The first LEED Gold certified art museum has been completed and this was possible thanks to a $60 million funding. The construction is the Grand Rapids Art Museum which was expanded and now it features about 125,000 square foot. This is about three times larger than the original structure.

The GRAM was designed by Kulapat Yantrasast, architect at the wHY Architecture and it provides space for galleries, auditoriums, conference rooms, cafes and stores. According to the designer it’s not very easy to design “a museum, especially an art museum, is a very unforgiving type of building because the air inside the building has to be very consistent. It is mostly 75 degrees and 50% humidity. [that range] can sway about five percent, but if it swings more than that the artwork will suffer. Conventional museums expend a lot of energy maintaining that condition”.

Being a modern and futuristic structure, the GRAM was designed to be environmentally-friendly and it’s based on sustainable technology. About 70 percent of the lighting will be provided by natural sources and will be water-efficient as will reduce the consumption by 20 percent.

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