Piano compromises the relationship of the Fogg to Set between a street of low-scale brick apart- the ground, defacing the building with a vast, ment houses and the east edge of Harvard triangular ramp that cuts across the façade, Yard, ham’s highly constrained site contained slicing through original details in one stroke. the Fogg, built in 1927 by Shepley Bulfinch, This brutal shift of grade against the old brick a 1991 addition by Gwathmey Siegel (which wall brings the ramp perilously close to the was judged expendable), and, to the south, base of one of the Fogg’s exquisitely detailed the 1963 Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, stone aedicule balconies, rendering it an ob- Le Corbusier’s only built work in America. stacle. What was once an elegant emblem of In this dense setting, Piano incorporated the classical design is now a forlorn fragment, shell of the Fogg and its internal Calderwood sequestered behind a paltry modernist fence. Courtyard, which was based on the façade of In this instance, accessibility has become an the canon’s house of the sixteenth-century excuse for a messy design. church of San Biagio in Montepulciano. On the north and south ends of the build- His design was then negotiated with the ing, Piano has juxtaposed the Fogg with Cambridge Historical Commission, the lo- expanses of windowless façade. The meticu-

10 The New Criterion March 2015 Piano plays Harvard by Peter Pennoyer lously detailed slots that divide old and new Entering from the Harvard side, the disjunc- feature svelte bands of glass that emphasize tion of the exterior fades, and ham becomes the disjunction between the Piano structure one building. The arcades of the courtyard and its host. This high level of technical skill and its central axis organize the entire plan on in sealing the gap between two incompatible every level, and abundant daylight admitted buildings is only admirable if one accepts that through the glass roof floods the surround- disjunction is desirable. On the Broadway ing spaces and reorients the visitor emerging side, a service ramp and two additional en- from the surrounding galleries. Because the trances puncture the base giving the impres- admissions desk, the gift shop, and the cloak- sion of a perfunctory design. room are pushed to the outside of the arcade, Facing Prescott Street, the gallery floors are the courtyard is free of the clutter that is so wrapped in a windowless, building-wide box often imposed in museums as part of the “visi- that is cantilevered ominously two levels above tor experience.” The extension of the volume the sidewalk. The slats that cover the box ap- of the courtyard in glass provides welcome pear to be aluminum but are actually Alaskan views of the conservation studios and study yellow cedar. Though the wood is intended to rooms above and a glimpse of an entire wall echo the clapboard found on some of the older of glass-fronted cabinets displaying a library houses in Cambridge, its perfectly even tone of pigments, paints, glues, and other archived and spaced mounting makes it feel completely materials central to the work of the conserva- foreign to . In the depth of the tors and scholars. open base, Piano has slid what must be the The Prescott Street lobby contains the stair largest and most unwelcoming ramp in Mas- and the elevators that, like many aspects of sachusetts, which spans the entire building, this building, have been detailed to be func- intercepting and fusing with Le Corbusier’s tional but not aesthetically pleasing. Piano is ramp from the Carpenter Center for the Visual consistent in refusing to exploit any of the Arts. This implausible connection has shocked exposed nuts and bolts of his buildings for Le Corbusier partisans, one of whom called expressive value. The stair itself, given its it “a crime against humanity,” and indeed it prominent position, is uncomfortably nar- reflects badly on both buildings, reducing the row, and its placement, straddling and par- great modernist master’s ramp to a role in a tially obscuring the view from the entrance, museum-scale Rube Goldberg moment. is the very definition of an anti-humanist Further complicating the architecture, the approach. This is stair as equipment, not as ramp and the stairs share a landing that pushes architecture. In the humanist tradition, the the actual entrance deep under the looming stair would be centered on the axis. When a gallery wing where it is barely visible above stair is treated as a piece of equipment, the layers of rock-faced granite retaining walls and human element is relegated to second place. a virtual carapace of steel guardrails. Piano’s Likewise, the cramped relationship of the gal- goal, “to bring change to the spirit of the rela- leries to the openings where they connect to tionship between Harvard and the Cambridge the arcades suggests that Piano found the community,” is laudable, but his notion that original dimensions confining and that he this cantilever would make the building “float” treated the architecture as an inelastic matrix is simply a self-delusion, and the idea that rais- that had to be worked around. ing the galleries would allow the community The galleries are that unremarkable and to flow in is a misconception exposed by its ubiquitous style of sheetrock partitions and overbearing, almost intimidating presence on ceilings where each plane floats mysteriously Prescott Street. The fact that the Georgian apart from the next, leaving gaping reveals at Revival side of this building is more welcom- the edges of each room that seem to say that ing suggests that the community and even the this is not architecture and these are not walls, University might have been better served by but all is simply a vaguely modernist stage set. a more unified, contextual design. The bland result points to an anxiety that even

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a hint of architectural character might diminish by a sliding slab of façade, mounted on tracks the art, or worse: make viewing the art seem outside the building, to shade the adjacent less serious. The standard white box galleries galleries. So standing next to a Bernini, one we see here find a corollary in the perennial is confronted by the view of the inside of a curatorial impulse—that is rarely acted upon— wall with its nuts, bolts, welds, and straps—an to strip certain twentieth-century paintings of unwelcome distraction. their frames on the grounds that the decora- In the top floors of the ham, Piano’s skill tion might domesticate what should be seen at designing the high-tech mechanisms for as serious and radical. filtering light are on full display. Continu- In at least two places, Piano makes an effort ing the volume of the courtyard in walls of to enrich the architecture of the interiors. glass, Piano places an entire floor of viewing On two levels, the galleries have shallow bar- rooms where students and visitors can exam- rel vaults that run the short direction of the ine works of art in person. Above, the three room. This serves to improve the perceived divisions of the conservation center—paper, proportions of the space and makes a subtle materials, and paint—have adjacent studios reference to the vaults of the original court- with glass ceilings providing the direct day- yard. Unfortunately the vaults, like Piano’s light that is a requirement for this kind of ceilings, are detached from the walls and from work. These spaces are exhilarating to be in each other, demonstrating that they are vesti- and function perfectly for ham. gial elements that have neither structural nor So it is at the crown of ham where Piano’s decorative integrity but are closer to acousti- skills in designing systems to modulate light cal baffles in a concert hall. are in harmony with the institution and the building. At this level, we realize that we At the north and south ends of the build- are in a working attic. Here, beauty doesn’t ing, Piano cantilevers a small, daylit gallery matter. Grids and ladders and exhaust fans beyond the façade. These abrupt protrusions, are on display as cogs in Piano’s “light ma- called “winter gardens,” are bathed in natural chine.” Below, in the stairs, the halls, and on light, a welcome counterpoint to the adjacent the exterior, we realize that Renzo Piano is galleries that must be windowless. The south not particularly interested, despite his claim winter garden contains fifteen Bernini bozzetti to be a producer of beauty, in aesthetic or “clay sketches,” one of the great treasures of achievement. Even the detailing of the kit the Fogg. To see these exquisite models made of parts, which is what makes this building by Bernini’s hand in full daylight is extraordi- seem half-hearted, suggests a design process nary and an example of Piano’s masterful use closed within a hermetic mindset that doesn’t of light, but the glass walls are partially masked admit the relevance of history and context.

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