Author's note, 2005: almost none of the news stories I wrote and edited at Building Design were to do with architecture. We covered defect-laden social housing projects, institutional politics, trade union and trade association stuff and planning issues mostly, and seldom looked beyond the shores of Britain. Though we did have a French correspondent, who often sent us the work of a promising young architect called Jean Nouvel. She turned out to be married to him.
Generally, however, we left the soft stuff, as we saw it, to the features editor, Deyan Sudjic, who cultivated an air of mystery and wisely stayed out of the office as much as possible. It was Deyan who had first written up the Whitney scheme in July 1979.
This story was unusual, and in retrospect more significant than I thought. This was a time of economic recession, when architects and engineers clubbed together to go out hunting work. Derek Walker - famous at the time as the architect-planner of the new English city of Milton Keynes - was part of such a supergroup with Norman Foster and engineer Frank Newby, which had been invited by an Italian development consortium to put forward an air-rights scheme for the Whitney, plainly designed mainly by Foster. But did the museum want the scheme? The story recounts the controversy in the brisk staccato house style we favoured.
At the time Foster's tower looked impossibly futuristic with its cross-braced structure, sleek flush glass skin, radiused corners and flaring base. The idea of a Brit building a tower in New York was unprecedented. Foster later published the project in full, since it was his first skyscraper design, preceding his Hong Kong and Shanghai bank. But it was indeed highly speculative - the developers seemingly had a 90-day option to present plans for a condominium tower on the site, but also added 50,000 square feet of gallery space which would have doubled the Whitney's display area. Hence the very different structural treatment of the base of the tower.
Only now - a quarter of a century later - is a Foster tower finally going up in Manhattan: the Hearst Centre. You can find a precursor of its triangulated structure in the gallery base of his Whitney proposal. Meanwhile the Whitney has got through several expansion plans in the intervening period, and is presently (September 2005) working on a proposal by Renzo Piano.
From Building Design, February 8, 1980
Ambitious plans by a British consortium of architects including Derek Walker, Norman Foster, and Frank Newby to build a prestige extension to the Whitney museum in New York have foundered in confusion.
The museum claims that the plans were unsolicited and that it has told the group to stop circulating drawings of the Madison Avenue scheme. Both statements were firmly denied this week by Walker.
A spokesman for the Whitney Museum told BD: "They did this on their own. We didn't ask for the plans, we didn't see them and we don't want them."
According to Walker, this is nonsense. "The thing was done with their absolute knowledge. We were solicited to do the job," he said. Nor had he been told not to circulate details of the scheme, which was published in BD last July.
The Whitney says it currently has no plans for an extension to its existing Marcel Breuer-designed building. Adminstrator Palmer Wald is quoted in the New York press as saying that the project was presented by a "third outside party" and turned down.
Walker confirmed that the group's scheme was now "a dead duck so far as we are concerned". The Whitney board agreed to let the plans be drawn up for an Italian developer, SGI/Sogene, he said. But height restrictions in Madison Avenue made the mix of galleries, offices, apartments and recreation facilities unprofitable. The Whitney said no and SGI/Sogene pulled out.
The drawings have been left with the Whitney in case the scheme ever becomes feasible again. "It was a very nice exercise and we were happy to do it," Walker said. "It may be that we would push it again."
The problem of the Whitney site was one of the height. Permission would have to be obtained from the city authorities for the "air rights" to the building and in a restricted area the building would have to be of exceptional quality to get permission. But despite the evident merits of the sleek tower and its A-frame base, "none of the financial equations were particularly good," Walker admitted.
Publicity for the scheme was agreed with the developer and the Whitney has no power to forbid their publication. "I'm only sorry if the Whitney feels we're being opportunist," said Walker. He has not been in contact with the board of the museum for about 12 months.
2005 footnote: the Foster/Walker/Newby Whitney proposal was eventually published in detail in the officially-sanctioned "Norman Foster Buildings and Projects Vol.3 1978-1985", pub. Watermark,1989.
