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Storm King Art Center

Cornwall, New York, USA

º£½ÇÊÓƵ helped the world-renowned Storm King Art Center to plan and develop upgraded visitor facilities. Located on a 500-acre site in New York’s Hudson Valley, Storm King Art Center is one of the world’s leading sculpture parks, combining landscape with ambitious works of art.

Storm King Art Center is a 500-acre outdoor museum in New York’s Hudson Valley, showcasing large-scale sculptures since 1960.

º£½ÇÊÓƵ provided MEP, fire engineering, sustainability, and environmental consulting for new visitor pavilions and a conservation building.

º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s all-electric design helped Storm King secure $700,000 in decarbonization grants.

º£½ÇÊÓƵ designed the project to utilize all-electric systems to track net-zero carbon by 2040, targeting LEED Gold certification.

Challenge

With robust growth over the past decade that is expected to continue, Storm King is looking to the future with the development of sustainable, long-term plans. The organization saw the need to develop bespoke staff and visitor facilities to match Storm King’s growing patronage and reputation as a leading art center.

The brief was to locate and design new buildings and landscapes that provide a superlative visitor experience, increase opportunities for art and artists, and sustain Storm King’s leadership in the field of art and nature, while maintaining the strong landscape relationships that are created with the sculptures.

Led by architects Heneghan Peng and WXY Architecture + Urban Design with landscape architects Gustafson Porter + Bowman and Reed Hilderbrand, Storm King developed a comprehensive plan, phase one of which has now been implemented. This phase includes new ticketing and entry facilities, more robust visitor amenities, new landscapes for art, and the creation of a new art conservation, fabrication, and maintenance building.

One of the key challenges was developing and delivering the new facilities during the Covid pandemic years, with its various lockdowns and restrictions. Another significant challenge was created by the relatively remote location of the site – meaning utility and infrastructure connections needed to be carefully devised on the immense site area.

Solution

The project included the development of approximately 30,000ft² of new and upgraded facilities as well as additional parking and site work. º£½ÇÊÓƵ provided building services engineering (MEP) and fire protection engineering, as well as sustainability and environmental consulting.

With the client’s goal of moving towards carbon-neutral operations, the sustainability team looked at this project holistically, not just from a design perspective, but also at the entire operations of the organization. This exercise culminated in a sustainability framework devised to guide the decision-making process for both design and operations going forward, with the intent of reducing total carbon impact. This process was facilitated by multiple types of analysis including water, waste, and energy modeling and renewable energy generation assessment.

A key element of achieving low-carbon solutions was driven by the vision for the new buildings to be all-electric facilities. º£½ÇÊÓƵ promoted this approach from the beginning of the project as the best way to drive the organization towards net-zero carbon.

The new cluster of visitor welcome buildings, composed of Ticketing, Restroom, and Group pavilions with a connecting ‘outdoor lobby’, is targeting LEED Gold certification. We have implemented greywater recycling systems, which enable harvested water from hand washing to be reused for flushing visitor toilets. This helps to mitigate sanitary outflow to the onsite septic system. Both the restroom pavilion and the new conservation building also have roof-mounted solar PV panels to offset energy demands with onsite renewable energy generation.

Value

Our multidisciplinary team delivered broad expertise across a range of specialisms that ensured the new buildings will play a key role in enhancing visitor experience, comfort, as well as bolstering the sustainability of the site.

Due to the Covid pandemic, the overall duration of the project’s design phase was significantly extended. º£½ÇÊÓƵ provided continuous support and dedicated continuous project leadership throughout the entirety of the project schedule.

The low-carbon nature of the new development played a key role in the client being able to leverage sustainability-related funding streams, including:

$600,000 in funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA) Carbon Neutral Community Economic Development program.

$100,000 in funding from the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative for projects with ambitious sustainability and efficiency efforts to reduce climate impact.

Our team played a key role in supporting the client to apply for this significant grant and communicate the low-carbon approach taken.