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The Pritzker Prize-winning Italian architect Renzo Piano upgrades the Harvard Art Museums in Boston, Massachusetts, by creating new resources for study, teaching, exhibition, and conservation.
The Harvard University’s three art museums – the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger and the Arthur M. Sackler have been consolidated into one reorganized and upgraded facility.
The renovation and expansion project has increased gallery space by 40%, for a total of approximately 43,000 square feet. The vast majority of this space will be devoted to the reinstallation of the museums’ permanent collections.
Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s design sensitively preserves the original 1927 Fogg Museum building, including its historic façades on Broadway and Quincy Street and the iconic interior Calderwood Courtyard. A new addition was constructed along Prescott Street, and a new glass roof allows controlled natural light to filter into the museums’ conservation labs and the Art Study Center, as well as into the central courtyard below. The project was designed to minimize impact on the historic structure; to add a new, distinct architectural expression; and to create a dialogue with the residential neighbourhood and the adjacent Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the only building in North America designed by architect Le Corbusier.
The facility’s center, within the restored Calderwood Courtyard, will be a hub of activity and circulation. Mirroring an Italian piazza, or city square, the Calderwood Courtyard has been extended upward with glass arcades on the upper three floors and a new glass roof allowing controlled natural light into the heart of the building.
“Renzo uses light as a building material. Piano’s giant skylight disperses sunshine through the museums’ conservation lab, art study center, and the new central circulation corridor, diffusing brightness into the galleries and arcades and the beloved old courtyard, creating what Piano calls the “light machine.” says Thomas W. Lentz, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums.
Visitors can pass through the museums’ ground-floor public spaces, entering from either a new Prescott Street entrance or the original Quincy Street entrance, and can easily navigate the six levels of public space including galleries, the Art Study Center, classrooms and lecture halls, and a top floor offering views both into the heart of the facility and outside to Cambridge and Harvard Yard. The ground floor of the building, including a shop and cafe, will be open to the public without the purchase of admission to the galleries.
The Harvard Art Museums have internationally renowned collections, which are among the largest art museum collections in the United States.
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SUSTAINABILITY
Bringing the 86-year-old building up to code is certainly not the only benefit to the renovation and expansion of the Harvard Art Museums. The 204,000-square-foot facility, designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano, will soon become the newest LEED-certified building at Harvard. The project is designed to follow the university’s sustainability initiatives with the intention of attaining LEED Gold certification. (LEED is a sustainability rating system for buildings, homes, and neighbourhoods.)
Since the beginning of planning in 2006, the museums, with the support of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) and the Green Building Services (GBS) group from the Harvard Office of Sustainability, have taken a holistic approach to the design, construction, and operations plan for the new facility.
One of the most sustainable aspects of the project is the site itself. The building’s facades and its previously developed site have been reused, reducing urban sprawl and environmental impacts from construction. Also, the site’s proximity to existing infrastructure, such as public transportation, open space, and basic services like markets and libraries, promotes density and community connectivity.
Energy conservation is another important facet of the project. According to the design team, the energy-efficient HVAC equipment, building materials, and design and operation strategies planned will result in a 16.9% energy reduction over a comparable building size and type while still meeting the climate and indoor air quality requirements for the museums’ collections. Further, the museums are considering procuring 35% of its electricity needs through the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). RECs are tradable certificates that represent proof that electricity was produced using renewable resources. One REC is equivalent to one megawatt hour of electricity.
The team is also addressing water-use reduction through a combination of resource-conserving strategies. The bathroom flush and flow fixtures use minimal water and meet the most stringent water conservation standards. Even better, rain water that falls on the roof and landscape will be collected and stored in underground tanks to supplement non-potable water uses, such as flushing toilets. The design team has calculated a water savings of 48.9% over a comparable building baseline.
There are several opportunities during the construction phase to achieve LEED credits and to support the overall goal of a more sustainably built facility. The project’s construction manager, SKANSKA USA Building, Inc., and its subcontractors have developed and implemented an Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Management Plan for during and after construction that reduces IAQ problems resulting from construction activities and that promotes occupant and worker comfort.
The design team has selected regional and responsibly harvested materials for the project. A minimum of 10% of the total building materials have been extracted and manufactured within 500 miles of the site, and a minimum of 50% of the wood used has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Demolition and construction waste is also a huge component of any building project, especially from the perspective of resource conservation and recycling. Diverting large amounts of construction waste, such as concrete, wood, metal, glass, is economically sound as much as environmentally sound, due to the savings contractors realize from material reclaiming and recycling. Currently the project is achieving the diversion of over 97% of construction waste, which reduces the impacts on local landfills and promotes material reuse.
The new Harvard Art Museums is now open to public. Occupants and users are able to learn about the myriad of sustainable features of the new facility through an educational outreach program. Museum-specific web pages, technical case studies, digital slideshows, and interactive utility dashboards acquaint people with the green building features that make the Harvard Art Museums an environmentally friendly, LEED-certified facility.
Payette Associates is the Architect of Record and local design partner, and Skanska USA served as construction manager of the project.
Source: Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Art Museums Magazine - Bill Stanton, Renzo Piano Building Workshop