It’s football season all year round at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. Considered the symbolic heart of college football season, the move to the middle of Atlanta’s sports and entertainment district gives the College Football Hall of Fame, which was suffering from years of dwindling attendance at its former home in South Bend, Ind., a chance to reinvent itself.
Designed by Atlanta-based tvsdesign, the $66.9 million College Football Hall of Fame opened on August 23, 2014. Tvsdesign was challenged by the National Football Foundation to design an iconic building that would not only serve as a shrine to the heroes of the game and a cultural center, but also capture the “Game Day” experience and celebrate the game’s traditions. It also needed to have event spaces, retail and restaurants. Expected to handle more than 500,000 visitors a year, the building also had to achieve LEED Silver certification.
Visitors enter the 94,256-square-foot facility through a tunnel where silhouetted football players run next to them and the cheers of the crowd in the background. From there, a three-story atrium has a display of helmets of every NCAA football team in the country. A curved steel stair leads to a second-floor theater and the third-floor “Hall of Fame” shrine. A two-story, 65-foot-long handing bridge connects to the 45-yard-long turf playing field, and museum exhibits, which highlight everything from recruiting, tailgating, stadium history, legendary athletes and classic rivalries.
Soaring more than 80 feet in the air, the football-shaped rotunda is a figurative and realistic symbol of the game. As Kevin D. Gordon, AIA, LEED AP, principal at tvsdesign, describes, the design team faced three challenges with the rotunda: the double-curved geometry, the requirement of a neutral or natural color that doesn’t represent a specific league or team, and the speed of erection and project budget. “As such, aluminum composite panels in a rainscreen application was the best alternative to meet the criteria,” he says.
For the project, Eastman, Ga.-based Alcoa Architectural Products supplied 41,331 square feet of its 4-mm Reynobond aluminum composite material (ACM) panels with a fire-resistant (FR) core. The panels were installed in a dry-joint rainscreen system for the exterior cladding, interior walls and soffits. PPG Industries, Pittsburgh, supplied the custom coatings for the panels.
To simulate football leather, the Reynobond panels were in two custom metallic colors: Duranar Sunstorm ULTRA-Cool Foxfire Brown and Duranar Sunstorm ULTRA-Cool Terra Mauve. The panels were placed randomly around the rotunda, with select panels rotated 180 degrees to alternate the direction of the grain, creating a contrasting pattern that gives the appearance of four colors. Installed in Austell, Ga.-based The Miller-Clapperton Partnership Inc.‘s Face-Fastened Attachment System, the raised profile of the copper-colored fasteners add a pebbly texture to the wall surface, similar to a football’s pebbly leather surface.
“One of the most challenging aspects of the project was designing, fabricating and installing the 1,165 panels for the curved rotunda and angular press box substrates,” says Scott Stafford of The Miller-Clapperton Partnership, the metal contractor for the project. “The varied substrate and numerous custom panel sizes required strict attention to detail to achieve a uniform panel surface with precise joint alignment and integration with adjacent materials. Every panel was designed to fit in a specific spot on the rotunda.”
Panels in Duranar Sunstorm ULTRA-Cool Foxfire Brown and Duranar Sunstorm ULTRA-Cool Terra Mauve were also used on select interior walls and at the entrance to the adjacent parking deck. Meanwhile, the press box features Reynobond panels in custom Duranar Sunstorm ULTRA-Cool Natural Suede.
The Reynobond ACM panels in Natural Suede were also used on the entry’s angled walls, the street-level façade and the inside walls of the playing field. To help with sound absorption in the field, the architects used perforated Reynobond panels.
Gordon says the choice of the ACM panels and rainscreen installation system helped contribute to a successful on-time project delivery, especially after a difficult winter in 2013-2014. The use of natural or recycled materials was also heavily considered for the required stadium aesthetic, he adds.
College Football Hall of Fame, Atlanta
Architect: tvsdesign, Atlanta
General contractor: Brasfield
& Gorrie General Contractors, Kennesaw, Ga.
Structural engineer: Sykes Consulting Inc., Atlanta
Metal fabricator/installer: The Miller-Clapperton Partnership Inc., Austell, Ga.
Coatings: PPG Industries, Pittsburgh, www.ppgideascapes.com
Aluminum composite material: Reynobond by Alcoa Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga., www.reynobond.com
Photo: Bob Perzel Photography, Minneapolis