PORTFOLIO
Archives II
College Park, Maryland
This 1.9 million square-foot structure is one of the most unique archival storage facilities ever built. The sixstory building houses one million square feet of office, laboratory and support space in addition to 900,000 squarefeet of storage area. Built to a 100-year life expectancy standard of quality, Archives II is the largest concrete structure in Washington, D.C. Although the project required one of the most complex mechanical installations ever undertaken, the mechanical work was completed 150 days ahead of schedule.
The facility features a 130,000 square-foot central plant containing eight centrifugal chillers providing nearly 8,000 tons of refrigeration, four 400 BHP high pressure fire tube steam boilers, laboratory grade air, gas, vacuum and deionized water equipment.
The archival storage areas were constructed according to stringent environmental control requirements directed via a high-tech digital building automation system. Environments in the storage areas are maintained through 33 dedicated central station custom air handling units housing chilled-water cooling coils, glycol sub-cooling coils, steam preheating coils, stainless steel clean steam humidification systems and four levels of filtration including state-of-the-art degasification equipment.
