There is quiet simplicity to the massing of the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts building at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Along the glass-front elevation, you see two, side-by-side boxes, one uphill from the other. But walk around the building and you discover vertical and horizontal masses that break through the volumes. Plus, in a tour-de-force of metal, panels change shapes and create protruding, converging, extending lines that give the whole building a sense of movement. The simplicity of the massing becomes the canvas for the paneling.
Designed by New York City-based Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, the 38,800-square-foot center features a recital hall, recording studio, multimedia lab and studios. All space within the building will be assigned for multidisciplinary work. Programs and courses will be developed where collaboration among artists, scientists, and humanists will seek to create new art forms, new approaches to collaborative work, and will explore, examine and extend our understanding of the creative process.
But it is the exterior that got the judges’ attention. Henry Tom says, “The beautiful execution of the changing panel shapes makes a dynamic facility.” Mark DeWalt adds, “It is a really engaging use of metal skin. The pleats and bends elevate a simple enclosure to something really special.”
The building envelope features 60,000 square feet of Raleigh, N.C.-based Umicore Building Products USA Inc.’s 0.70-mm VMZINC QUARTZZINC with a Preweathered Gray patina. The building envelope also contains 26,000 square feet of Eastman, Ga.-based Alcoa Architectural Products’ 4-mm Reynobond Zinc Composite Material panels with an FR core and prepatina VMZINC finish in addition to 4,000 square feet of 4-mm Reynobond Aluminum Composite Material panels with an FR core and custom Grey Velvet Kynar finish.
That paneling provides texture, structure and color that forces the eye to follow the lines across the building to a vanishing point. It is evocative of the long fins on 1950’s era Detroit cars that looked in motion when sitting still.
In some ways, the most radical element of the design isn’t the paneling, though. It is the elevation with the two masses, which appear like one has slipped down from the other. The disturbance in the elevation is as striking and daring as the paneling, giving the whole building more sense of movement. And the glass wall that separates the buildings only accentuates the slippage.
Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Providence, R.I.
Completed: January 2010
Total square footage: 35,000 square feet
Owner: Brown University
General contractor: Shawmut Design and Construction, Boston
Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York City, www.dillerscofidio.com
Fabricator: Karas & Karas Glass Co., South Boston, Mass.
Structural system: J.L. Marshall & Sons Inc., Seekonk, Mass.
ACM panels: Alcoa Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga., www.alcoaarchitecturalproducts.com
Zinc: Umicore Building Products USA Inc., Raleigh, N.C., www.vmzinc-us.com