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Project Portfolio – October 2006

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Morgan Library and Museum

New York City
Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano alters the character of New York’s Morgan Library and Museum with a new entrance and a skylit court.

	Photo © Michel Denancé,

By Victoria Newhouse

The recently opened Morgan Library and Museum in New York, with Beyer Blinder Belle as executive architect, and shortly before it the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, with Lord, Aeck & Sargent, are the first two major museum expansions by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The two projects demonstrate how varied the intentions for such undertakings can be, and consequently how different the results. The Morgan trustees wanted the same kind of popular facilities currently favored by large, public museums, which in its case ended up occupying 75,000 square feet and costing $106 million. In order to add a 280-seat auditorium, new storage vaults, more galleries, a new reading room, an enlarged store, a café, and a fancy restaurant, far too much was crammed into this tight, 42,314-square-foot site. Considering the trustees’ reluctance to build a tower, Piano tackled the problem by excavating 65 feet below ground for the auditorium and new state-of-the-art storage. Above ground, Beyer Blinder Belle handled restorations and renovations; Piano executed the additions with his usual elegance, but in the process turned this historic house museum into a conventional, purpose-built museum.

In both cities, Piano linked new glass-and-steel structures with existing architecture, in each case reoriented around a central piazza. For both he used similarly scaled, rectangular, off-white metal panels for cladding. The Morgan, located in a residential area near Midtown Manhattan, presented Piano with the challenge of accommodating three landmark buildings: the marble 1906 library designed for the banker J.P. Morgan by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead and White, which faces 36th Street; the more subdued 1928 marble annex modeled after it by Benjamin Wistar Morris on the corner of 36th Street and Madison Avenue; and the brownstone mansion on Madison Avenue and 37th Street built in 1852 by Isaac N. Phelps Stokes of Phelps Dodge & Co. Piano joined the three by means of a 52-foot-high enclosed central atrium, inserted a 20-foot-high cube between the two 20th-century buildings, added a four-story office building on 37th Street with a loading dock at its base, plus the entrance pavilion with exhibition space on the second floor and a new reading room on the top.

Piano’s atrium holds the new complex together. Because most of the Morgan’s possessions are sensitive to ultraviolet rays, daylight is limited to just one gallery: the small, top-lit cube. The library’s collections of rare books, manuscripts, and drawings are shown in rooms suffused with subdued, electrically generated light. About all that can be said of them is that they are well-proportioned and fulfill their function competently.

Want the full story? Read the entire article in our October 2006 issue.
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the People

Owner
Pierpont Morgan Library

Architect's firm name:
Design Architect:
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
34, rue des Archives
Paris, France 75004
011 33 1 44 61 49 00 tel
011 33 1 42 78 01 98 fax
www.rpbw.com/

Executive Architect:
Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners LLP
41 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10003
212 777 7800 tel
212 475 7424 fax
www.beyerblinderbelle.com

Renzo Piano Building Workshop:
Renzo Piano
Giorgio Bianchi
Thorsten Sahlmann
Kendall Doerr
Yves Pages
Mario Reale
Alex Knapp

Beyer Blinder Belle:
Richard Southwick, partner in charge
Michael Wetstone, project manager
Rob Tse, project architect (new building)
Frank Prial, project architect (historic buildings) Yuri Suzuki Joe Gall Meghan Lake

Structural Engineer
Robert Silman Associates
www.rsapc.com

MEP Engineer
Cosentini Associates
www.cosentini.com

Consultants
Landscape:
H.M. White Site Architects
www.hmwhitesa.com/

Lighting:
Ove Arup and Partners Engineers
www.arup.com

Acoustical:
Kahle Acoustics
www.kahle.be

Harvey Marshall Berling Associates
www.hmb-a.com/firm.html

Security:
Ducibella Venter Santore
dvssecurity.com/

Exterior envelope:
Front, Inc.
www.frontinc.com/

Elevator design:
Iros Elevator Design
www.iroselevator.com/

Sub grade waterproofing:
James Gainfort Consulting Architect

Geotechnical engineer:
URS Corp.
www.urscorp.com/

Architectural Conservator:
Jablonski Berkowitz Conservation
www.jablonskiberkowitz.com/

Exhibit design:
Imrey Culbert
www.imreyculbert.com/

Signage and graphics:
Pentagram
www.pentagram.com

Cost estimator:
Stuart-Lynn Company

Code consultant:
Rolf Jensen Associates
www.rjagroup.com

Historic research:
Higgins and Quasebarth
New York, NY 212-274-9468
mquasebarth@hqpreservation.com

Zoning consultant:
Development Consulting Services
www.dev-consulting.com/

Construction manager:
F.J. Sciame Construction Company
www.sciame.com/

CAD system, project management, or other software used:
AutoCAD
www.autodesk.com

the Products

Structural system
Exterior cladding
Metal panel cladding, metal/glass curtain wall and skylight/exterior sunscreen system:
Josef Gartner & Co.
www.josef-gartner.de/

Concrete work and rock excavation:
Civetta Cousins

Stone work:
Wilkstone, Inc.

Doors
Entrances:
Capoferri
www.capoferri.it

Wood doors:
Bauerschmidt & Sons, Inc.
11920 Merrick Blvd
Jamaica, NY , 11434-2205
Phone: 718-528-3500
http://www.bauerschmidtandsons.com/

Fire rated glass partitions and fire rated glass doors:
Technical Glass Products
www.fireglass.com/

Hardware
Locksets:
Corbin Russwin
www.corbin-russwin.com

Hinges:
Rixson
www.rixson.com

Dorma
www.dorma.com

Closers:
Norton
www.nortondoorcontrols.com/

Rixson
www.rixson.com

Dorma
www.dorma.com

Exit devices:
Corbin Russwin
www.corbin-russwin.com

Dorma
www.dorma.com

Pulls:
Rockwood
www.rockwoodmfg.com/

Interior finishes
Demountable partitions:
Tecno

Cabinetwork and custom woodwork:
Bauerschmidt & Sons, Inc.
www.bauerschmidtandsons.com/

Paints and stains:
Benjamin Moore
www.benjaminmoore.com/

Floor and wall tile:
Bisazza (glass mosaic tiles in toilet rooms)
www.bisazzausa.com/

Wood flooring:
Haywood Berk
www.home.nyc.rr.com/haywoodberk

Furnishings
Office furniture:
Tecno

Herman Miller
www.hermanmiller.com

Fixed seating:
Poltrona Frau (auditorium seating)
www.poltronafrau.it/

Chairs:
Knoll
www.knoll.com

Lighting
Interior ambient lighting and gallery track lighting:
iGuzzini
www.iguzzini.com

Down lights:
Erco
www.erco.com

Task lighting:
Artemide
www.artemide.com

Exterior:
Erco
www.erco.com

Controls:
Lutron
www.lutron.com

Conveyance
Elevators:
Otis Elevator
www.otis.com

Custom metal stairs:
Mariani Metals
marianimetal.com/

Plumbing
Drinking fountains:
Filtrine
www.filtrinemfg.com/

Toilets and urinals:
Toto
www.toto.co.jp

Lavatories:
American Standard
www.americanstandard-us.com

Lavatory faucets:
Sloan
/www.sloanvalve.com

Automatic sun control louvers at skylights; and automatic exterior sun control roller blinds at glass curtain wall:
Arc Structures, Inc.
www.arcstructures.com

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