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Institutional Memory
Institutional Memory

The Past is Present in Two Mall Museum Projects

by Deane Madsen, Assoc. AIA

The Tower One gallery in the East Building of the National Gallery of Art © 2017 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington;
© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko
Award for Excellence in Historic Resources/Preservation National Gallery consulted with Pei to conduct studies for the
renovation, he directed them to longtime associate Perry Chin,
National Gallery of Art East who worked alongside Hartman-Cox to unlock the potential of
Building Renovation & Expansion Pei’s modernist masterpiece and add more than 12,500 square
feet of new exhibition space while minimizing disruption to the
Washington, DC
original architecture.
In Pei’s design, one of the museum’s three towers was
Hartman-Cox Architects occupiable, but the other two held mechanical systems above
Concept Architect: Perry Chin gallery laylights; these systems have been relocated, and additional
Landscape Architects: OCULUS Landscape Architecture gallery floors inserted, to add two tower-level spaces. The new
Structural Engineers: Thornton Tomasetti Tower One gallery houses a rotating selection of works by
MEP Engineers: URS Corporation (now AECOM) Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, and Tower Two features
Civil Engineers: Wiles Mensch Corporation mobiles and stabiles by Alexander Calder. Connecting them is
Building Code Engineers: Hughes Associates, Inc. a newly installed terrace that overlooks Pennsylvania Avenue.
(now Jensen Hughes) Paved in Lac du Bonnet granite that conforms to Pei’s rigid
General Contractor: The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company triangular grid established throughout the museum, the terrace
offers an outdoor sculpture and viewer contemplation bridge
Restoring internationally acclaimed architecture—and expanding between the Tower galleries.
it from within—is no easy task, but that’s exactly the assignment Within the hexagonal tower voids are new egress stairs that
Hartman-Cox Architects received from the National Gallery of connect all of the gallery levels. The original design included
Art for its 1978 East Building. The original and much-lauded spiral staircases, but they were not up to current code standards
design by I.M. Pei (the East Building won the AIA 25-Year Award nor did they reach all floors; these were replaced with hexagonal
in 2004) left little room for improvement, while updates to codes staircases faced in Tennessee Pink marble that cantilever off of
meant new requirements for egress and fire safety. When the wall-mounted stringers.

14 INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY