Skanska USA Building, Inc.

Client:

NYC Department of Design and Construction (NYC DDC)

Scope Of Work

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum was founded in 1899 as the world’s first museum for children. Originally occupying one, then two Brooklyn mansions, the museum moved in 1975 to a bermed, underground facility, designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, in Bower Park.

The most recent major expansion, designed by Raphael Viñoly Architects, doubles the museum’s space to 102,000-sf, increasing annual capacity from 250,000 visitors to 400,000. Its yellow, undulating exterior wall, which curves in two directions to embrace the earlier building, was designed in its entirety using an extraordinary show of 3-D computer technology. The porthole windows are set from 18” to 36” deep, and some are vertical, some canted as the building wall turns inward. This work needed a mason, ironworker, carpenter, and tile supplier. The wall was modeled and tested at a specialty lab.

Designed and built to a high level of sustainability, the two-story, steel-framed building will use photovoltaic panels to provide electricity. The design abundantly uses recycled materials and rapidly renewable materials – like bamboo floors – in its construction, obtained from local sources.