MEM Elevator Adds Art Deco Flair to Museum

Jan. 12, 2011 - PRLog -- A modular elevator from Modular Elevator Manufacturing, Inc. (MEM), leading manufacturer of factory preinstalled commercial hydraulic and machine-room-less elevators, provided the ideal vertical transportation solution for the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California.

The 46,821-square-foot Mullin Automotive Museum is both a private and public museum that features the world’s largest collection of Bugatti and French race cars of the 1930s. The building’s design was inspired by the art deco style of same period, containing furniture, decorative art and photography from the influential era.

In order to open the museum to the public, the building needed to improve its accessibility by adding a versatile elevator system that could be easily placed inside the existing building. A modular elevator from MEM was lifted by a crane through a hole in the roof and installed in the former warehouse.

“Mullin Automotive Museum features our direct modular hydraulic elevator featuring in-ground jacks,” explains Tom Shield, President and Founder of MEM. “This is one of our most popular systems and it is ideal for a low-rise facility needing an elevator for ADA remediation purposes.”

The elevator rises from the museum’s main floor through the mezzanine to a roof deck and garden. Symmetrical waveform grilles surround the elevator mechanism, symbolic of the art deco style, featuring geometric and vertical characteristics. The elevator tower includes a staircase and doubles as a photo gallery.

“I used a modular elevator for the Mullin Museum project to satisfy both aesthetic and functional needs,” says David Hertz, founder and president of Studio of Environmental Architecture. “Modular Elevator Manufacturing was able to exceed my expectations when it came to making the elevator an exposed and integral part of the architecture.”

The modular elevator contains a commercial factory pre-installed elevator contained in a freestanding structural steel hoistway. The elevator system features state of the art digital controls, a fully-equipped standard elevator car, fully assembled modular hoistway tower constructed from welded tubular steel and is powered by an oil hydraulic machine.

The project was completed in April 2010. In addition to MEM, the project team included Studio of Environmental Architecture, Santa Monica, CA as architect, Interscape Construction, Montrose, CA as general contractor and The Scenic Route, Pacoima, CA for interior design.


Additional high-res photos can be seen here: http://www.larsonobrien.com/mem/html/mullin_auto_museum.html and high-res installation photos can be seen here:
http://www.larsonobrien.com/mem/html/mullin_installation....

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Modular Elevator Manufacturing, Inc. (MEM) designs and manufactures factory preinstalled commercial hydraulic and machine-room-less (MRL) elevators. Built as freestanding structures in rated or non-rated hoistways, MEM elevators enable virtually any kind of facility to achieve and/or improve accessibility, meeting ADA compliance while saving time and money. MEM’s holeless-designed elevators arrive on-site fully installed, can be made operational in one day and are priced below conventional elevator systems. For more information about Modular Elevator Manufacturing, visit www.modularelevator.net.