Rebecca Maloney
Americas Press Office ,Boston
Arup designed specialty daylighting and environmental control systems for the new home of the Broad collection located in downtown Los Angeles.
The Broad, a new contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles, celebrated its grand opening on 21 September. The Broad is a new 120,000ft2, three-level contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Built on top of a 155,000ft2, three-level parking garage with an adjacent 24,000ft2 public plaza, the museum is home to the nearly 2,000 works of art and is also the headquarters for The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library.
Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, Arup worked closely with the large design and construction team to deliver the much-anticipated museum. We provided mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering, commissioning, acoustic consulting, fire-life safety consulting, early phase audio visual and IT/communications consulting, and gallery lighting design.
“Arup has been an amazing partner in the building of The Broad. They understand the sensitivities of building a space for a collection of contemporary art and helped develop efficient and innovative solutions for the physical and aesthetic needs of the institution.
Joanne Heyler, founding director of The Broad.
Throughout the building, the need to support, display, and protect art guided Arup’s design of specialised systems. Skylights are configured to allow filtered daylight while preventing any direct sunlight. Other features include air handling systems with tight humidity control and multiple filtration levels, a dehumidified cold room for photography storage, track lighting and underfloor supply in the gallery areas to allow flexibility in the placement of temporary exhibition walls, backup emergency power systems to allow continuous security operations and air conditioning for art preservation, and a welded pre-primed, pre-action sprinkler system designed to limit risk of corrosion-caused leakage.
Building Information Modelling of the building services in the roof and undulating lobby ceilings led to the discreet integration of sprinklers, daylight sensors, shading devices, conduits, and electric lighting tracks into the architectural aesthetic. We developed energy savings strategies that included the extensive use of the architectural “veil” as an external shading device, daylight harvesting, occupancy-based control of lighting, variable frequency drives on large HVAC motors, demand control ventilation, carbon monoxide control of garage fans, and the use of low-energy ultrasonic humidifiers. The building’s energy use is projected to be lower than the current California Energy Code requirements by at least 18%, assisting in the achievement of a LEED Silver rating.