Wednesday, December 09, 2020
The Transformation of the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny into MuseumLab - A Beautiful Ruin
Green Building Alliance: What happens when you take a team of museum professionals and combine them with architects and contractors that have a shared interest in inspirational problem solving, mixed with the hope to discover and reinstate the historic architecture of a building that had been dampened by a 1970’s renovation?
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This is a very neat restoration, design, and build process. Reading about this project made me think a lot about how much of a different beast an augmentation to an existing space. I worked on a crew for Kevin last year installing some temporary spans to hang banners off of in the CFA building, and to design those spans, Kevin had to be aware of how the building was structured. The spans ended up resting on top of existing ledges in the architecture, and were held in place with a stopper that clamped to the edge of the ledge that was carved to look like moulding. I can only imagine how chaotic it must have been to have the construction team find the beautiful terracotta arch under the plaster, and then having to redesign to preserve that architecture. I’m not surprised that the eco-friendly insulation was so expensive. In my research for the green theatre project I looked through a bunch of eco-friendly insulation as alternatives for foam, and it seems that since these materials haven’t become widely popular, they are still very expensive products. I think it’s wonderful that the team was able to design a building that was structurally sound, reduced the building’s energy utilization index by 83%, and embraced the original architectural features.
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