DOWN TOA FINE ART

Art Center ExpansionTests the Limits of Creativity

By Nicole Achs Freeling

As the Industrial Revolution took hold ofthe world in the second half of the 19thcentury, new art styles and movementsbegan to thrust themselves into public view —and just as quickly disappear. The modern artmovement reflected the growing rate of changein our society. Modern artists felt free to trusttheir inner visions, experimenting and innovatingas often as possible.

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, established in 1927, seized upon the modern art movement in 1940, making it a focus of the museum’s permanent collection. As contemporary art continues to evolve, pushing the envelope of artistic thought, even the Walker itself has undergone an imaginative transformation — a 130,000-square-foot expansion with new galleries and gardens for the museum’s growing collection.

The Walker reopened in April 2005 after nearly doubling its size, incorporating both the renovation of an existing building built in 1971 by Edward Larrabee Barnes and the addition of a new wing. The addition also includes a 385- seat theater, facilities for interactive education programs, rooftop terraces with sweeping downtown views, a gourmet restaurant, new galleries, and extensive underground parking.

But underlying the widely lauded architecture of the newly expanded Walker Art Center is another masterful creation — one made especially remarkable by the fact that no one will ever see it.

Parsons Electric LLC, in conjunction with Hammel, Green and Abrahamson’s (HGA) electrical engineering group, created the museum’s $5-million electrical, lighting, and fire-detection systems, which took two years, thousands of hours, and hundreds of CAD drawings to design and install. In order to meet the building’s unusual architectural demands, the electrical team worked with lighting manufacturers around the world to literally invent new products and fixtures. What part of this state-of-the-art system does the public see? Virtually nothing. And that, according to the architects, is the beauty of it.

The building’s plans called for hidden electrical, fire-detection, sprinkler, and air-handling systems. Even light fixtures are out of sight; the only visible element is the lighting itself, which shines through 2.5-inch openings in the ceilings.

“The trick was to make it work without compromising the integrity of the building,” says Keith Rosdahl, Project Manager at Parsons. “We had to find all the nooks and crannies where the electrical wiring would go.” Parsons, HGA, and the construction team led by M.A. Mortenson Company spent many hours a week together, totalling hundreds of hours, creating CAD drawings to ascertain how to get the electrical system through the building.

Kendall Griffith, Senior Project Manager at M.A. Mortenson Company, says the most challenging aspect of the project was its asymmetrical design. “So many buildings are symmetrical, and there’s a natural order for things. On this project, we had 130,000 square feet of space, but it had to be broken down into five different projects because each had a different flow.”

Designing a Masterpiece

The museum began its upgrade efforts in 2001, when it acquired an adjacent 3.4-acre property housing the Allianz Life Insurance building. (The building was torn down to make way for the new wing.) At that time, the Walker, which had undergone one previous renovation in its 30-year history, was finding itself in desperate need of room to meet the growth in attendance, programs, and collections, as well as an increased emphasis on educational programs. But perhaps the primary reason for expansion was to create a multidisciplinary facility for its multidisciplinary programs.

The Walker conducted a worldwide search for a team to carry out the renovation, seeking bids from firms as far away as Hong Kong, Switzerland, and England. “Because of our focus on modern and contemporary art, we wanted a group that was committed to experimental design,” says Howard Oransky, Walker Planning Director. “We wanted people to help redesign the building into what a great art museum can be.”

The architect chosen to lead the design was Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron, also responsible for creating the celebrated Tate Modern in London and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. HGA was selected as the architect and engineer of record.

Herzog and de Meuron’s design incorporates the old wing on one side and a cantilevered, slightly askew cube on the new side, separated by a long corridor to form what the Washington Post referred to as “a long architectural hyphen.” The main building is covered with minicubes made of aluminum sheets, making the surface appear, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, as if it were crumpled and then smoothed out again.

“The building is conceived like a lantern,” Jacques Herzog told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It’s a blur between solid, translucent, and transparent. The skin is not a piece of glass but a fabric lit from behind with undulations and a sense of depth. It’s got nothing to do with anything you’ve ever seen before. ... It [is] magic and sexy.”

The directors of the Walker wanted its expanded facility to serve as a place where art’s many modes — visual, musical, and theatrical — could be showcased and even intersect. One of the museum’s highlights is a theater that, while seating only 385, features the scale, fly loft, lighting, and sound facilities of Minneapolis’s largest theater houses, those designed to seat several thousand.

“When artists perform at the Walker, it’s a very unique, intimate experience for our visitors,” Oransky notes. Parsons installed the theater’s state-of-the-art dimming system, as well as an electrical system with 265 points for rigging light fixtures.

“Anytime you have a theater, the electrical equipment — the way the lights are run — is very specific,” says Eleanor Savage, Associate Director of Events and Media Production for the Walker. “It’s not business as usual. The great thing about Parsons was they really worked with us in a team spirit. If they had not done the incredible coordination work they did, there could have been a lot of problems. They went above and beyond the call of duty in working with the other contractors.”

The museum also includes a number of features to further the museum’s educational mission, including an expanded library, interactive areas for individualized learning, a teen center, and a hands-on lab that allows people of all ages to discover their inner artists. The project also features a “town square,” which includes a 4- acre green space. The square is meant to serve as both an interior and exterior public gathering area where community programs and arts events are held, providing an inviting and accessible community resource.

