When One Mount Isn’t Enough: Seismically Retrofitting a 2000-Pound Scholar’s Rock in the Bay Area

The Asian Art Museum houses an extensive collection of art and antiquities from Asia. It is perhaps the deepest collection of its kind in the country. Much of the art is considered priceless and is extremely fragile. I have been able to create discreet mounts with the help of the building’s base isolation system. The performance of this building is a known quantity because of the “tuning” of the structure. The design earthquake we are anticipating is a major quake with forces akin to the 1906 quake that leveled San Francisco. The sculpture called “The East Wind” by Artist Ren Tianjin is a 1 ton nickel sculpture reminiscent of a Chinese scholars rock. It was installed out in front of the museum but outside the base isolation system. Within the museum it is relatively easy with ordinary materials to make mounts that confidently protect our antiquities. But on the outside almost anything I used seemed inadequate according to my calculations. Because of this I created an integrated network of several technologies which amounted to a discreet almost invisible failsafe system for not only seismically mitigating the art but also protecting it from the public and other natural forces such as sun, wind and rain.