Museum of the Bible

overview

Located two blocks away from the National Mall, a 1922 historic warehouse was transformed into a state-of-the-art museum housing artifacts documenting the narrative, history and impact of the Bible. The 430,000-square-foot, eight-story building also features a biblical garden, grand ballroom and restaurant.

We provided physical security design services, and our scope included blast hardening and progressive collapse assessments and mitigation options including protecting the building perimeter and queuing areas from a hostile vehicle approach. 

highlights

• We designed the perimeter security barriers in close coordination with the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) to achieve targeted levels of protection with non-traditional solutions that were integrated with the landscape and streetscape. We worked with limited space and a tight construction schedule to design the vehicle barriers.
• The historic building façade and unique structural system posed preservation and blast/structural strengthening challenges for the team. We developed several strengthening schemes to balance the historic preservation considerations with various levels of protection and associated costs.
• We also coordinated with the structural engineer to optimize column strengthening strategies that met the gravity and progressive collapse/blast demands.