National Gallery East Wing crumbling from Pei's inflexibility

Greater Washington ^ | December 11, 2009 | Erik Bootsma

[Lorianne]

The facade of the I.M. Pei-designed National Gallery East Wing is now crumbling.

Catesby Leigh reports in the Wall Street Journal that the building, constructed using an experimental curtain wall system that the architect described as "a technological breakthrough for the construction of masonry walls," has become unstable.

The clean lines and solid geometrical forms of the building's design simply could not be interrupted with unsightly expansion joints. I.M. Pei quite simply was shackled to his own modern design, constrained to have large uninterrupted geometries of stone, a technological solution was an absolute necessity. The earlier Main Building, designed by John Russell Pope, had no such constraints.

What most people, even architects don't realize is that the Pope building, like the East Wing, is similarly constructed using a marble veneer over a structural core. What is different, however, is the extensive use of a well established conventions construction and the use of expansion joints. These expansion joints on the facade of the Main Building are cleverly hidden behind clusters of classical pilasters on corners of the facade. Pope, not being constrained by the ideology of modern architecture, was able to find a solution that was at once attractive and still working marvelously almost 60 years after completion.

The question of modern versus traditional when it comes to building technology has become more than just a question of style, but that of sustainability. The cladding of the entire East Wing will now have to be removed and restored at the cost of $85 MILLION TO THE TAXPAYER.

[Publius6961]

I had heard that many of Wright's buildings have structural problems.

I believe all still-standing Wright buildings do.
The only exception I know of was the (now gone) Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

[tsomer]

That cabinet is gorgeous. But it does have some decorative elements: note the dovetails between the rail and stile in the upper doors, a dowel or splined, thru-mortise would have worked as well. Also the angle of the upper rail of the doors. These took more time.

Man yearns for more than mere function, this is the basis of minimalist’s failure.

Not sure about I.M. Pei’s failure with the Nat. Gallery. I think he he believed his structural materials would compensate for expansion. His refusal to change the design based on this experience is another matter.