Among the several I.M.Pei buildings I have visited (the pyramid at the Louvre and the National Gallery being the largest) I like best the small Johnson Art Museum at Cornell. It’s a minuet by a composer best known for symphonies and operas. All of his buildings are studies in serialism; in some, it’s too much, the geometry becomes too formulaic and the building looks dull--like the Javits Center or the Kennedy Library. On the other hand, the pyramid, which is nothing but diamond-shaped panes of glass is not. First, it fits the semantics of France--the French love Egypt and the pyramid stands in view of the obelisk on the Place de la Concorde. Second, the transparency of the glass evokes the charm of crystal palaces, butterfly pavilions and chateau orangeries in a way that the ponderous Javits Center, alas, does not.
Rather than a multiplication of a single shape, lego-like, into an aggregate structure, the Johnson is a simple cube, a lyrical rebuke of brutalism, demonstrating just how silky and elegant concrete can be. The linear impressions made by the concrete forms during construction, the parallel beams in the ceiling, the windows and stairs etc., act as serial leitmotifs within the composition rather than a relentless times table governing the whole.
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