An Active and Dynamic Façade

by Marcy Marro | July 1, 2019 12:00 am

With 300 more parking spaces than the original garage, the new eight-level, 720-space facility, which has received a Judges Award in the 2019 Metal Architecture Design Awards, is convenient to downtown businesses, theaters and the Civic Center. The garage also has ground-level retail, an art gallery and sidewalk café, and incorporates public art into its design.

International Parking Design Inc.[1] (IPD), Oakland, Calif., was the Architect of Record for the project, and Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects[2] (MWDL), Berkeley, was the Design Architect, tasked to come up with the façade treatments on the two street frontages. San Francisco-based Conversion Management Associates[3] (CMA) provided project management, and Overaa Construction[4], Richmond,Calif., was the general contractor.

Double-Helix Design

The $40 million, 248,000-square-foot facility has an ambitious double-helix design. According to Raju Nandwana, AIA, LEED AP, vice president at IPD, the expectations were high to make the project stand out in the downtown area. “We paid close attention to the elements of the structure that are most appreciated by the users as well as those that would view the building from the street,” he says. “Sophisticated guidance systems and pedestrian wayfinding were developed to make the parking experience a pleasurable one for the patrons to this facility.”

While the original design of the structure was a single helix with two levels of below-grade and six levels of above-grade parking, the project budget required all eight levels to be above ground. “A solution was needed that could address minimizing the number of turns—ground to roof—as well as help efficiently load and unload the building for special event parking,” Nandwana explains. “With direct access from two opposing streets, a double-helix design was functionally the most appropriate solution. Basically, dividing the garage into two, 360-space, four-story garages intertwined. This solution results in a high volume of egress capacity, which can easily handle the theater patrons who return to their vehicles all at once.”

A Waving Façade

After going through a number of design iterations, MWDL created a waving façade made of a perforated aluminum mesh security screen that highlights the two open-air staircases. Made out of sharply folded panels of perforated metal in more than 20 sizes, the two street façades create sculptural elevations, while the colorful, cantilevered staircases—red on Addison Street and lime green on Center Street—offer expansive views to the east and west. At night, choreographed LED lighting attached to the wall’s frame provides shifting backdrops that wash across the internal structure.

Design Award judge Charles Bloszies, FAIA, SE, LEED AP, principal, Office of Charles F. Bloszies FAIA Ltd.[5], San Francisco, says the garage has a very active façade that is pretty interesting. “There is a clever use of different shapes of simple bent plate that changes as it undulates around the façade.”

Donn Logan, principal and partner at MWDL, notes that the chosen façade concept was developed in detail with the help of Rob Calderwood, senior sales consultant at B.T. Mancini Specialty Contractor[6], Milpitas, Calif. California Sheet Metal Works Inc.[7], El Cajon, Calif., supplied approximately 12,000 square feet of panels in White in the custom screen system, as well as approximately 5,000 square feet of aluminum panels in Red and Lime Green at the staircases and guardrails. The 1/8-inch perforated aluminum panels have either a 1-inch stagger with 48-51 percent as open; a 1/16-inch stagger with 46-48 percent as open, or a 7/16-inch stagger with a 46-48 percent as open.

Choreographed Lights

To design the façade illumination, Darrell Hawthorne, founder of San Francisco-based Architecture & Light[8], says that the sharply folded perforated metal panels strike an up-tempo counterpoint to the red and lime green staircases. “The pleated scrims form two waves surging in different directions cloaking the utilitarian structural bones,” he explains. “Taking this movement cue, the primary lighting challenge was expressing this kinetic flow effectively, beautifully and frugally. Utilizing 100 percent LEDs, the structure behind is lit with color-changing floods, while front lighting the scrim with white, thus creating great depth and mystery. These two layers of light provide complexity and seemingly infinite thematic variations—alluding to the random movement of water implied by the architectural surfaces.”

“The resulting integrated solution is for sure a place for cars, but presents a face to delight people,” adds Hawthorne. “The strategy of white front light projected against soft-colored back light is a classic theatrical riff—and a nod to the neighboring theatrical venues. This dynamic optical contrast allows low brightness, achieves exceptional efficiency, and meets dark sky constraints not otherwise possible from conventional approaches.”

Sustainability

According to Hawthorne, the project mandates required it to aggressively reduce energy use by beating California’s Title 24 by 15 percent. The project also features rainwater run-off bioswales, valet parking for 350 bikes, 20 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, car share parking, and a micro-grid hub that provides emergency power.

Lauren Fakhoury, senior project manager at Brightworks Sustainability[9], Oakland, Calif., says that the city felt the EV charging stations should be powered by renewable energy in keeping with the theme of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Energy modeling is not typically a huge piece in the design of a parking structure,” she explains, “so the design team had to run multiple iterations of the model to confirm the percentage of energy offset by renewable sources.”

In addition to the high-efficiency, color-changing LED lighting, the parking garage has 480 Yaskawa PVI 50TL rooftop solar panels from Yaskawa America Inc.[10], Waukegan, Ill., which provides power to the parking garage as well as neighboring city-owned facilities.

Additionally, the project features a wildlife-friendly design, which earned one innovation point under Parksmart Certification. “The sharply folded steel panels create an aesthetically pleasing wave effect, both in biophilic nature and to act as a deterrent for bird collision occurrences,” adds Fakhoury.

Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/an-active-and-dynamic-facade-6/

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