Modeling Parrish

1ARCH 3603 STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS

modeling parrishthe parrish art museum - Herzog & DeMeuron

Cornell University Department of ArchiectureStructural Systems | Mark Cruvellier | Spring 2013

Relicque Lott | Karim Daw

2 PARRISH ART MUSEUM

time

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Parrish acts as both a compass and a clock, track-ing an artwork’s position in time and the universe relative to the location of the sunrays glaring through the solitary skylight of the main gallery. You need not look at your wristwatch, but may glance at the light streamed across an original Diebenkorn to know that you are indeed late to lunch.


By extruding the shape of the vernacular 20th century home across an expansive hamlet, Herzog and DeMeuron exaggerate Long Island’s tradition of the coastal live-in studio juxtaposed with the industrial feel of a typical American farm. At 614 ft long and 34,400 sq.ft. of floorspace, this gallery houses over 2,600 artistic ob-jects (varying in media) from artists working in the immediate region.

The East End of Long Island has pro-vided inspiration to some of the most influential artists, such as Fairfield Porter, Larry Rivers, Jane Freilicher, Roy Lichtenstein, April Gornik, Cindy Sherman, Eric Fischl, and Dorothea Rockburne.

architecture as landscape

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Why Long Island? This humble com-munity is in mayways a blank canvas compared to its neighboring metrop-olis, Manhattan. While Long Island provides unparalleled landscapes and gorgeous summer weather, it is mostly a spacious geography with very little industrialization and urban development.

Ross Bleckner, a Long Island based artist, described his personal Long Is-land in-home studio: “All I really need is the room to work—I don’t even need plumbing. When I found out I had to get variance…I thought, ‘you know what, who needs it? I’ll just skip it.’ I mean, nature is my bathroom.”

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Google Earth


analyzing parrishOur first step in reconstructing a scale model of the Parrish Art Museum was to recreate a digital replica using the software Rhinocerous. WIthin this program, we distinguished between I beams, columns, T beams, bracing, and rafters.

We would work primarily with steel, solder, and wood. Becuase this struc-ture is incredibly long, we dedided to approach the building in pieces; we reneamed a set of four columns, two I beams, four T beams, and two brac-es a “module”.

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Once the scale was realized (1:200), individual connections were analyzed in construction site photographs (taken by museum associates) and noted in our own digital model. We proceeded to interpret pin connec-tions as small solder clusters and weld plates as solder clusters. Any welding that occured in reality was replicated with the soldering iron and cleaned away to mimic the smooth finish of the actual members of Par-rish.

T beams frame into the X truss using gusset plate connections and weld-ing. Wood rafters are then placed over each side of the T beam web, completely covering T beam.

T beams connect to vertical I beams atop the central beams.

Photos by Douglas Moyer Architect


manufacturing the members

Custom steel members (I beams, columns, T beams) were fab-ricated by spot soldering the varoius hand cut steel pieces together in a laser cut wood jig.


Once each member was completely soldered, we tested each to make sure that they all perfectly frame into each other.

10PARRISH ART MUSEUM

The X frames could not be cut by hand with enough precision.

water jet


We sent the file next door to water jet the 17 X frames and 1500 gusset plates.


An additional jig was laser cut and used to line up all of the individual members in order to solder them to-gether with accuracy (appropriate angles etc.)

module jig

This jig was used to produce all 11 modules.



I beams were soldered to the mod-ules to create a frame using another two jigs. These two jigs were con-structed at specific heights to ensure precision when soldering.

completing the frame


Soldering was minimal.


The frame was completed in the Rand Hall Shop.


We took the frame outdoors beneath the Milstein Hall Plate to clean off rust and excess flux from soldering using a dremel.


Using a foam jig, we fast a reinforced concrete bench wall with reinforce-ment in the bottom of the bench.

The minimalist qualities and blank canvas motif of Parrish are predomi-nantly exhibited in the concrete wall that extends from the ground plane to enclose the interor of the building. They are bare and surround the visi-tor who strolls down the center of the museum space. The walls neither take from nor add to the exhibitions housed by Parrish; they simply carry the art.

ground becomes wall: concrete


We placed the steel frame into a simple rectangular box that would be cast in concrete, joining the last 1/4” of the columns to the base. We se-cured the concrete walls to the frame with paper clamps and poured the concrete into the base box.

The walls became connected to the ground plane.


Eighteen bags of Rockite.



We moved the model outside again and attached the wood rafters to the individual T beams.

rafters



Our model was on display in the Hartel Gallery April 13th-20th, 2013, sponsored by the department of Ar-chitecture, Art and Planning at Cor-nell University.

exhibition


We would like to thank Mark Cruvel-lier, our instructor and mentor, for his passion and enthusiasm throughout the semester. We would also like to thank the members and associates of the Parrish Art Museum for their support throughout this process, Bri-an Beeners, Chris Oliver, Frank Par-ish, and our TA XiaoXiao Li.

Documents

Modeling Parrish