The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Art Museum

摘要

Preserving an old building is a sustainable act in itself. Retrofitting a 150-year-old historic landmark to be a top energy performer? That's truly impressive. And it's just what Cleveland-based Westlake Reed Leskosky (WRL), now part of Omaha, Neb.-based DLR Group, did with the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Art Museum, a delectable French pastry of a building designed in the ornate Second Empire style by James Renwick Jr. and completed in 1859 as the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Last renovated between 1967 and 1972, the 46,800-square-foot building-located not on the National Mall, but on Pennsylvania Avenue-was plagued by difficulties with its mechanical systems and an antiquated public image when engineer Roger Chang, a principal at DLR Group | WRL, first visited in 2009. "As soon as I walked in, I thought, 'This is incredible,'" he says. In 2012, after the Smithsonian issued an RFP for its renovation, Chang headed the team that won and, in 2015, completed the job.