Volunteering for the Arts Brings Industry Together

By Elaine S. Silver

The new Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art is more than just a cultural statement. The low-budget urban renewal project combined the renovation and expansion of an historic office building with the volunteer efforts of 19 local architects and a generous design-builder to bring taste, grace and excitement to an energetic northern Florida city.

Collaboration is the magic word everyone uses when describing the miracle of the museum's magnificent new $4.5- million home. The work, which started in May 2002 and was completed a year later, offers stunning loft-style gallery space, classrooms, an interactive arts center, a 137-seat auditorium, museum store and café that seamlessly blends old construction with new.

advertisement

In 1999, the growing museum was located in the suburbs and the trustees decided that it was important for the museum to become a vital part of the city center. The trustees, who include Walter Taylor, principal at KBJ Architects and Preston Haskell, chairman of design-build firm The Haskell Co. and chair of the museum's capital fund, originally wanted to design and build a new signature building. But opportunity knocked. An historic structure became available-the five-story, 40,000-sq-ft U-shaped Western Union Telegraph Building, built in 1931 and located on North Laura Street. And the design and construction community went to work in an unusual partnership with the backing of the museum trustees, six of whom kicked in $25,000 each to get the project rolling, and the city, which secured a U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development grant to buy and renovate the building.

Team had $4.5-million budget to restore facade and convert offices.

Taylor put together a volunteer design collective consisting of architects, structural engineers, interior designers and landscape architects. "I know all the people in the design community," he says. "And I called them and they all said 'yes.'" Nineteen designers eventually donated their services, including two from the Haskell Co. Taylor formed a steering committee of five to coordinate the work. The Haskell Co. donated civil, structural, mechanical and electrical engineering services, interior, kitchen and millwork design, construction management and material procurement. KBJ's architects donated the design documents.

Meanwhile, museum President Jane Craven and Curator George Kinghorn visited other museums across the U.S. to see how their facilities worked. Craven wrote a floor-by-floor facilities program to guide the design team. "We conveyed a vision of how we wanted the museum to appear aesthetically," says Craven. "Since the art displayed is from 1945 onward, we needed a sleek and contemporary look."

Simple Statement

But how could this ordinary five-story office building and basement be used as a modern museum? The designers decided that they would preserve the exterior "but on the inside we would give it a New York loft feel, with the artwork as the interior," says Haskell.

After forming their working groups, the designers faced two daunting obstacles-very limited funds and the challenge of design-by-committee. "The budget was $4.5 million, as opposed to the $100 million of other museum budgets, for the entire refitting of the building. It was a joke," says William Morgan, principal at William Morgan Architects, and steering committee member. "Anything we could dream of, you could take it and throw it out the window except [us] meeting all the code requirements and the plumbing. All we had left was funds that could cover a lot of white paint. So, we had to respect what was there."

Keeping the project simple meant that the building would be allowed to be exactly what it is, a great example of a reinforced concrete structure from the early twentieth century. "If we had been left to our own devices, we would have ended up with something self-referential. Instead, we got champagne out of lemons," says Morgan.

Surprisingly, the design-by-committee approach also ended up being a good thing. "I think the fact that there was a dialogue going meant we got quicker feedback on ideas and it required us to put ego aside," says David Laffitte, senior architect at Reynolds, Smith and Hills Inc., an architectural firm and lighting designer. "It was energizing."

One of the more vexing problems designers faced in creating the new museum was figuring out where to put the auditorium-the place where the community would come together for films and lectures. The city's design and construction community had to spin gold out of straw to do the job.

In the early drawings, the designers put the auditorium along the extreme south end of the building. It was a long, single bay 16 ft by 48 ft that began on the first floor and cut into the basement. It seemed to be the only solution to deal with the concrete columns that dotted the structure every 16 ft. But after about a dozen design meetings, someone suggested that one column be removed from the basement. "That suggestion became the Rosetta Stone of the building's design," says Taylor. The auditorium was relocated to the basement in a much more elegant 43-ft x 48-ft space with an entrance flowing from the main floor. "Everything else seemed to fall into place after that," Taylor recalls. "But it wasn't one person's idea, it was truly a collaborative effort."

Laffitte says that the design of the auditorium opened the way for the main design element of the museum, the Atrium Gallery, which is the only addition to the original structure. Laffitte says that once the auditorium was placed in the building's basement, the empty space in the "U" part of the building above the basement became usable. It could be enclosed. The west side of the Atrium Gallery is open to the second and third floors and serves as a connection between the gallery floors. The museum stairs became a social place, a place to see and be seen. "It probably took a dozen or so meetings to get to this design," says Laffitte. The Atrium Gallery, a post-tensioned concrete structural floor addition, accounted for about 1/3-or $1.5-million-of the tiny budget. "It was money well spent," says Taylor. This addition added 30 ft x 40 ft of additional space over three floors and at its highest point measures 43 ft high.

	Budding young artists get their own loft space to explore mediums and styles.

The columns posed other challenges. Everything had to be designed around them. On the gallery floor, the columns dictated where the design-builders could create walls to hang art. The columns in the kitchen created weeks of debate among the museum staff, kitchen staff, caterers and architects and builders. "The architect wanted the kitchen to float between a set of columns," says Craven. But then it was too small. Finally, someone on the design committee thought of placing a large counter in front of the columns. "It looks like a piece of furniture," Craven says, "and it bought an additional 8 ft of work space."

Bringing the building up to code was another priority. "We had to build two fire stairs," says Taylor. "We took one of the elevator shafts and made it bigger. Then, we had to cut certain concrete joints and support them with steel framing and put the stair in. The other stair was too small, so we used the opening of that stair and widened it and it allowed us to rotate the direction of the stair." For the air conditioning, the team put in trunk ducts to minimize architectural design conflict.

Facile Façade

Everyone wanted the exterior to look exactly as it did in 1931 and Florida's Secretary of the Interior gave the museum $400,000 for restoration work. Luckily, Taylor's firm, KBJ Architects, is a successor to the building's original designer and had the plans. Herschel Shepard, a consultant in historical architecture and a retired professor of architecture at the University of Florida, was on the team as well. He helped devise a design solution to the changes that were made over the years in which a number of the original storefronts were replaced with modern designs and the magnificent doors and grills and the decorative terra cotta had been completely removed.

Shepard and Haskell together looked at the façade and made decisions on how to bring it back to its original look within the confines of the restricted budget. "We used a cast architectural stone to resemble the original terra cotta," says Shepard. "The team would have preferred to restore the original terra cotta, but it would have cost us as much as four to five times the cost of the faux finish." The storefront material was replaced with anodized aluminum instead of more expensive bronze. "It is very powerful to walk by the façade of the building," Shepard says. "It is a wonderful contrast of old and new, of historic preservation and contemporary architecture."

The museum opened to acclaim in May 2003. "I don't think it could have been achieved without the design-build relationship between designer and contractor," says Taylor. Haskell says that he and Taylor both had personal interest in the building and a desire that the building turn out perfectly. "We worked well together and there was no turf. Walter gave me enormous amount of respect in the decision-making" he says. And they made their decisions together.

Once construction started, making quick decisions kept the project moving and improved it. "When you have an old building turned into a totally different use, you have hundreds of changes and decisions to make," Haskell says. "It was a daily revolving door. We'd make one decision and another would pop up."

For example, one side of the building had a 3-in. dimensional discrepancy from the other side. Haskell and Taylor had to decide exactly how to adjust the staircase to accommodate the difference. In another case, the team thought it had complied with all regulations regarding access for the disabled in the auditorium. But late in the construction process, it turned out that they needed wheelchair space on both levels of the auditorium, not just one as designed. Again, Haskell and Taylor met and quickly decided to carve out space from the theater's operations booth to solve the problem.

The design collaborative that became a design-build collaboration has prod-uced a project that is changing the city. Membership in the 80-year-old museum is larger than ever and more people are visiting it. Showcasing regional and local artists, it is a true community center. "Most of us have known each other a long time," says Shepard. "We have worked together and competed with each other. We came together and had a ball. It was a great experience."

The author, a freelance writer, lives in the Hudson River Valley of New York State and reports frequently for Design•Build and other publications.

Photos by: Rashba.com

Click here for features archives >>