Owner/Client:
Seattle Asian Art Museum/LMN Architects
Funding dependent
- Use/Occupancy: Museum
- Built in 1933, a major building renovation is planned for the Seattle Asian Art Museum which will include making the exterior walls more thermally efficient, upgrading the building mechanical systems to better control the indoor conditions, and addressing building enclosure moisture issues at various locations.
- The building enclosure comprises sandstone and concrete walls, a historic art deco aluminum frame glazing system, and several single-glazed skylights. Much of the building enclosure assemblies are original, with the exception of the roof.
- RDH was retained by LMN Architects to assist with analyzing design and performance issues related to the building enclosure as part of the renovation.
- RDH designed a program to continuously monitor the in-situ performance of the exterior wall assemblies and interior operating conditions prior to the building renovation to assess the condition of the assemblies and the risks of insulating or modifying them. The building was monitored using a combination of specifically positioned temperature, relative humidity (RH), surrogate moisture content, pressure, and condensation sensors. The sensors were embedded within selected wall assemblies or placed at strategic positions within the museum to measure the desired conditions.
- To assist with the design recommendations for the proposed new wall assemblies, RDH undertook computer simulations and analyzed the building for heat transfer through the enclosure in order to assess the risk for condensation. Hygrothermal modeling was also used to simulate the performance of the wall assemblies under local climatic loads using the monitored data to calibrate the computer models.
- Monitoring
- Thermal simulation
- Hygrothermal simulation
- Wall assembly analysis and design review
Brian Hubbs
Michael Aoki-Kramer
Graham Finch
