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Main theater. Photo © Alan Karchmer Architectural Photographer

Rooftop terrace. Photo © Alan Karchmer Architectural Photographer Upper-level “Galley,” offering spectacular views of Washington’s Monumental Core.

nearly $42 million—was deployed to bring various segments of the Foreseeing the exact heat and electrical load requirements of
Bible to life. In case a mere outward look at the city wasn’t satisfying each exhibition was impossible given the number of organizations
enough, visitors can fly through the local landscape in the second and the timeline involved, so SmithGroupJJR instead set generous
floor’s virtual reality-inspired “Washington Revelations Flyboard parameters. By allowing flexibility up to a certain amount of
Ride.” Lying in a semi-prone position upon responsive boards, up to wattage per square foot, or by specifying the size of air handling
36 guests can simulate flight in and around Washington to see various units available, the architects ensured that exhibition teams would
biblical quotations and references etched into the city’s architecture, know what they had to work with. “We were struggling with how
with motion augmented by sight, sound, and even smell effects. to provide flexibility and power through wide areas of space,”
Six exhibition teams fell under the purview of Sarah Ghorbanian, Ghorbanian says. Installation of a 2.5”-high free-access flooring
LEED AP, who joined SmithGroupJJR as an exhibitions coordinator, system solved that issue: “We didn’t have to make final decisions
but became a project manager and eventually construction admin- about data and electrical ports. Exhibit teams… couldn’t increase
istrator as the museum began to take shape. Ghorbanian likens the the quantity, but the final locations could remain pretty flexible
programmatic layout to a series of museums within the museum. throughout the design.”
Existing cultural institutions such as the Vatican Library and the That kind of flexibility is evident on the third floor, where
Israeli Antiquities Authority were invited to house portions of their stories of the Bible get theatrical. In the Hebrew Bible exhibition,
respective collections in dedicated spaces with the Museum of the designed by BRC Imagination Arts from Burbank, California, visitors
Bible. “There was a thematic tie-in to the overall mission of the wander a path that loosely follows the Old Testament through a
museum,” Ghorbanian says, “but each of those spaces needed to mazelike series of rooms, one of which is seamless white, illuminated
be separated acoustically, and security-wise … and can be occupied by a temporal gradient rainbow vaguely reminiscent of the work
by a short-term or long-term partner.” of spatial artist James Turrell. For that exhibition, there was one

22 A DC MUSEUM OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS