Jeffersonville, Ind.’s River Ridge Commerce Center is a 6,000-acre industrial campus comprised of large tilt-up warehouses, distribution centers and industrial buildings populated by shipping docks and semi-tractor-trailer trucks. Hardly a place for an artistic, cultural landmark to exist; however, thanks to the Los Angeles-based and New York City-based wHY architecture firm, that is exactly what was created with The Gallery, America Place headquarters office building.
Commerce and culture coexist in a creative office complex
America Place employees occupy the first floor of the three-story, 40,000-square-foot headquarters, and the second and third floors are rented out. The America Place’s expansion of its industrial campus makes it the largest property-owning developer at the park. The industrial park, located on the Ohio River, currently employs approximately 10,000 employees.
“The building is located in a warehouse business district, and the goal was to stand out while at the same time fit into the surrounding built and natural environment,” says Andrija Stojic, director, wHY, New York City. “The movement of the hills had a strong influence on the façade design. Our goal was to mirror the surrounding topography and apply it to the skin.”
DISTINCTIVE DESIGN
wHY had previously redesigned the $60 million expansion of the Louisville, Ky.-based Speed Art Museum, category winner in the Renovations & Retrofit category for the 2017 Metal Architecture Design Awards. The museum’s distinctive design served as inspiration for the museum-quality headquarters; a less-is-more minimalist appearance and creative use of metal are prominent in both buildings. “It is not only a unique steel and concrete structure in River Ridge, but its design and use has set the bar for Class A office space in Southern Indiana,” says Eric M. Goodman, RLA, founder of Jeffersonville-based Form G Companies, LLC, the projects’ general contractor and manufacturer of a custom-built, one-piece 20-foot curvilinear, fiberglass front desk that compliments the white terrazzo and glass stairway adjacent to the atrium.
Combining art and business under one roof, Kulapat Yantrasast, founder and owner of wHY, wanted to create an educational and inspirational hub for its building occupants. The ground floor features rotating art and a 6,700-square-foot art gallery.
The walls are a bright white canvas for the contemporary art found in the hallways and offices. Inside this flourishing environment, the paintings and metal sculptures create the atmosphere of a museum, but the creativity extends to the furniture, light fixtures, the staircase, and even the HQ’s structural steel and exterior aluminum panel cladding. All of this provides a dynamic setting for workers and visitors.
CREATIVE CLADDING
With an office building stacked with artistic gestures, perhaps the most prominent is its façade. Having successfully used metal on the Speed Art Museum and other major projects, wHY designers were aware of metal’s very economic and cost-effective results. “The exterior of the building showcases a checkerboard pattern of a metal rainscreen and curtainwall-canted glass [from Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope, Dallas], which provides an abundance of natural light within the gallery space featuring 14-foot-tall ceilings,” Goodman says. “Lines inside the glass panels called frit project patterns on the polished dark grey concrete floors and exposed steel columns [from Padgett Inc., New Albany, Ind.]. The architect’s signature exterior aluminum panels enhance the appearance of the building throughout the day as the sunlight passes over the reflective metal.”
Dave Rassmussen is business development and preconstruction manager at Maplewood, Minn.-based MG McGrath Inc., the fabricator and installer for the project. “We were involved with wHY early on in the process,” he says. “We helped with the design of the façade metal panels and after many conversations and brainstorming sessions with them, we landed with the wavy panels currently installed on the building.”
For the façade’s wavy panels, 15,000 square feet of custom-formed, 0.063-inch-thick aluminum from Rogers, Minn.-based Quality Metalcrafts LLC/Americlad with a clear satin anodized finish was used. “Rassmussen approached us with a challenging opportunity to assist in the design and manufacturing of the panels for this project,” says Mike Wallace, president of Quality Metalcrafts LLC/Americlad. “We supported the process by coming up with a unified strategy on how to ultimately build and supply the panel system. The panel design was essentially a custom-modified AMERICLAD AC- 6000 flush panel system.” Additionally, the façade has a 2-inch metal wrap insulated panel by Moon Township, Pa.-based CENTRIA, which includes a rail system to attach the outboard girts to so the finished panels can have adequate attachment points. Quality Metalcrafts LLC/Americlad and MG McGrath worked very closely together to achieve Yantrasast’s vision. “These panels are incredibly complex because there are several different radius’ panels to make up each opening,” Wallace says.
“There were 10 different panel profiles. The goal was to produce a panel that would mimic a wavetype look moving horizontally. To achieve this, it was necessary to incorporate multiple radii within a given panel. Multiple panels make up each opening.
[It was] true artisanship where each part would be rolled and flipped several times in the process to meet the exact dimensioning and radii as the panel was being rolled to each radius followed by forming of the joinery condition. The parts had to be exact to pair up with the top and bottom closure pieces and framing that MG McGrath had built.”
Rassmussen says the most unique part of this project was the panels themselves and being open on both the top and the bottoms of the panels. “This allows for drainage through the exterior panel system, essentially creating a rainscreen on the building. After the panels were rolled, we needed to install gusset plates on the back sides of them to keep the panels stiff so they would stay engaged to each other once installed. Each panel required four to five gusset plates due to engineering and each gusset needed to be cut to the matching radius on our CNC machine. The gussets helped hold each radius true and kept the panels stiff which allowed for a fairly easy installation in the field.”
America Place’s operations and development manager Eric J. Luckett says the checkered pattern created multiple points of waterproofing that needed to be addressed through hours of engineering and mock ups. “It presented multiple challenges with waterproofing that our team of experts was able to work through with multiple mock ups and hours of discussion and engineering.”
COMMITMENT TO COLLABORATION
Not only did Quality Metalcrafts LLC/Americlad and MG McGrath closely work together to ensure the HQ’s success, but Luckett also worked side by side on a daily basis with Form G and wHY on it. Luckett calls the new HQ “truly one of a kind,” and America Place’s director of real estate Taylor King says the public’s response to it has been excellent.
wHY’s team members also share these contributors’ commitment to collaboration and approaching projects from many different angles. “Whether a public space, like a museum, or a private space, such as an office building, the structure needs to reflect the enthusiasm of the team that brought it to life,” Yantrasast says. “What I’m most excited about with this building is that it has potential for design to have an impact on people’s lives. If the architecture cannot move people, then the architecture doesn’t do its job.”