| The Mead Art Museum
Amherst College Amherst, Massachusetts 25,000 Ft2 of Renovation Construction Cost: $3.6M Simpson Gumpertz Heger, Consulting Architect
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The Mead Art Museum was completed in 1950. It was one of the last buildings designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White. The Mead was built without today's high cost of energy or strict, high humidity climates in mind. Consequently, the building was not originally insulated or provided with appropriate protection of its un-insulated masonry exterior walls.
After several false starts during the 1980's, Amherst retained AltieriSeborWieber to head a team to study and prepare a program for improving the Mead to the standards of construction and climate control.
The renovated Mead is now served by a new campus chilled water plant. As a standby, and for shoulder seasons, an existing air-cooled chiller that had served the Student Union building to the east was re-commissioned to serve the Mead.
All new state of the art climate control systems were provided. Separate systems (with different criteria) provide for the general collection on display, general art storage, works on paper, and a low humidity room for storage of metals. All critical systems were provided with both particulate and gas phase filtration systems.
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Improvement of the building envelope also proved a challenge. Working with the firm of Simpson Gumpertz Heger, a low cost solution was achieved. The exterior walls were provided with new insulation installed inside the existing assembly. Return air plenums at the perimeter walls prevent humid interior air from migrating and attacking the structure. A secondary benefit of this approach is the ability to hang the collection on exterior walls without fear of temperature or humidity gradients affecting the objects.
Construction on the Mead began in the fall of 1999. The Mead reopened to the public and student body in the late fall of 2000. |