A "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion, Part 8: Thinking Longitudinally | Quadracci Pavilion, Milwaukee Art Museum (2001)
This series complements my recently published guidebook, Milwaukee in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Cream City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it MSC.
The MSC section and page references for the building featured here: 5.40; pp. 113-116.
Looking northward.
Photographs in tourist brochures and promotional websites rarely show the Quadracci Pavilion from this angle, with its brise soleil tucked in.
In this case, however, I'm glad it is. This perspective, longitudinal with respect to the east-west Pavilion but not with respect to the entire north--south-oriented Museum, allows us to admire designer Santiago Calatrava's ingenious bracing system and its cable stays that run from the pedestrian bridge over Lincoln Memorial Drive to the daringly raked mast and then down to the roof. It gives this old sailor a warmhearted feeling to see rigging that's so shipshape and Bristol fashion.
The Quadracci's exterior is mostly a story of two geologically derived materials, steel and concrete. The latter of these is discussed in Part 7 of this series, our first look at this building's interior.
As far as the steel goes, it's an alloy of iron and carbon that may also contain other elements, depending on its exact use and formulation. Nowadays much of the world's iron supply is derived from Banded Iron Formation deposits of Archean or Paleoproterozoic age.
One thing I've learned in my explorations of the Pavilion is how essential its bridge is to the overall design. Visitors miss a lot if they do not enter the building by crossing it from East Wisconsin Avenue, which in itself is an architectural and geological via mirabilis. The narrow, rock-floored span not only offers a superb view of the city's lakeshore and skyline; it also serves as the one and proper entryway to the magical kingdom of the soaring, chambered interior.
And, as we'll see in the next post of this set, the stone type the bridge is paved with has quite a story of its own, and one that is directly connected to the Badger State's once-great quarrying industry.
But even that is not the end of the Quadracci's geologic significance. For there's the matter of what this amazing structure is sitting on, and in.
Milwaukee's downtown, like the Chicago Loop, is underlain by a layer cake of fluviatile and glacial sediments made all the more waterlogged and squashy by their proximity to Lake Michigan and the rivers that locally feed into it. But the Pavilion's perch right on the modern shore features what must be the most saturated sediments of all.
The normal way for Cream City architects to stabilize buildings in such yielding glop has been to provide a foundation resting on a multitude of piles—first conifer trunks resembling modern telephone poles, and then steel beams. Alternatively, they've sometimes used a method pioneered in Chicago, an anchoring system of concrete-filled shafts called caissons.
Here, however, a shallow raft foundation was employed instead. This method, consisting of a concrete pad that covers most of its building's footprint, had been tried in the Windy City back in the late 1800s, with disastrous results. But various advances in engineering and technology have made this the best solution for this challenging site. Or so I'm told.
Incidentally, the Quadracci Pavilion is not the only twenty-first-century Milwaukee landmark that sits secure on a shallowly set base. Just to the west across the drive, the elegant Northwestern Mutual Tower rises skyward from its own raft foundation.
This site and many others in Milwaukee County are discussed at greater length in Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU Imprint of Cornell University Press).
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion album. Also, while you're at it, check out my Architectural Geology of Milwaukee album, too. It contains quite a few photos and descriptions of Cream City sites highlighted in other series of mine.
A "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion, Part 8: Thinking Longitudinally | Quadracci Pavilion, Milwaukee Art Museum (2001)
This series complements my recently published guidebook, Milwaukee in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Cream City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it MSC.
The MSC section and page references for the building featured here: 5.40; pp. 113-116.
Looking northward.
Photographs in tourist brochures and promotional websites rarely show the Quadracci Pavilion from this angle, with its brise soleil tucked in.
In this case, however, I'm glad it is. This perspective, longitudinal with respect to the east-west Pavilion but not with respect to the entire north--south-oriented Museum, allows us to admire designer Santiago Calatrava's ingenious bracing system and its cable stays that run from the pedestrian bridge over Lincoln Memorial Drive to the daringly raked mast and then down to the roof. It gives this old sailor a warmhearted feeling to see rigging that's so shipshape and Bristol fashion.
The Quadracci's exterior is mostly a story of two geologically derived materials, steel and concrete. The latter of these is discussed in Part 7 of this series, our first look at this building's interior.
As far as the steel goes, it's an alloy of iron and carbon that may also contain other elements, depending on its exact use and formulation. Nowadays much of the world's iron supply is derived from Banded Iron Formation deposits of Archean or Paleoproterozoic age.
One thing I've learned in my explorations of the Pavilion is how essential its bridge is to the overall design. Visitors miss a lot if they do not enter the building by crossing it from East Wisconsin Avenue, which in itself is an architectural and geological via mirabilis. The narrow, rock-floored span not only offers a superb view of the city's lakeshore and skyline; it also serves as the one and proper entryway to the magical kingdom of the soaring, chambered interior.
And, as we'll see in the next post of this set, the stone type the bridge is paved with has quite a story of its own, and one that is directly connected to the Badger State's once-great quarrying industry.
But even that is not the end of the Quadracci's geologic significance. For there's the matter of what this amazing structure is sitting on, and in.
Milwaukee's downtown, like the Chicago Loop, is underlain by a layer cake of fluviatile and glacial sediments made all the more waterlogged and squashy by their proximity to Lake Michigan and the rivers that locally feed into it. But the Pavilion's perch right on the modern shore features what must be the most saturated sediments of all.
The normal way for Cream City architects to stabilize buildings in such yielding glop has been to provide a foundation resting on a multitude of piles—first conifer trunks resembling modern telephone poles, and then steel beams. Alternatively, they've sometimes used a method pioneered in Chicago, an anchoring system of concrete-filled shafts called caissons.
Here, however, a shallow raft foundation was employed instead. This method, consisting of a concrete pad that covers most of its building's footprint, had been tried in the Windy City back in the late 1800s, with disastrous results. But various advances in engineering and technology have made this the best solution for this challenging site. Or so I'm told.
Incidentally, the Quadracci Pavilion is not the only twenty-first-century Milwaukee landmark that sits secure on a shallowly set base. Just to the west across the drive, the elegant Northwestern Mutual Tower rises skyward from its own raft foundation.
This site and many others in Milwaukee County are discussed at greater length in Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU Imprint of Cornell University Press).
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion album. Also, while you're at it, check out my Architectural Geology of Milwaukee album, too. It contains quite a few photos and descriptions of Cream City sites highlighted in other series of mine.