Project of the Year - Cultural

Brooklyn Museum of Art

The Brooklyn Museum of Art, with an old entrance that one architectural critic said epitomized the dominance of "culture over the individual," has a whole new look.

That fortress-like entry of the 19th century structure has been softened by a welcoming plaza that radiates from the building's central hall and funnels people through to an airy pavilion. The extensive work on the historic McKim Mead & White structure - part of a multiyear renovation effort that included roof repair and substantial interior renovations - wrapped up in the spring.

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The charge to the design team was to reintegrate the building with the site as well as to metaphorically recreate an iconic grand staircase removed decades ago. Most significantly, the team was to create a new public identity for the museum. That none of the work impacted the museum's operations was, in itself, a work of art.

Creating the vision is one thing. Implementing it is quite another, especially when dealing with a structure past the century mark, suffering from significant façade deterioration. With that backdrop, construction manager Bovis Lend Lease LMB Inc. explored strategies for providing temporary shoring even a year before construction started on the $40 million job.

Dismissed as impossible or prohibitively expensive by other contractors, Nabco Construction Services - through extensive field investigations - finally devised a shoring scheme. Requiring the cooperation of the steel erector, it called for the installation of needle beams from below, through the existing floor structure and within a narrow 24-in. space between the bearing wall and exterior partition. The plan also called for the sequenced installation of permanent structural steel so that the temporary shoring never carried the entire load.

In similarly creative fashion, the team also addressed a concern that the shoring scheme had created about the stability of the terra cotta floor structure on the museum's third level. It opened the floor to allow access to the area, removing a 3- by 25-ft. section and adding structural steel beams and vertical supports to the structure. The removal took place in 4-ft.-long sections in order to avoid destabilizing the existing terra cotta floor structure. The 24- by 68-in. needle beams were supported by 8-in.-sq. steel tube columns, 25 ft. high and .5 in. thick.

That portion involved a sequenced installation scheme with selective demolition, masonry infill, and grouting. All demolition work was modified to minimize vibration and water penetration, which required extensive core drilling and wire sawing work. Since the masonry and grouting were performed during the cold winter of 2003, the entire area was enclosed and heated for proper curing.

Another core element of the job involved underpinning the six original brick piers that supported the museum's portico and the adjacent bearing walls at the center. The team chose a method that treated the row of columns as a large continuous wall, underpinning in sections. It involved the removal of 19,000 cu. yds. of soil and installation of 477 cu. yds. of underpinning to construct the structure's new foundation.

The project also included the cleansing and repointing of the building's old limestone and granite face and restoration of decorative ironwork, allegorical statutes flanking the entrance, and more than 30 statues on the building's cornice.

All of that helped to lay the groundwork for installing the new entryway. While the building had its detractors, the original grand stairway standing twice as high as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's entrance had also made it a landmark. Its removal in the 1930s to increase accessibility rendered the museum even more fortress-like.

The design team, led by Polshek Partnership Architects, decided to evoke the grand staircase as a design element, restoring the original entry sequence while following the complex geometry of the building and managing those same access issues.

"With a building of this significance, this kind of project can get extremely complicated," said one juror. "There is not one straight line in the whole place."

The solution developed by the design team was a new 14,700-sq.-ft. glass and steel pavilion that shelters the new lobby and serves as the airy entryway to the building. Outside is a 98,000-sq.-ft. plaza that includes two water features, an amphitheater, and a cherry tree grove.

Stepped glass arcs in the pavilion roof also re-create, in a form, that original McKim Mead stairway. The skylight consists of five curving rows of glass in a semicircular pattern. Each row steps down with small, vertical curved-glass panels connecting each row of water-white laminated glass.

Supporting the arcs is a structural steel and concrete superstructure constructed to within a .25- to .5-in. tolerance at all locations. The arcs also integrate traditional shingled skylights found elsewhere in the building.

As one juror said, "The entryway has turned out to be very complementary to the existing architecture."