Following significant growth in visitor numbers and issues with navigation and accessibility, the Dutch Parliament decided in 1999 that Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum needed extensive refurbishment to meet the standards of a 21st-century museum. In 2001, Spanish architects Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz were commissioned to lead a team to develop the design for the museum’s refurbishment.
Arup was commissioned to work on the building services and building physics aspects of the renovation as well as the lighting design to help achieve the best integrated design and respond to a very challenging brief in a monumental context.
The renovation included a complete overhaul of all existing installations for the Main Building, the Philips Wing, the Drawing School and the Director’s Villa. The main objective was to create a stable indoor environment to prevent changing conditions from damaging the exhibits.
Invisible installations
In most museums, the exhibition spaces are air conditioned, requiring extensive air handling units and a large number of supply and return air ducts. One of the main challenges for the design team was to integrate these air handling units, air ducts and other service installations into the building while restoring the original geometry of the 19th century monument. This was achieved by making the installations invisible by integrating them into the monumental roof spaces above the upper galleries and creating new underground plant rooms serving the lower galleries through a ring tunnel outside the building.
Lighting design
The renovation aimed to restore the daylight of the original Cuyper design, while limiting damage to the exhibits, reducing energy and accentuating the displays. For the upper galleries, natural and artificial light are combined in an integrated solution of different layers of special glass and automatically adjustable louvres, while for the lower galleries direct and indirect light is used to enhance the architecture. In the courtyards, natural light and artificial light have been used on the oversized chandeliers to create an attractive environment.
Energy efficient installations
Another of the museum's ‘masterpieces’ is the centralised energy production, combined with thermal energy storage, which provides heat or cooling to the air-handling units as required. The system is supported by a series of reversible heat pumps with heat recovery, backed up by conventional boilers and cooling towers, which also allow energy flows to be balanced throughout the year. This system, together with improvements in insulation and airtightness, makes the renovated Rijksmuseum much more energy efficient than before.
