A Work of Art at the High

Contractors building $85 million addition at Atlanta's High Museum

By Debra Wood

Atlanta's High Museum of Art at the Woodruff Arts Center will more than double its exhibit space with the addition of two new gallery buildings at its midtown campus.

"The museum has been extremely successful," said Marge Harvey, director of architectural planning and design for the High. "We've had unprecedented growth in attendance, membership and our collection. We decided we needed to expand to provide our visitors with better amenities. We also needed dedicated special-exhibition galleries."

More than a half a million people visit the 135,000-sq.-ft. High Museum annually, nearly double the number that visited when the current building opened in 1983. About 40,000 households belong to the museum.

With its space constraints, the museum could only display about 3 percent of its permanent collection. The $85 million addition will add 177,000 sq. ft.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop of Genoa, Italy, designed a $130 million expansion plan for the Woodruff Arts Center in collaboration with Lord, Aeck & Sargent Inc. of Atlanta. The team conceptualized a unified, pedestrian-friendly village for the arts, with a piazza and terraces, two gallery buildings, an administrative building and a restaurant for the High. One of the two gallery buildings is called the Wieland Pavilion. The other has not been named, pending a donor.

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The design also included a new residence hall for the Atlanta College of Art and other improvements to the Woodruff campus.

Jones Lang LaSalle of Atlanta is the project manager. Randy Shields, project director for Jones Lang LaSalle, said the use of unique materials, such as the passive, natural lighting system, and the tight, urban site on an operating arts campus were obstacles during construction, but they have been well managed.

"It's going great," Shields said. "There are daily ups and downs, but if you lift yourself above that and look at the big picture, it's going well."

A joint venture between Skanska USA Building and minority contractor H.J. Russell & Co., both of Atlanta, serves as construction manager for the High project.

"We are not building a typical, standard museum," said Willie Russell, project executive, who is no relation to the minority contractor. "We've become more than bricks-and-stick builders. We're part of the architectural climate. The museum structure actually becomes a piece of art."

Skanska-Russell Project Director John LeFauve considers the complex a living, breathing piece of sculpture. "The owner made clear that quality is paramount and [the High] wants the architect's vision to be realized," he added. "And it had to open on time."

Harvey said even though the architecture may appear quite simple at first, it is really a sophisticated design.

Holder Construction Co. of Atlanta completed the dormitory project. The college needed the new residence hall before Skanska-Russell could begin tearing down the existing dormitory. Demolition began in summer 2003.

A sculpture building, subway platform and underground parking garage also came down. The new underground parking complex extends deeper into the ground, picking up space for an additional 100 cars.

"We had to do a lot of mass rock blasting and excavation, and we were surrounded by the owner's buildings; Peachtree Avenue, a major artery; and another street on the back side with the public transport subway system," LeFauve said.

Skanska-Russell arranged for seismic studies before the blasting and placed monitors throughout the existing museum to check that the excavation was not creating any excessive movement.

The structures are reinforced concrete up to the piazza level and structural steel above. Skanska-Russell began steel erection on the largest building, the five-story Wieland Pavilion, and then started on the smaller, three-story, special-collections gallery. The work will run parallel until both top out at the end of August.

Because of the tight, midtown site, Skanska-Russell instituted a just-in-time delivery process. Special permits, with specific routing, are required for deliveries at off-peak traffic times.

"We don't call for material until we are ready to put it into place," LeFauve said.

An architectural concrete with reveals, pie-hole patterns and surface articulations covers the exterior of the building at street level. Glass-enclosed bridges will connect the new buildings to each other and to the existing High Museum. Decorative, vertical aluminum panels cover the balance of the structures and will be added to the existing museum to help it blend in. On the new structures, the aluminum panels continue to the roof, where they twist and serve as sunshields for a rooftop full of skylights.

"[The roof] is a ribbon of sunshades that goes over the top of the light cones and down, then up and down," Harvey said. "It follows the skylights in a grid pattern. It goes all the way across the top of the building and continues down the other side of the building."

Early computer modeling, showing the sun field and weather conditions throughout the year, detected that southern sunrays could enter the gallery on certain days. The direct sun could be harmful to the artwork.

"We had to change the geometry of those cone and shades so there would never be direct sunlight," Harvey said.

In order to allow patrons in the upper galleries to view the art under natural light, Renzo Piano added 800 skylights to the main pavilion and 200 to the smaller structure. The skylights are 3 ft. in diameter, with glass at the top. They are placed adjacent to each other, tipped lightly to the north, and rise about 4 ft. above the roof. A curved object that acts like a hood blocks the southern light.

"[The architect] is using a very simple, elegant geometric shape to control the way light enters through the skylights," LeFauve said. "It presents some unique and challenging construction conditions for us."

Key contractors include Cleveland Electric Co. and B & W Mechanical Contractors Inc. of Atlanta and Precision Concrete Construction Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga. Between 300 and 400 workers are onsite.

The project is on schedule for a summer 2005 completion. The administrative building and parking garage will be turned over this fall.

"We've been able to pull together tremendous subcontractor resources for all these specialty items and still satisfy the owner's budget and schedule needs," project director Shields said.

Useful sources:

High Museum of Art — http://www.buildingthehigh.org

Renzo Piano Building Workshop — http://www.rpbw.com

Woodruff Arts Center — http://www.woodruffcenter.org