The Façade Tectonics Institute recently published “A Break From The Past: How the Guggenheim Renovation Made Thermally Broken Steel Windows a New Normal” in the March 2024 issue (#138) of its SKINS newsletter.
The article, written by AYON Studio Principal Angel Ayón, begins with a mid-century Modern context, comparing Frank Lloyd Wright’s façade design intentions for the 1959 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City with the existing conditions found a half-century later in this landmarked building. The unprecedented, bespoke façade replacement solutions devised by the preservation team (for which Angel was the Project Architect, prior to founding AYON Studio), provided optimum performance, while maintaining preservation appropriateness. Although not commercially available at that time, more than 15 years later, the replacement glazing assembly market has been revolutionized, now offering new products and new technologies, as well as the invigoration of old ones. It all started with the interventions at the Guggenheim – which installed the first thermally-broken steel-frame window wall system in North America.
Be sure to read Angel’s entire article, as well as others, in the full March SKINS issue entitled “Exploring Heritage: Building on the Past,” which examines the historical context in connection with today’s climate crisis, and was curated by guest editors from the Association of Preservation Technology’s (APT) Technical Committee on Modern Heritage (TC-MH), in collaboration with their Technical Committee on Sustainable Preservation (TC-SP).
Mic Patterson, FTI’s Ambassador of Innovation & Collaboration, who penned the issue’s foreword, highlighted Angel’s expertise and that of his preservation community colleagues, which “has profound relevance for the entire building industry and particularly for the design of new buildings and their façade systems, as well as the façade interventions that are a critical component of existing building renovations.”