Bringing the Dream to Light

But bringing Herzog and de Meuron’s design to fruition was a feat of artistry in itself, one that required both extraordinary imagination and exactitude.

“If it wasn’t for companies like Parsons that really commit to the project and get closely involved, we wouldn’t have pulled it off,” Oransky says. Parsons provided design-assist as well as installation for the electrical systems, theatrical dimming equipment, and voice and data systems. All three of the company’s divisions — electrical, technology, and technical service — were employed in the project.

The building’s architecture, while beautiful to behold, made designing the electrical system extremely challenging. “The integrated design process, which folded the engineering in the architecture, was critical to the success of the project,” says Ben Gutierrez, Electrical Designer for HGA. HGA was charged with producing the construction drawings and executing the conceptual design created by Herzog and de Meuron. “Without a collaborative team, we could not have accomplished an atypical project like the Walker. It is what we do best,” says Gutierrez.

“The lighting system was mounted in places you wouldn’t normally install lights. Instead of mounting the main electrical service next to the transformers, it was located under the loading dock. None of the floors were consistent,” Gutierrez says of the facility, which includes multilayered split levels and a gentle, 12-foot slope from the old building to the new. “It was difficult to find consistent shafts for routing services since walls weren’t vertical; they were flared. We had to do a number of drawings just to figure out where the feeders could be located.”

The fixtures, air exhaust and intake systems, fire-detection devices, and diffusers are stowed in door frames and lighting tracks. “You don’t see sprinkler heads. You don’t see smoke detectors,” Rosdahl notes. “All you see is a narrow slot in the ceiling.”

Creating this effect required working with manufacturers to invent a special track system with disconnect pieces that would make bulbs and other parts removable for maintenance.

Coordinating all the parts of this specially designed equipment was no easy feat. The tolerances were exacting to the point that if something was 1/2 inch to even 1/8 inch off, it would not fit in the space provided.

Achieving the necessary level of precision required extraordinary coordination between the trades. According to Gutierrez, the team was able to design solutions to problems, rather than having to make quick, stop-gap fixes. Parsons had an office on site for two years that included Rosdahl, Project Manager Jim Moryn, and Scott Shaffer, a Parsons CAD specialist who spent more than 12 months producing drawings.

Blending Old and New

When planning the new structure, the museum’s directors wanted to create a building that was a seamless blend of old and new, so visitors would not see two distinct structures but one world-class museum. This presented a design challenge to the architects, who created an interior space that would mimic that of the earlier building, offering few hints the visitor had passed from one section to another.

It also posed a practical challenge to Parsons, which — as installer of the fire-detection system — had to create a firewall between the two buildings without using doors or physical barriers of any kind.

The Barnes building, built in the 1970s, was created using much less stringent fire codes than those required today. To refrain from having to update the structure, an enormous project that would have likely proved impossible from a budget and design standpoint, MountainStar, a local fire-protection design specialist, met with the city of Minneapolis to come up with an “equivalent” design concept. It was left to the design team, including Parsons and its fire alarm subcontractor, LVC, to make the concept work.

Eventually, a system was developed that would create opposing air flow from one building to another. The air flow would function as a firewall, acting to contain a fire that erupted in either building so it would not spread. “That was hours and days worth of meetings,” Rosdahl says. Because of the sensitivity of the system, 500 fire alarm points were tested to ensure they were all functioning properly.

In the meantime, as the trades struggled with design challenges above ground, a five-story parking lot was under construction below. “Because the garage was finished about a year before the rest of the building, we had to have the answers out front,” says Gutierrez. The ground-level electrical infrastructure for the entire facility all had to be designed well ahead of the finalized architecture.

Once the concrete was poured for the garage, there was no going back, despite the fact that the exact design for where the feeders and lines would go was not yet established. “We needed the information related to where the lines would go about eight months before the design was going to catch up,” Gutierrez says.

Parsons’ work on the garage’s parking ramp was unusual in a number of ways. “The power for the parking ramp came from the Walker Art Center, which hadn’t been built yet,” says Moryn. “The first thing that had to be built at the art center was the electrical room. It was kind of like building a house and doing the garage first.”

Parking structures are usually quite simple, but this one had unique architectural elements and lighting. “Instead of having ceiling fixtures, the garage entrance was lit with fixtures on the ground that shine up,” says Moryn. There were approximately 100 wall washes as well as step lights on the stairways, which is unusual for a garage.

Art for Art’s Sake

It is said you can’t rush art, but when it came to building the new museum, meeting the February deadline required sweat, overtime, and, according to Rosdahl, extreme efforts. “There were times when we arrived at 4 a.m. to test the systems,” he says. “We had to work in a way that wouldn’t interrupt activity in the existing building or the day’s construction activities.”

The museum was closed to the public during renovation, but staff continued to work in the offices. Artwork remained in the building, requiring temporary power and cooling.

After four years in the making, the improved Walker opened to the public in the spring and was met with gushing reviews from newspapers, magazines, and architectural journals around the world, including Newsweek, The New York Times, and ArtNews. It seems the museum met its goal of designing a facility that would be a work of art in and of itself, one that would stretch the notions of modern architecture and challenge the conventions of how buildings are made. Ultimately, the building itself, like the art shown within, is about testing the limits of creativity.