When the National Museum of the United States Army, Fort Belvoir, Va., opens, it will celebrate more than 240 years of history, honoring the past, present and future of the Army. Spanning the time from the Army’s earliest days as the colonial militia to the present, the museum will walk visitors through every generation of the Army, prioritizing the story of the individual soldier.
Reflective stainless steel panels evoke a sense of humility at new museum
Photo: Jim Greipp, Pau Hana Productions
Located 20 miles south of Washington, D.C., the five-story, 185,000-square-foot structure sits on an 84-acre bucolic site in the Fort Belvoir Military Installation, where it leverages the site’s natural topography. Similar to how the U.S. Military Academy is elevated at West Point, the museum is elevated on a plateau to establish a sense of monumentality.
Photo: Jim Greipp, Pau Hana Productions
A Sense of Community
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), New York City, the building is made up of a series of five pavilions connected by glass connectors to evoke the sense of an interconnected community. Inside there are galleries, retail space, a café, 360-degree theater, Veterans’ Hall for events, and three terraced gardens, including one specifically honoring Medal of Honor recipients. Each space is supplemented by a memorial garden, a parade field and grandstand, as well as an Army Trail with interpretive stations.
“A sense of community is the core of our design—embodied in the building’s form, siting and materiality,” explains Colin Koop, AIA, design partner at SOM. “We wanted to create a place where veterans and their families could feel at home, and establish a new center of national significance that would, in its architecture, express that very significance. Three ideals—discipline, modesty and rigorousness—drove the design, and these are the three principles of the United States Army.”
Koop says the goal was to manifest the personal experience of the individual soldier through the design, creating a building that would resonate with any veteran. This is achieved, in part, through a series of stainless steel pylons, each sharing an individual soldier story, guiding visitors from an outdoor promenade through the vestibule and into the exhibition hall. The façade design is likewise driven by concepts such as discipline and modesty. “The stainless steel paneling on the façade is part of this—they are characterized by precision and that sense of rigor,” he adds.
Photo: Jim Greipp, Pau Hana Productions
Reflective Rainscreen
The museum has a steel frame enclosed in a conventional exterior drained and back-vented rainscreen metal wall system installed over structural metal studs and exterior-grade gypsum sheathing, covered with a weather-resistant air barrier and mineral wool thermal layer. For the project, Metalwërks, Kennett Square, Pa., supplied 110,000 square feet of its AMERIPLATE Spline metal wall panels in T316 alloy stainless steel finished in a reflective #6 long-grain satin-polish along the length of the 1/8-inch-thick panels, which are 3 feet wide and go up to 20 feet tall. To accommodate the large-format panels, Stephen Scharr, director of business development at Metalwërks, says they had to adjust the normal system depth down from 2 inches to 1 1/2 inches.
“The goal was to evoke the visual of a continuous line of marching soldiers, straight and true, which is achieved through the vertical orientation of the Ameriplate Spline panels and overall façade,” says Scharr.
Another consideration, Scharr says was thermal expansion and contraction. “Stainless steel absorbs heat from solar radiation, and the panels can become very hot when in direct sunlight,” he explains. “The panels needed to be able to grow and shrink along the long and short axes to avoid pillowing or thermal bow. The Spline system allows the panel face plates to ‘float’ on a layer of structural silicone instead of direct attachment to the panel frame. The spline filler inside the joint also allowed expansion and contraction inside the panel pockets to accommodate thermal expansion.”
As a reflective metal, stainless steel can be used to make a powerful architectural expression. Since stainless steel endures extreme temperatures better than most metals—and because, in the case of the Army museum, the steel has a long grain brushed finish—its reflectivity is diffused, meaning you can see the surrounding colors in the façade, but the panels are not a mirror.
“The character of the building changes through every season and time of day,” says Koop. “This evokes a sense of humility, as well as a simplicity and sharpness that expresses the Army’s three principles.”
Along with the vertically oriented stainless steel panels, glass curtainwall from EFCO Corp., Monett, Mo., makes up the exterior façade. EFCO also supplied painted aluminum fins located at the corner of each pavilion that add dynamism to the façade.
Photo: Jim Greipp, Pau Hana Productions
Dynamic Interplay
The building composition also played a large role in the cladding. Since the building is composed of a series of pavilions housing different functions, and museums often require spaces that should not have natural light, Koop explains that they created glass-clad thresholds between each pavilion that creates views out to the surrounding environment. This creates a dynamic interplay between the stainless steel and the glass, he adds.
The stainless steel, which was locally sourced, contains a small portion of recycled content, which aided the project on its LEED Silver certification. The rainscreen helps preserve the life of the structure while enhancing the thermal envelope, which insulates the building and helps optimize energy performance.
Also aiding in the projects sustainability is its low window-to-wall ration, high-efficiency LED lighting, automatic daylighting controls and occupancy sensors, low-flow plumbing fixtures, as well as multiple landscaped terraces and green roof.
“One of our primary goals in the design process was to reduce the overall carbon impact of the new museum while creating a high-performance building that expressed the storied principles of the Army,” notes Koop.
In naming the museum the Smooth Metal Wall Panel category winner, the 2020 Metal Architecture Design Award judges were all impressed with how the stainless steel panels look on the museum, calling it a sublime and phenomenal project. “The metal is the project,” says Stephen Van Dyck, AIA, LEED AP, partner, LMN, Seattle, “It really stood out for me.” Rick Schneider, AIA, APA, LEED, principal, ISTUDIO Architects, Washington, D.C., adds, “They strove for the absolute minimum and best design. And going minimal, as we know, is hard. Doing less is really difficult to do well.”