Architect Renzo Piano’s new Whitney Museum of American Art opened on May 1, 2015. Construction on the new museum building, located at the intersection of Gansevoort and Washington Streets in Manhattan’s West Village and Meatpacking District, began in 2010 on a previously city-owned site. The museum site marks the southern entrance to the High Line.
Reviews of the Whitney’s new design have been wonderful. One design feature, extraordinarily important yet perhaps most often not noticed, is the custom flood-mitigation system.
The flood-mitigation system was designed after Hurricane Sandy brought a 13-foot storm surge to the shores of Manhattan in October of 2012, flooding the museum’s construction site with more than five million gallons of water. The system includes a perfectly balanced, 15,500-pound, 14-feet-tall by 27-feet-wide door designed by Walz & Krenzer engineers who build water-tight latches for the U.S. Navy’s Destroyers.
The Whitney’s system, with its technical sophistication and aesthetic sleekness, is proving to be a model for other U.S. art museums asking the same questions.
While the country has been stuck in a surreal debate over the reality of climate change, disaster-preparedness has become a matter of pressing concern, and institutions in vulnerable areas are having to respond in real time.
The museum’s actions—turning to specialists in naval engineering, for example—augur an era of improvised ingenuity, of localized efforts to address a problem in dire need of a global solution.
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Whitney Museum of American Art
“Protecting Priceless Art From Natural Disasters” | How Renzo Piano’s New Whitney Museum Protects Its Art From Climate Change, John Whitaker, The Atlantic, 27 May 2015
“Whitney Museum of American Art” | Wikipedia
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