A world-class Burchfield-Penney
By Barry A. Muskat
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Exhibition space will double in the new building to 16,000
square feet. The areas for education and public programs will triple. |
Designed by the respected firm of Gwathmey Siegel Associates, the new Burchfield-Penney will be a significant piece of contemporary architecture, an important addition to the museum district, the city, and the region.
For years, the Burchfield-Penney has been housed on the third floor of Buffalo State’s Rockwell Hall. Dedicated to the art and vision of Charles E. Burchfield and distinguished artists of Buffalo, Niagara, and Western New York, its facilities are inadequate for the scope and caliber of the gallery. Although fully accredited by the American Association of Museums, its current space in Rockwell (a refurbished college office and classroom building) is woefully tight. Exhibition space is limited. There’s inadequate storage and conservation space, little room for support services, no loading dock, and no lecture hall for educational programming. With little curbside exposure, the current location is hard for visitors to find—and when it’s found, the parking problem is chronic.
The Burchfield-Penney will be moving south, to a freestanding building less than a block away at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Rockwell Road. The new museum will sit on almost five acres of land on the grounds of the Buffalo Psychiatric Center, near the entrance to Buffalo State College.
The site is in a unique, even hallowed, area where some of America’s best architects have done their work. Directly adjacent to the site is Henry Hobson Richardson’s Buffalo State Hospital, whose rough-hewn sandstone and imposing towers (1880) epitomize the style that came to be known as Richardson Romanesque. Its park-like grounds were planned by Frederick Law Olmsted. Across the street is Edward B. Green’s Albright Museum (1905), the first museum of the acropolis type in the United States, and Gordon Bunshaft’s (Skidmore Owings & Merrill) 1962 addition. Its pure rectilinearity is the ultimate refinement of classic Modernist simplicity.
I visited the BPAC architects—Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel—last September at their New York City office. Although principals of a major firm who have active projects and a deep portfolio of built work, they seem like regular guys who genuinely respect each other.
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Charles Gwathmey (left) and Robert Siegel (right)
in their New York office. |
In conversation, the architects continue in that spirit, where one architect’s ideas are expounded upon by the other, and thoughts are enhanced, amended, and layered.
They describe themselves as traditional modernists and identify the work of Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Alvar Aalto as being consistent in its ethic, well-drafted, and detailed. “It’s about the essence,” they explain. “It’s never decorative, never applied. It’s reduced to the primary state—the essence and sensibility of craft, space, sculpture.”
Their practice is rooted in pre-computer basics such as painting, sculpture, color, travel to Europe, and studio problems. “Form did follow function [in the pre-digital age] to a great degree; forms that weren’t premeditated had no historic base,” they say, noting, “As you [design digitally], you lose intuitive powers: the ability to think and draw holistically.”
In speaking of an architectural partnership, they assess it to be easier if you have a common ground on the larger issues, noting, “From the beginning, we were in tune with each other.” In answer to accusations of not having a “look,” they say, “We respond to specifics—place, environment, technology, culture—as integral parts of design,” adding, “A building in California is different than one in Vermont; you can’t automatically ascribe an aesthetic.”
Charles Gwathmey appeared on critics’ radar screens as one of the New York Five (recognized for their intellectual approach and thoroughness) with a small house he built for his parents in Amagansett, Long Island (1965-67). The house quickly became an icon, a new geometry organized vertically. Its simple clarity and unadorned cedar siding expressed a new sculptural form. A freestanding studio was added and stands in juxtaposition. The two incorporate an American wood tradition with no system of frontalization, whose volumes contain no references to the past.
Bob Siegel reflects, “The house for Charlie’s parents was of the essence, an economy of means, and inspirational.” He continues, “From the outside it was silhouette and fenestration, from the inside it was a filtering world. It has a strong use of materials—the boarding of the wood.” Siegel adds that “for me, that house is still the model for how we make decisions as to form.”
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The architects note that at the new BPAC, all forms come to
the corner in asymmetry and nonfrontality. |
By the time Gwathmey Siegel accepted the commission for the addition in 1982, Wright’s Guggenheim Museum had become a cherished part of the Fifth Avenue streetscape. After a fifty million dollar expansion and renovation, the newly restored Guggenheim opened ten years later, enduring what was probably the most sustained controversy of any addition/restoration proposed or completed—anywhere—ever.
A nine-story slab tower was added as a backdrop to the original spiral.Clad in Indiana limestone, it invokes a Wrightian tartan grid and the grid of the city. The new space, coupled with a complete renovation of the original gallery, relieved many of the practical inadequacies of Wright’s design while still allowing his concept to shine. New double-height galleries accommodate larger artwork: the original spiral ramp and the monitor wing (smaller rotunda) were opened all the way to the top. The new building links with the old.
I’ve visited the Guggenheim many times, yet on each visit I am struck, even inspired, by its power. It’s not only Wright’s compress and release, but it is the climb and curve of the procession which involves the visitor and evokes emotions.
As at the Guggenheim, part of the adventure of the new Burchfield-Penney may be in the procession through the space. From the entry, visitors will walk through a two-story space illuminated by a series of skylights. There’s a grand stairway, a circular balcony, and a cantilevered overlook to the two-story exhibition space, the rotunda, and the terrace where site lines look to the Albright Knox. Integrated into the sequence will be Burchfield’s studio, to be discovered along the route.
A key to the success of the design and fruition of a very long planning process has been the leadership, tenacity, and contagious enthusiasm of Ted Pietrzak, BPAC Executive Director. The architects concur that their best work comes for their most demanding clients, saying “We respond to the situation—designing within constraints.”
The architects note that they pay a lot of attention to intersections: how forms come together. “They’re not just planes,” they explain, “but a three dimensional value system. The [Long Island] house is a fantastic model to discover forms and how they come together; it has always been a kind of microcosm for us where we discover ideas that can be reapplied to other work.”
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The Gwathmey Residence, Amagansett, Long
Island, was built for the architect’s parents in 1965. |
The design includes exhibition galleries which double current gallery capacity, educational spaces, administrative offices, a café, an expanded museum store, an auditorium that will seat 156, and a conservation laboratory.
Gwathmey and Siegel note that its corner location is key to the museum’s design: all forms come to the corner in asymmetry and nonfrontality. They see the rotunda as the iconic piece, the fulcrum for the composition. They use it as an example to talk about how memory—even if it’s subliminal—affects our experience of a structure. “From outside, you’ll remember that rotunda; then, it’s anticipatory and you experience it. You see the outside but appreciate the interior differently. As architects, we grow a building inside and outside concurrently.”
They stress the importance of a thorough attention to detail noting, “Every move is thought about from a use point of view. ... there’s nothing that’s arbitrary.”
The exterior materials are limestone, glass, magnesium bricks, and zinc panels. Gwathmey points out, “Aside from glass, these are natural materials that will patina over time.” He predicts that “the building will get better as it takes on its own life. Part of our ethic is a concern as to how a building maintains itself: it’s not just the aesthetic appearance, it must perform and have enduring longevity.”
Like the best of the artwork it will enclose, the architecture of the new Burchfield-Penney Art Center strives to engage visitors for generations to come.
Barry A. Muskat is Buffalo Spree’s architecture critic and frequent contributing writer.
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