With its simple elegance, single material and color palette, as well as its effective use of daylight to create patterns across the facade, the judges awarded the Digital Futures 2 (DF2) building in the Uptown Gateway mixed-use development in Cincinnati the winner in the Smooth Metal Wall Panels category for the 2023 Metal Architecture Design Awards.
The Digital Futures 2 building at Uptown Gateway is the winner of the Smooth Metal Wall Panels category in the 2023 Metal Architecture Design Awards
Photo courtesy of ECMS
Designed by GBBN Architects, Cincinnati, in collaboration with Terrex Development, Cincinnati, and Messer Construction Co., Cincinnati, the DF2 building is part of the first development within the Cincinnati Innovation District (CID), which is designed to attract research and innovation talent by co-locating and collaborating with the companies that need it. The 8-acre Uptown Gateway site includes two, six-story, 180,000-square-foot office buildings and a future hotel over a 1,300-car, partially submerged parking structure. As the front door to the city’s Uptown neighborhood and its many academic and research institutions, the buildings needed to express the technological innovation and creativity taking place within them.
According to Adam Fosnaugh, associate principal and member of the GBBN project team, the goal of DF2 was to express the innovation, creativity and technology of the future. The project explores the concept of creativity by embracing simplicity. “Much like a cardboard box is often a child’s favorite toy—it can be folded, cut, scored and imagined in multiple ways—the architecture derived inspiration from this idea, and utilizes repetitive folded metal panels as a way to express the limitless bounds of the future of technology.,” he says.
DF2 is a simple rectangular box, kinked at each end in plan and shifted at the third floor. This shift in massing allows daylight to reach its neighbor, the University of Cincinnati’s Digital Futures building, and fill the pocket park between the two with sunlight. Contrasting the neighboring building’s white façade, DF2 uses a simple, black metal panel system that yields impressive visual complexity. Unlit, the black panels shift to white, silver and gold, as they’re transformed by the light of the sun.
Photo courtesy of ECMS
The façade is made up of uniform parts—repetitive metal panels and punched opening windows—with one bay on both the north and south facades that feature folded metal panels with perforated openings. “These occur adjacent to the building’s circulation cores, offering opportunities for lobbies and conference spaces to be differentiated from the interior,” Fosnaugh says. “From the exterior, the façade reads uniformly during the day, but these spaces glow at night through the perforated holes.”
For the project, East Coast Metal Systems (ECMS), Triadelphia, W.Va., fabricated 1,617 panels of Reynobond aluminum composite material (ACM) from Arconic Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga., in its EC-200 Rain Screen System. Making up a total of 33,204 square feet, the 4-mm, 0.040-inch aluminum panels with an FR Core have a two-coat solid PVDF finish in Deep Black. Additionally, ECMS supplied custom-perforated, 0.125-inch aluminum plate panels in Deep Black.
The panels’ dark gray color reflects light, and the angled folds allow each panel to be both in sun and shade at any given time. “Due to the long façade and location along a busy street, the idea of movement was very important to understanding the building in different ways at different times,” Fosnaugh explains. “The result is a dynamic system that constantly shifts shape with the quality of light throughout the day, an impressive feat for such a highly repetitive, cost-effective system.”
Photo courtesy of ECMS
Kyle Sowinski, senior project manager at East Coast Metal Systems, adds, “The use of dry joints within the rainscreen system facilitates the creation of distinctive shadow lines, which cohesively aligns with the overall design of the project. This feature underscores the way other paneling elements utilize light and reflection, thereby establishing a visually dramatic and captivating appearance. Consequently, the rainscreen system is not only beneficial for its inherent weather protection capabilities, but it also significantly contributes to the architectural integrity of the structure.”
Additionally, the rainscreen design allowed all the panels, each measuring 4 feet by 13 feet, to be fabricated off-site, brought to the site and installed quickly, which, Fosnaugh says, allowed for high-quality fabrication and increased speed of construction.
“As the first development within the Cincinnati Innovation District, it was important to set a standard,” Fosnaugh says. “Great architecture with intentionally considered and well-crafted spaces can affect research outcomes, enhance productivity and provide opportunities for connections and collaboration.”