Whitney Museum of American Art

To better showcase the Whitney Museum’s extensive collections and to provide additional programming space, the museum commissioned a new building in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The asymmetrical nine-story building features tiers of terraces and glazed walkways that step down to the High Line. To the south, the building cantilevers dramatically over a public plaza, creating a set-back entrance that opens into 10,000 sf lobby with a free-entry exhibition space.

Above the lobby, spaces include a theater, offices, and expansive new galleries. On the top floor, a sawtooth skylight system provides natural light for the “studio” gallery and a café. The new museum building provides over 50,000 sf of indoor gallery space and nearly 13,000 sf of outdoor gallery space.

Exposed structural steel round columns support the building’s north-south trusses. To maintain the slim profile of the columns while still providing the required structural support, Silman designed most of the columns as custom hollow steel pipe sections. The more heavily loaded columns were designed as solid steel round sections.

Facade Coordination

The absolute deflection of the building’s long-span beams and full-story trusses was significant in some locations. To aid the facade contractor in the development of details, as well as to facilitate construction sequencing and schedule, Silman provided deflected-shape diagrams and deflection values at critical points, allowing the contractor to estimate expected building movement during installation.

The building facade consists of glass, precast panels, and steel panels. The precast and steel panels are hung from the top and braced laterally at each floor, and Silman designed the lateral connections with redundancy to support the full weight of the panels above. Silman also worked closely with the facade consultants to fine-tune the cable system and support structure for the glass cable wall system in the ground-level lobby.

Because of the site’s proximity to the Hudson River, the project team was concerned about water – both during excavation as well as in the permanent foundation design. To address these concerns, Silman designed double-height, cast-in-place concrete foundation walls around the interior of the site, with an independent, permanent support-of-excavation system at the exterior. These walls were designed to withstand FEMA design flood elevations of the time, in addition to lateral earth pressures. Given the site’s poor soil quality, the basement slab was designed as a 24-inch reinforced concrete mat on mini-caissons.

One of the most unexpected design challenges came during construction in 2012, when Superstorm Sandy exceeded the design flood elevation and flooded the mechanical basement. Silman then worked with the entire project team to develop flood resiliency features to withstand future flood levels without the benefit of updated flood data. The team was able to come up with a solution that kept the architectural design intent intact while working within the confines of the structure and precast facade that were already in place.