An iconic, angular metal canopy inspired by nearby mountains covers Cañada College’s Kinesiology and Wellness Center in Redwood City, Calif. To complete the project within its budget, the construction process and building materials were reevaluated.
By angling up and down, a perforated metal canopy takes the form of mountains
The perforated metal canopy mitigates heat and daylight atop an activated roof. Photo: Bruce Damonte
Crinkly Canopy
The rooftop canopy is a defining feature of the Kinesiology and Wellness Center’s design. Clarence D. Mamuyac, Jr., FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, president and CEO at ELS Architecture and Urban Design in Berkeley, Calif., says, “One of the signature moves on the building is the sun canopy. It’s a crinkly structure that sits atop an activated roof.”
The concept for the canopy emerged when the design of the roof was developed with a running track, pickle ball courts and exercise areas. Mamuyac said they realized daylight and heat would need to be mitigated.
“When you’re up there, it can get brutally hot. So we had to put some kind of shade protection up there. In addition to that, we needed a big canopy to shade the windows along the south and west sides. So that canopy becomes a big sun device, not only for patrons up on top the roof working out, but it also stretches over the edge of the building face and shades the glass.”
The canopy design is striking for several reasons. In addition to its large size traversing the building, numerous, sharp bends in the metal canopy create an angular form reminiscent of mountaintops.
“The crinkly canopy is inspired by the ridgeline of the nearby San Mateo mountains,” Mamuyac says. “That’s where this sort of random, crinkly shape comes from.”
Another attention-getting aspect of the canopy is its perforated aluminum panels, which infill most of it. However, to accommodate the uses of the rooftop, at some places the canopy has solid panels and some places without panels. The perforated panels themselves, as they ascend and descend, also create lighting effects on the roof.
“The canopy is perforated at different rates, so we get this sort of an uneven pattern of gaps of light,” Mamuyac says. “In addition to that, there are some areas where the panels are solid because there is equipment we want to protect from weather.”
One driver of the design was to make it iconic, Mamuyac says. Cañada College is one of three colleges part of San Mateo County Community College District in San Mateo, Calif., and each campus has an iconic building; the Kinesiology and Wellness Center is Cañada College’s.
“Each one of the campuses has a distinctive building that when you look at it, you go, ‘oh, that’s the flagship building at the campus.’ So that’s the role of this building. I think it’s a pretty striking profile for the building as one is approaching it from either the highway or Redwood City. Then, when you get onto the campus and you take the loop road up the hill and you turn the corner, this building sort of reaches out and tries to give you a big hug.”
The nearby San Mateo Mountains were the inspiration for the bending form of the rooftop canopy.
Photo: Bruce Damonte
Construction and Materials Reevaluation
To execute the canopy within the project’s budget, the project team reevaluated the construction process and building materials. They had to figure out how to complete the canopy for about $3 million, about $1 million less than it was estimated.
“The canopy, I call it the sun hat, came in pretty expensive,” Mamuyac says. “The design-build team figured out that if we build this thing on the ground in sections, and then lift the whole thing into place in sections, we save on crane time, we save on manpower, we save on all kinds of safety issues. I think that was a pretty decent stroke of genius.”
Another way the project team brought the estimated cost down was by changing the material of the canopy framing from aluminum to steel. Working with Blach Construction Co. in San Jose, Calif., the general contractor, Darwin (Darby) Steffanson, senior sales consultant, structural division, at B.T. Mancini Co. Inc. in Milpitas, Calif., the installer, says, “We went through different types of scenarios trying to bring down the weight and also cost because originally the framing on the structure that the perforated panels were on was going to be aluminum, but it got too costly, so it went to structural steel.”
In addition to classrooms, the Kinesiology and Wellness Center has a gymnasium, fitness
space for community use and swimming pools. Photo: Bruce Damonte
Multiple Materials
For the construction of the canopy, California Sheet Metal in El Cajon, Calif., fabricated, and B.T. Mancini installed, 40,000 square feet of 1/8-inch thick perforated aluminum panels from Diamond Perforated Metals Inc. in Visalia, Calif. They have 1-inch diameter perforations and are two-coat Kynar coated in two colors: Dark Brown and Mocha.
B.T. Mancini installed more than 850 panels in sections. Trades workers assembled canopy sections on the ground and then hoisted them into position on top of the building. Most sections were 30 feet by 10 feet. To build some of the angled sections of the canopy, some canopy sections were 10 feet by 5 feet and 5 feet by 2 feet. B.T. Mancini attached each panel to frames with 20 to 25 countersunk, stainless steel screws and, at each corner, 1/2-inch diameter bolts.
In addition to the steel and aluminum canopy, a variety of other metal materials were used for the exterior, B.T. Mancini installed translucent wall panels from Kingspan Light + Air LLC in Lake Forest, Ill., and flat, smooth 20/22-gauge insulated metal panels (IMPs) supplied by CENTRIA in Moon Township, Pa.
To conceal mechanical equipment, Morin Corp. in Bristol, Conn., supplied, and B.T. Mancini installed, Morin X-12 perforated aluminum panels with a three coat-metallic finish on both sides. Also, at four columns in the pool area, California Sheet Metal fabricated, and B.T. Mancini installed, metal composite material column covers.