Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico
Santurcey District, San Juan, Puerto Rico
70,000 Ft2 of adaptive re-use and Expansion
Museum Planners: The Museum Group

Architect: Otto Reyes and Luis Gutierrez


AltieriSeborWieber was retained in 1996 to program and provide design guidance to a Puerto Rican design team that did not have prior museum experience. ASW provided design assistance in four ways:
1. A complete MEPF program was written. The building was organized by system design, system separation, and system design criteria
2. Planning diagrams were provided to the architects at the very beginning of the process to enable them to plan the building, while the local engineers were assimilating a large amount of new data.
3. An outline specification, complete with equipment selections and preliminary plans were prepared to permit preparation of an accurate MEP budget early in the process.
4. ASW provided peer review services to the local professionals during document preparation.

The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico is a new institution. An abandoned masonry building, previously occupied as a hospital was renovated for use as permanent galleries. In addition, a significant addition was constructed at the rear of the existing structure to house a new 300-seat auditorium, administrative spaces, workshops, a café, and museum store.

AltieriSeborWieber was retained for our broad international experience in the planning, design and construction of world class art museums. The client wanted assurances that the systems provided would meet the rigorous criteria established by lending institutions around the world. The systems serving the new museum are comparable to those found anywhere in the world.


Features include high efficiency particulate and gas phase filtration, outdoor air pre-treatment and refrigerant heat recovery.

All HVAC systems are managed by a state-of-the-art DDC control system.