Agrarian Transition

When designing the Harris Law Building in a nearby industrial park, George Garcia, AIA, RIBA, principal architect at Garcia Architecture + Design, San Luis Obispo, knew he would have to respect and consider the transition from the pace and activity of the building’s commercial setting and adjacent regional airport to the surrounding valley’s natural beauty and agrarian patterns.

“While function is a requisite form generator in commercial development, special care was taken to bridge the change in scale from the projects’ programmatic requirements to nearby agricultural uses and vistas,” Garcia says. “This building is composed of additive and subtractive forms at different scales; cubic masses, broad horizontal lines, and contrasting solid versus transparent planes. These elements vary in height from one to the next, projecting a distinctly rhythmic, yet harmonic cadence against the backdrop of rolling foothills and distant mountains.”

AN AESTHETIC BALANCE

Metal wall panels from Sheffield Metals International, Sheffield Village, Ohio, were used to help strike this aesthetic balance. The building’s exterior is comprised of 6,000 square feet of Sheffield’s FWP Flush smooth metal wall and soffit panels. The 12-inch-wide panels have 1-inch-high seams and are made of 24-gauge steel. The full-height, vertically seamed black panel color was chosen to provide high contrast with the adjacent white, smooth cement plaster walls.

Metal wall panels were chosen because of their inherent strength, durability, aesthetics and low-maintenance qualities. “Although metal siding is typically known as an industrial, low-cost building envelope material, this project shows that metal construction can also be elegant and striking when coupled with thoughtful design and skillful implementation,” Garcia says. Also, metal was chosen to achieve the aesthetic balance between the Harris Law Building and the more industrial metal buildings surrounding the site. It’s located in an industrial business park where adjacent utilitarian structures heavily utilize metal products for siding and roofing. “The design goal was to respect the surrounding built environment by utilizing indigenous materials—such as metal wall panels—but in a more modern vocabulary,” he adds.

Additionally, Garcia says, selecting long-wearing unitized materials such as metal wall panels of varying lengths, complemented with uniform sets of fenestration, further expresses the distinct functional areas of the building while respecting the qualities of a simplified agrarian palette. “These elements work in concert with smooth cement plaster and storefront glass, with an emphasis at the building entry, where large windows are cut into walls, accentuated with 3-D push-pull variation and contrasting trim, thus transforming typical building walls into dynamic pedestrian-scaled rhythmic elements, which respond to the surrounding natural hues and chroma, as well as the massing and scale of the emerging built environment.”

Because the project called for 20-foot-plus long, unbroken vertical sections of dark colored metal wall panels, awareness was paid to the fact that they can warp and oil can when exposed to typical diurnal temperature changes. At the suggestion of the siding and roofing installer, San Luis Obispo-based Wicks Roofing Inc., this issue was overcome via addition of continuous ribs and vertical pleats to mitigate warping and twisting, resulting in additional texture and vertical accentuation along these stretches of metal paneling. The building’s general contractor was Anderson Burton Construction Inc., Arroyo Grande, Calif.

SITE DESIGN AND SOLAR CONSIDERATIONS

Each building exposure was deliberately designed in response to its solar orientation. For energy efficiency, solar cutoff is maintained in the warmer seasons via deep recessed windows (along the west and east façades), overhangs, as well as supplemental horizontal metal louvers from Arroyo Grande, Calif.-based Anvil Steel Fabricators on the west and south exposures for additional solar control.

“The building’s east and west elevations contain equally spaced window openings uniformly aligned to allow evenly distributed daylight into the office work spaces,” Garcia says. “Throughout the year, these elements reflect ambient light deeper into the core of the building, reducing the need for artificial lighting during sunlit hours.”

This east and west uniformity is offset by floor-to-ceiling storefront windows along the building’s north elevation (to capture preferred northern daylight), as well as the building’s main entry. For example, “The north façade is almost 90% full-height glass storefront curtainwall [from Norcross, Ga.-based Kawneer Co. Inc.], allowing excellent daylight opportunities for the adjacent open office area,”

Garcia says. “In contrast, the west façade contains a punched window approach to fenestration, accentuated with deep window buck shading features along with continuous, linear horizontal metal shading louvers that mitigate the harsh western sun. Buck shading is any kind of door or window that has an extruded element—a surround that comes out of the building place onto a walkway or setback.”

Site constraints such as limited street access, existing utility easements and storm basin requirements all contributed to site design and building orientation. In terms of stormwater control, the State of California has strict stormwater mitigation requirements for all new construction, which are implemented by the local jurisdiction. State and local municipal codes require that any new stormwater run-off created by new impervious surfaces such as buildings and parking lots be mitigated on the property via construction of on-site retention and/or detention basin(s). “We were actually able to take this rather onerous site constraint and turn it into a functional design feature,” Garcia says.

“The required stormwater retention basins are located over non-usable street setback and easement areas along the front perimeter of the building. These linear basins not only provide the necessary stormwater retention and bio-infiltration during the rainy season, but were sculpted in a manner that provides additional foreground landscaping for the project itself.”

Looking back at the building now, Garcia says its exterior forms, which rise and fall vertically along the west and east elevations, coupled with the strong horizontal lines emphasized by the building’s solar screens, “echo the organic yet rhythmic patterns of the surrounding hills and vineyards of this central coastal valley.”