2
9
Still avant-garde, yet long an icon of modern architecture
and one of the most popular exhibition venues in the art city
New York today: Frank Lloyd Wright’s last masterpiece, the
Guggenheim Museum (fig. 1). It set off a storm of protest
when it opened in October 1959. Architecture critics and
leading artists were unanimous: the structure, which essen-
tially consists of a downward-tapering concrete spiral ramp,
was simply not considered suitable for a serious presenta-
tion of works of art. The architect from Wisconsin had not
only – as so many others before him – emphasised and
focused on the circulation, but had made it the actual con-
cept of the museum, causing a shake-up in the traditional
understanding of a museum.
Circulation – the term seems much too low-key for such a
dramatic design. But then again the term, normally only
used by professionals in the field, doesn’t sound very
exciting in general. In fact it is rather more indicative of the
necessary evil of the associated rules, regulations and
standards. Amazing really, considering the fact that circula-
tion is one of the most influential components of a design.
Circulation areas often serve as the calling card of a building
and their individual elements are almost always used as
important design features in sophisticated architecture.
This applies particularly to stairs as built elements for
movement within spaces. In addition to a purely functional
significance – the connection of different levels – a meta-
phorical significance has always been attached to stairs as
well, as symbols of ascent, of a transition to another world.
By the Renaissance period, stairs in castles, palaces and
cultural buildings had become architectural showpieces.
This meant that the staircase was often a component with a
decisive influence on the overall design. Great examples
such as Michelangelo’s stairs in the vestibule of the Lauren-
tian Library in Florence, Balthasar Neumann’s magnificent
staircase in the Würzburg Residence (fig. 4, p. 16) or
Charles Garnier’s lavish staircase at the Paris Opera bear
witness to this.
Stairs as sculptures
Unlike hardly any other structural element, stairs embody
dynamism, making them ideal as enriching sculptural fea-
tures within rooms. Special attention has been paid to them
by architects ever since man started to build for this reason.
It also explains the concentration of the essential character-
istics of a particular trend in building history, sometimes
even in an exaggerated form, frequently observed in stair
structures. Specific trends in more recent architectural his-
tory are also reflected particularly well by the stair design –
sometimes ornate or elaborate, sometimes complex and
fragmented into individual components, or exhibiting a
minimalist elegance. In high-tech architecture, stairs
appear degraded into brackets, bolts and tensioning ropes,
the overt structural design turning into a creative element
(fig. 4, p. 10). Deconstructivists on the other hand use stairs
to set off veritable fireworks of creativity, such as Günter
Behnisch and his ”Bird’s Nest” in the former building of
the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, the
”Bundestag”, in Bonn (fig. 3, p. 10), where different-sized
wooden sticks burst apart in all directions. In comparison,
the appearance of most modern staircases is rather
more simple and restrained today, although special stair
The concept of circulation
Christian Schittich
1 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (USA) 1959, Frank Lloyd
Wright
2 MUMUTH – House of Music and Music Drama at the University of Music
and Performing Arts (KUG), Graz (A) 2008, UNStudio