NC Art Museum’s New Building To Be ‘Green’
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – The North Carolina Museum of Art’s new building is seeking to meet certified “green” standards when it opens in 2010, a difficult objective given the unique climate needed inside art museums, its director said Tuesday.
The expansion – which will house works of art valued at as much as $50 million – is designed to allow in natural light to keep energy costs down but protect the work from damaging sunlight, museum director Larry Wheeler said during a tour of the construction site.
He said those and other building techniques will likely meet the second-highest tier of environmental sustainability standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council’s certification program.
“It’s very difficult to do that with an art museum because environmental conditions have to be closed down, and this is a building that invites the outside in,” Wheeler said.
The museum will close Sept. 6 to allow the staff to move 800 paintings, sculptures and other pieces of art to the new, 127,000-square foot building, scheduled to open in April 2010. It also will feature five courtyards and three reflecting pools.
It will reopen in 2010 as the home to 29 casts of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, along with others loaned by the Cantor foundation, including the large version of “The Thinker,” Wheeler said.
He and Dan Gottlieb, the museum’s director of planning and design, said about 50 percent of the building’s “skin” is glass, allowing sunlight in to keep energy costs down. But use of ultraviolet filers, louvers and curtains will protect the paintings and sculptures.
And when all else fails, the museum will use blackout shades that are connected to sensors that tell the shades to deploy when direct sunlight threatens.
“We have spent about as much money keeping light out as we have letting light in,” Gottlieb said.
The design also will save water by using a 90,000-gallon cistern to hold roof water runoff and air conditioning condensation. The water will be used to irrigate the gardens that make up much of the museum’s new look. 
Those and other hidden features are expected to earn the building a “gold” certification, second only to “platinum” under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design energy efficiency program, or LEED.
“So this building is based on simplicity, and the way you get to simplicity is by a lot of complex engineering behind the simple pieces you see,” Gottlieb said.
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