Creating Folding Light

by Marcy Marro | July 1, 2021 12:00 am

As Design Award judge Stephen Van Dyck, AIA, LEED AP, partner, LMN Architects[1], Seattle, said, “The consistency of the concept around the project is the project. It’s not just about the outside of the building, it’s about the entire experience of the place. They nailed it.” Tara Williams, AIA, associate architect, ASD | SKY[2], Tampa, Fla., agreed, saying that the metal is the concept of the building. “This building wouldn’t be this without this material, and just the way that it is used in this kind of vertical lines that you’re getting from these smooth aluminum pieces, that was just really, really interesting to the facade.”

Sculptural Expression

The 53,916-square-foot, four-story building, named “Folding Light,” anchors a 4.6-acre downtown campus. The project stands as a sculptural expression of the nonprofit’s mission to provide accessible, inclusive arts experiences. The campus also includes a renovated 1910 historic warehouse and a three-block arts park, which provides space for outdoor exhibitions and programming.

“The building is inspired by the concept of light and how the quality of light affects this building, which is why it’s called Folding Light,” explains Rand Elliott, FAIA, principal, Rand Elliott Architects. “It’s all about trying to capture the building reacting to the light. And what’s so powerful about this process is that it really does. It really contains this energy of inspiration and creative impact as it translates the color of our skies to the building itself.”

The building features a light-filled lobby that includes the Visitor Experience, a cafe and community lounge. In addition to 8,000 square feet of gallery space, there’s a theater, dance studio, nine classrooms and a flexible-use, second-floor terrace. A four-story vertical lantern sits on the southwest corner of the building, while a sculptural canopy on the east side adds elegance and protection from the elements. The art center teaches young children and adults about the creative process, while providing a space to do pottery, woodworking, welding and more.

Because it’s a creative space, Elliott says they wanted the building to inspire and to teach. “We wanted the building to be a source of learning. So, we’re teaching about the structure. We’re exposing the structure of the building behind the fins so young children, or adults for that matter, can learn about the building along the way.”

Focus Points

When working on his designs, Elliott always considers the three most important influences on a building, which are place, purpose and poetics. Understanding the place—Oklahoma City—has influence over how they approach the project is an evolutionary element to the project itself. Following on the idea of folding light, the building is a series of folds. “The concept literally translates to the physicality of the building itself,” he says.

Another important piece of the puzzle, he says, is why the walls would be folded. These folded exterior walls are directly reflected on the interior main gallery space, creating different sized walls that allow for both small and large artworks to be displayed. “Oklahoma Contemporary is a small institution, and oftentimes, when it’s showing local work, it’s smaller pieces,” Elliott explains. “The folded surfaces on the wall allow smaller works to be installed so they feel good. The scale of the wall they are on fits the scale of the piece that you’re seeing. It was intended to be a very personal point of view, a thoughtful point of view, so you don’t put a postage stamp on a wall the size of the building. That would not show the artwork well, and that was something that was very important to us from the beginning.”

As Elliott explains, the concept of folded light is not just a surface idea, but it permeates every detail in the building. “The details are very much a part of the architecture. In fact, some would say that the details are the architecture, and I would agree with that. It’s about the depth of understanding and making sure that the concept is fulfilled all the way across.”

Captured Light

Elliott really wanted the surface of the art center to hold and capture the light, and that idea translates to the aluminum fins. In trying to decide the best way to capture the light, Elliott says it was really about picking the right material. “We had the ability to create a building that would change with the quality of light that we had,” Elliott says, so they set out to find a material that would allow them to capture and hold the light.

“We knew we could do it with aluminum,” he says. “We knew that we didn’t have to paint aluminum. We knew that it wouldn’t rust. We knew we could get it recycled. And we knew that we could extrude the aluminum, allowing us to have lots of variations on what the extrusion could be like. All of these things affected our choice to use aluminum.”

The building takes on the colors of the sky—the sunrises, the sunsets, the clouds, etc. The color reflected off the building skin causes it to change colors throughout the course of the day. To achieve this effect, the architects used a unique, recycled, extruded aluminum skin consisting of 16,800 fins at different angles that are designed to capture, hold and reflect the ever-changing colors of the sky. There are 15,000 of the 100% fins and 1,800 of the 50% fins. The 50% fins add some transparency and allows the top of the building to blend right into the sky.

The final design has nine different variations of how the fins are attached, allowing for all types of opportunities for how the sun and its reflections may be used for the personality of the building. “What’s particularly important here,” Elliott says, “is what the fin locations do as the sun moves across the sky. It means that as the sun is in different positions, each one of the fins is going to be parallel to the light, or perpendicular to the light, or an angle of the light, or any of those things and all of those things simultaneously so that there’s this incredible variation in the surface of the facade.”

“There’s this sense of energy before you even go into the building, as you see the color change of the exterior,” he continues. “You’re seeing the lantern glow, so it gets you excited about coming to this place to create something, or to imagine something you might not have seen before.”

In all, there’s 195,000 lineal feet (37 miles) of recycled, extruded aluminum components from ArtForm[3], Oklahoma City. The custom-fabricated, bright-dipped anodized extruded aluminum vertical random fins extend full height from the ground level to the top of the parapet, 67 feet, 2 inches above the first-floor elevation. The reflector at the top of the Lantern is 69 feet, 2 inches above ground level.

The attention to detail even extends to the institution’s name, which is integrated into the skin. As Elliott explains, this allows the institution and the place to become one. “What you get there is something that is integrated. You come to learn things, your experience with the architecture, your experience with the quality of the light, your experience with the adjacent impact, like the light lines on the trees, are all an integral part of the experience that we want people to remember for a long time.”

Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/creating-folding-light/

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