Shell Game: The Nautilus and the Guggenheim

Frank Lloyd Wright (attended 1886–87) urged people — and especially his fellow architects:

Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man, and his circumstances as they both change. That really is architecture.

That directive shows in the buildings he designed, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Inspired by the spiraling shape of a nautilus shell, Wright created a building with concentric rings that flow into each other, rather than right angles and discrete rooms.The building, which rises on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 89th Street, opened in 1959, six months after Wright’s death.

As visitors view art, they walk through an artwork all its own — one that marries nature and artifice. The sculpture in Alumni Park shows a nautilus shell transforming (and, yes, spinning is encouraged).