Contemporary Addition for a Historic Campus

by Mark Robins | June 3, 2019 12:00 am

The addition to CMU’s Jared L. Cohon University Center is a 62,000-square-foot expansion that meets the school’s growing demand for physical fitness, recreation and education, while enhancing campus life for students, faculty and staff. This addition to the existing multiuse facility (student union, campus recreational center, academic hub) strengthens circulation and connectivity across campus.

John P. Reed, AIA, design principal at Cannon-Design, New York City, says the building’s interior is carefully organized to create visual connections between public circulation and program spaces that promote transparency and open dialogue between students, faculty and staff.

Cohon Center Director Marcia Gerwig says the student center faces directly onto Forbes Avenue, a public city street, and was designed to open the campus to the adjacent cityscape and create a new front door to the University Center and campus.

“When the University Center was conceived and built in the late 1980s, Forbes was considered the back of the campus,” Reed says. “Today, with the new Tepper School of Business and quadrangle opening down Forbes to the west, it’s become the front of the campus. Because of this, we opted to create a visually transparent façade to express the campus’ openness to the surrounding neighborhood.”

The new addition fits in with the campus’ existing buildings, which were largely designed by two architects: Henry Hornbostel working in the early 1900s and Michael Dennis in the late 1980s. Hornbostel’s design combines the Beaux Arts style and the gritty industrial aesthetic that was once prominent along Pittsburgh’s waterfront. Dennis’ postmodern buildings grow organically out of the Hornbostel style. The new addition takes design cues (materials, proportions, placemaking) from the existing campus architecture and reinterprets them in a more contemporary and open way. Reed says the addition “respects CMU heritage and points the way to future campus expansion.”

AN ARCHITECTURAL PARABLE

Designers conceived the addition’s façade as an architectural parable. Likening the addition to the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” it can be read as a parable of reverse architectural aging. “This transformation can be seen moving clockwise around the building, from the punched window vocabulary and brickwork where the new building adjoins the Dennis designed gym volume across the service court, to the more transparent Forbes Avenue façade before finally resolving with the pulling apart of the metallic north court and sculptural entrance canopy,” Reed says.

Designers thoroughly analyzed the building’s internal circulation, program distribution, and its relationship to campus spaces and movement patterns. They also spent considerable time examining the proportioning system that governed the development of the existing University Center’s façades.

“When it came time to design the new addition and tie the two buildings together, we replicated the columnar spacing from the University Center’s elevation within the new north elevation,” Reed says. “Additionally, we designed several special large-scale windows to complement the collection of bay windows, which strategically punctuate the repetitious façades of the original building. These are just a few examples of somewhat subtle design decisions made by the design team, which link the buildings together into a unified architectural ensemble.”

ZINC EXTERIOR

The majority of the project’s metal (specifically zinc) was used as façade components, in addition to brick, polycarbonate and glass from Guardian Glass, Auburn Hills, Mich. The zinc, all supplied by Greeneville, Tenn.-based Jarden Zinc Products, was split between plate, composite metal panels and shingles based on visual and performance requirements.

This was all fabricated and installed by Wheeling, W.Va.-based Kalkreuth Roofing and Sheet Metal Inc. Kalkreuth’s project manager Chris Lemmon says the company also supplied the built-up roofing, zinc flat lock panels, plate and aluminum composite material (ACM) column covers and perforated plate screen columns.

“We specifically used steel for the addition’s structure because it enabled quick erection and the positioning of slim profile columns in close adjacency with the existing building’s perimeter,” says Demosthenis Simatos, senior project architect at CannonDesign. “The zinc was specified as three different rainscreen claddings: zinc plate, zinc faced-ACM, and zinc shingle panels. “We also specified two different colors of natural zinc finish.” The zinc components used are:

• Zinc Plate-1.5-mm. This is located on the columns forming the loggia, the perforated fins and the second-story framed window. They are clad in a 1.5-mm zinc plate for durability. Zinc Onyx Black color was used.

• Zinc Faced-ACM-4-mm panel thickness, 2-inch system depth (includes panel and frame that stiffens the panel). This composite panel is comprised of Jarden’s zinc face sheet on a fire core center with an aluminum backing sheet of Reynobond by Arconic Architectural Products USA Inc., Eastman, Ga. This was the predominate façade material. East Coast Metal Systems Inc., Triadelphia, W.Va., fabricated 584 panels, 4,323 square feet of the EC-200 rainscreen system with Reynobond FR core in zinc composite material (ZCM). Zinc Onyx Black color was used.

• Zinc Shingle Panel-Composed of a 1-mm, flat lock, oscillating interlocking seam type, this rainscreen clads the north courtyard, lobby and entry canopy. Glacier Gray color was used.

• Lemmon says the zinc provides a sleek, modern look with long-lasting functionality. Hyde says the ZCM is extremely environmentally friendly. “The natural finish of the zinc will patina over years of exposure prohibiting corrosion and will ensure a consistent weathering of the metals,” Hyde adds.

“On the north court façade, we used steel tube mullions in homage to Pittsburgh and the Steelers,” Simatos says. “It was designed with an add-on clip curtainwall system from [Kawneer Co. Inc., Norcross, Ga.].” The curtainwall was fabricated and installed by Canonsburg, Pa.-based Specified Systems Inc. The steel framing was supplied and fabricated by New Brighton, Pa.-based Littell Steel Co. The construction manager was Mosites Construction Co., Pittsburgh.

An interesting detail arose during the construction process during the fastening of the zinc shingle rainscreen. Due to the large amount of fastening points required for the metal shingles, a rainscreen layout using a traditional wood decking with weather barrier would have been cost prohibitive. “Instead the shingles were mounted onto the 1-mm, doublelock, metal galvanized Jarden roof decking system, oriented on a 45-degree angle, which improved drainage and simplified fastening,” Simatos says. “The flute of the deck is longer on the 45-degree angle allowing for more surface area to fasten to. This approach was implemented for cost, ease and speed of construction, and to expedite the shop drawing approval process.”

SUSTAINABLE ADDITION

CMU was founded in the pursuit of technology and the Cohon University Center uses technology in many sustainable ways. “Pittsburgh has new ordinances about stormwater and it forced us to retain water on-site and slowly release it,” Reed says. “The rain gardens on Forbes Avenue filter and clean water before returning it to the city system. The roof drains into these gardens. Reclaimed local paver limestone comprise the stepped gablon, water retention pond walls. The gardens’ local plant species can grow and thrive in low-water conditions.” The landscape designer was Andropogon Associates, Philadelphia.

Gerwig says common areas of the building aresuffused with natural light, from the curtainwall to the skylights. Motorized sunshades from Mecho-Shade Systems, Long Island City, N.Y., on windows that get extreme glare are networked to react to the time of the day and how much sun is coming in. Within the façade, window openings are optimized according to exposure with larger apertures on the north and smaller, more-specifically focused openings on the west and east. Inside the building, strategically placed skylights from Wasco Products, part of Velux Commercial, Wells, Maine, lower the need for lighting during the daytime
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