Summary

Spanning a full city block corner to corner, the world class Memphis Art Museum (formerly the “Memphis Brooks Museum of Art”) will serve the greater Memphis and Midsouth communities with over 9,000 artworks spanning 5,000 years of life and culture across the globe.

Bass Concrete provided the foundation for a world-class mass timber frame and concrete super structure. The museum’s structural foundation contains more than 11,950 cubic yards of poured-in-place concrete to support the three elevator cores and two floors of split-level split-slab insulated structural decks. Memphis’ proximity to the New Madrid seismic zone requires an elevated level of earthquake resistance and construction considerations, which included over 1,300 tons of reinforcing bar. Its most impressive structural feature includes nearly 56,150 linear feet of bent #11 bars now hidden below the surface of the large, non-prismatic tapered cantilever beams flanking the west façade. Tapered walls that sit within 20 feet of an active railroad track required intense planning and coordination with the general contractor and Bass support vendors. Upon concrete structural completion, Bass had supplied over 5,000 SF of reusable wall formwork and core climbing systems, 70,000 SF of structural deck shoring, and successfully placed over 1,200 yards of deck in single night dual pump placements.