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Balancing Art and Fire Safety
When museums such as the Getty Villa and Center build or renovate structures, codes and standards are part of a delicate balancing act.
by Alan R. Earls
In the rarified world of art, museums are often highly specialized. But familiar fire-protection codes and standards are still the backbone of the museum construction business.
At the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, California, an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts, an ambitious series of construction projects and renovations has kept a number of fire-safety professionals busy in recent years. As do many other cultural organizations, the Getty Trust faces special fire and safety challenges in protecting its collection and in building, preserving, and updating its structures.
Since the 1980s, the Getty Trust has had a full plate, with the construction of the new Getty Center in Los Angeles and the renovation of the Getty Villa, its original museum in Malibu, California.
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In the late 1960s, Getty decided to recreate a first-century Roman country house as a stand-alone museum on the property. The new museum, built to emulate a Roman villa unearthed at Herculaneum and now called the Getty Villa, opened to the public in 1974 and served as the museum's sole location until it closed in 1997 in preparation for the opening of the new museum at the Getty Center.
The Getty Villa is currently undergoing renovation, with the Boston, Massachusetts, architectural firm of Machado & Silvetti Associates, Inc. creating the plan. The décor will remain classical, with patterned mosaic and terrazzo floors, coffered ceilings, plaster walls, and wood and bronze details, but new skylights and newly opened windows around the inner garden and atrium will add natural light to the galleries.
When its renovation is complete in 2005, the Getty Villa will be unique among American cultural institutions as the only one focusing on the exhibition and study of Greek and Roman antiquity. The museum's collection contains more than 50,000 objects, and it will exhibit collections on loan from other institutions and from the Getty Research Institute, as well, many of which will be from outside the geographic and temporal scope of the museum's own collection.
Brad Johnson of Machado & Silvetti says that the Getty Trust's insurance company and risk managers had a great deal to say about fire-protection design issues. For instance, even though it´s a fireproof building with 12-inch-thick (30.4-centimeter-thick) concrete walls, they insisted that the sprinkler installation density be much higher than normal, with the specifications referencing NFPA 13, Installation of Sprinkler Systems, 1996 edition.
"We generally require the design/build system to provide a minimum density of 0.15 gallons per minute per square foot (gpm/ft2) (0.56 liters per minute per 0.09 square meters) over the most hydraulically remote 1,500 square feet (139 square meters) of area," Johnson says.
But this density varies considerably. For the central building, the requirement is 0.2 gpm/ft2 (0.75 liters) over the most hydraulically remote 3,000 square feet (278 square meters). For outdoor areas, it's 0.1 gpm/ft2 (0.37 liters) over the most hydraulically remote 1,500 square feet. For areas containing art, the requirement is 0.15 gpm/ft2 over the most hydraulically remote 3,250 square feet (302 square meters).
Much of the Getty Villa falls under NFPA 13's "light hazard" occupancy designation, which would have required only 0.1 gpm/ft2 at the most hydraulically remote 1,500 square feet.
Johnson says that at the Getty´s direction because of the art and books displayed and in storage, "we're installing preaction sprinklers throughout most of the building and wet sprinklers in areas that are less sensitive."
A municipal water source supplies a 50,000-gallon (189,267-liter) holding tank on site. There are also drip pans in key areas and an electronic leak-detection system, primarily to accommodate risks associated with other hydronic piping..
No additional fireproofing will be applied, and the separations between shafts and egress paths and exit ways are "just normal," he says.
"Most of the work involves a full-gut renovation of the interior and renewing the configuration and finishes of all the galleries," Johnson says.
In response to the insurance carrier's request, Machado & Silvetti are adding sprinklers in areas the code might not have required.
"There are many existing, covered outdoor areas where fire protection now is required by code, and even though both local fire authorities and the Getty´s risk managers might have supported seeking a variance in several cases to not install fire protection, the Getty decided to put in wet systems, and we're gaining access at points into the existing attic spaces in areas where ceilings are to remain and staging the attic in order to install a full sprinkler system in these areas," Johnson says.
Move to the Getty Center
Five years ago, the Getty Museum moved from the Villa to the new Getty Center, a modernist complex on a 110-acre (44-hectare) hillside in the Santa Monica Mountains, just off the San Diego Freeway. Two computer-operated trams ferry visitors from a parking facility to the hilltop site, which is organized around a central arrival plaza and offers panoramic views of Los Angeles.
The Getty Trust planning team wanted to keep the same open feel found at the original museum in Malibu, so the Getty Center's six buildings follow a natural ridge in the hilltop and are as open as security and conservation needs permit. Galleries, offices, and the auditorium all open onto courtyards and terraces, and all the offices get plenty of natural light. The buildings also extend underground and are linked by subterranean corridors.
Many of the Center's exterior surfaces are made of glass, allowing the brilliant Southern California sunshine to illuminate the interiors. Using a computer-assisted system of louvers and shades that adjust the intensity and quality of light, the painting galleries on the museum's upper level are naturally lit, with special filters to prevent damage to the paintings.
Other buildings on the Getty Center campus include the Restaurant Building, with its 225-seat restaurant, 415-seat Getty Cafe, and trustees boardroom; the East Building, home of the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, and the Getty Grant Program. The North Building is the home of the Getty Trust administration offices, human resources, and public affairs, and visitors can attend films, lectures, colloquia, and music performances in the freestanding, 450-seat Harold M. Williams Auditorium. In all, there are 945,000 square feet (87,800 square meters) of building space at the Getty Center, including 396,000 square feet (36,788 square meters) of museum space.
Ray Grill, a senior vice president at the Washington, D.C., office of Rolf Jensen & Associates, recalls some of the project's challenges.
"We developed the fire protection program to address code and design issues for Getty back in 1988 as a consultant to architect Richard Meier & Partners," he says. The applicable codes were primarily those from the city of Los Angeles, though the city has adopted NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm Code®, and NFPA 13. NFPA 130, Fixed Guideway Transit Systems, was also used in the tramway project.
The site and the building's contents extraordinary value presented many unique challenges, Grill says. For instance, the fire-protection design team had to pay a lot of attention to the risk of wildland fires. That meant carefully selecting, planning, and minimizing or protecting openings to the outside and ensuring that the exterior materials, primarily travertine marble, enamel-clad aluminum panels, and glass, were appropriate.
"It was a combination of looking at some of the actual building code requirements and then further minimizing exposure," he says.
Then, there were the issues created by the very factor that lent so much beauty and appeal to the buildings: its openness.
"All the vertical penetration that had been accomplished to get openness raised fire and smoke spread issues," Grill adds.
Grill says that most of the time, the design team used the Los Angeles building and fire codes as the basis of its design, but where solutions to specific issues could not be devised, "we negotiated alternatives on a case-by-case basis." In some cases, as with the vertical penetrations, that meant providing for more suppression or better detection.
Because water damage worries conservators as much as smoke damage, Grill says sprinkler systems were installed throughout the new Getty on the assumption that the danger of fire was by far the greatest risk. Most of the sprinkler systems in the building are preaction with a limited number of wet-pipe systems in mechanical spaces.
Ken Levien of Levien & Company, a project management firm in New York City that specializes in rehabilitating historic and religious structures, says it's a very delicate balance between the potential damage of a fire and the risk of water damage to valuable artwork.
"It's ultimately up to the client," says Levien.
Alan Earls is a freelance writer based in Franklin, Massachusetts, who specializes in business, technology, and property issues.
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