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 throughout the building and ballistic protection in specific areas. 

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 and non-bollards solutions. 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 façade strengthening schemes to balance the historic preservation considerations with various levels of blast protection and associated costs.
• We also coordinated with the structural engineer to optimize column strengthening strategies that met the gravity and progressive collapse/blast strengthening demands.
• We successfully navigated the complex DDOT approval process and carefully developed various hardening levels to provide the most effective security solutions while adhering to the strict project budget.