The offices of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) at Constitution Center feature active chilled beams. GHT provided mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) engineering design services for the project, which features open office space around the perimeter and closed offices through the interior. This layout maximizes daylight and provides views to the street and the building’s internal courtyard. All office space is conditioned using active chilled beams that provide sensible cooling while delivering 100% outside air for ventilation. Lighting is provided by high-efficiency fluorescent fixtures.
GHT employed Revit® MEP building information modeling (BIM) software to provide mechanical design for the project. The space includes a variety of conference venues, including a six-room conference center on the third floor. All large conference rooms are supported by supplemental water-cooled air conditioning (AC) units in addition to the chilled beam fixtures found in those spaces. The primary purpose of the supplemental AC units is to provide latent cooling to control humidity when high-density spaces are fully occupied. Each AC unit is connected to a wall-mounted humidistat which activates a de-humidification sequence when it senses a rise in the relative humidity of the space.
The space features a media room with special lighting and acoustic specifications required for audio and video recordings. The design team also added storage rooms and a 500 SF data center on the garage level. The data center features N+1 redundant cooling and a 40KW UPS backup.
