Nine rectangular boxes intersect to form one extraordinary office building
The wildly unique design of an office building known as the “Pterodactyl” in Culver City, Calif., is visually stunning. Designed by Eric Owen Moss Architects, Culver City, the 16,663-squarefoot building represents culmination of a project that has spanned 17 years. It has office facilities, including conference rooms, a library, audiovisual suites and a cafeteria. Completed in Spring 2015, the Pterodactyl is perched atop a four-level parking garage built in 1998. The structure was designed to anticipate a future building, with steel columns extended above its top floor plate.
The parking structure is the conceptual podium for the office building. The design team at Eric Owen Moss Architects realized the perceived relationship of the two uses from the primary west elevation emphasizes the office building presence. It also minimizes the visibility of the parking garage. Buildings in the area are three floors or less, so the office building on the roof affords good views of the entire city from downtown to the Santa Monica Mountains to the Westside of Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean.
The 800-car, four-level parking structure is straightforward and inexpensive construction: steel frame, metal decks, regular bays, and ingress/ egress ramps at opposite ends of the west face of the project. The required fireproofing of the structural steel was treated as a finish material and precisely applied to the steel frame.
How was the building positioned above the garage? “The [six rows of] parking garage columns are the only primary support for the Pterodactyl, other than parts of the front overhang that are partially supported on the lower garage ramp beams,” says Hooman Nastarin, PE, NAST Enterprises Corp., Los Angeles, the project’s structural engineer. “The columns are the only support for the
[individual nine] boxes. Ring-like ‘frames’ were embedded in the interior design that doubled as support beams, though not in a straight line, holding up the building.”
Office Boxes
The Pterodactyl is formed by the intersection of nine rectangular boxes that are lifted one level above the garage roof and stacked either on top of or adjacent to each other, along the west edge of the garage roof. The nine boxes organize essential program elements connected by an interior, second-floor bridge. The underside of the boxes is cut out to accommodate an open plan on the main office floor below. The boxes are supported on the steel column grid extended from the parking structure.
The boxes are made of structural steel frames supported by main members from 12 existing columns, the frames are stabilized by secondary members and the floor members. The outer shell of the boxes are constructed with metal studs, the upper/mezzanine floor is constructed with a metal deck (with concrete) over steel beams.
“The choice of boxes can be attributed to significant philosophical theory,” says Nastarin. “Each box has a unique overhang above the parking ramps. Structurally, the rotated boxes provide just enough space and intersections to efficiently place the structural members to support the structure. During the early design, we had numerous meetings and studies to determine the feasibility and constructability of each box, preserving the numerous and unique architectural features of each box as well as their interactions. The lateral and balancing support of each box was particularly challenging due to the shape of the elements and desired clearances and thickness of the building envelope.”
The main office floor is rectangular in plan and enclosed with a glass wall, supplied by PPG Industries Inc., Pittsburgh, that extends vertically to meet the elevated boxes one level above. The main floor is an entirely open plan, while the second floor is subdivided between open working areas and enclosed conference rooms and private offices, as the program requires.
The Pterodactyl is the final phase of the Wedgewood Holly campus: office buildings that were originally part of a grouping of contiguous warehouses in Culver City that had been added to incrementally since the 1940s. The design premise required a strategic removal of portions of the original buildings to establish discrete new building identities, allow sufficient space for landscaping, and accommodate both pedestrian and automobile circulation on-site. The complex now consists of four other buildings, all designed by Eric Owen Moss Architects: Stealth, Umbrella, Slash and Backslash.
Flat Lock Tile Design
Highlighting the Pterodactyl façade is more than 19,000 square feet of Woburn, Mass.-based RHEINZINK America Inc.’s prePATINA blue-grey Flat Lock Tiles. In addition, approximately 3,600 square feet of RHEINZINK flat lock tiles were used in a lowslope roof application.
“We like to use a relatively small palette of materials,” says Raul Garcia, project architect, Eric Owen Moss Architects. “That really helps create the dramatic space because you are concentrating on the form and the spatial aspects that the form creates. We used RHEINZINK on an earlier project known as The Beehive and were really happy with it-both initially and over time as the patina gave the building a life of its own. We like the color and the grain of the architectural zinc and the fact that it patinas and changes over time.”
The detailing and installation of the flat lock panels was as complex and unique as the overall design itself. “One of the great attributes of RHEINZINK is its workability,” Garcia says. “The material allowed the installers to customize it on-site to fit those complicated areas around beams and in tight corners.”
Wrapping the Panels
Another interesting aspect of the installation-done by Architectural Metal Cladding Inc. (AMC), West Hollywood, Calif.-was the architect’s insistence on wrapping the flat lock panels around the edges and corners. “This was out of the norm for most flat lock tile jobs,” says Gary McKee, RHEINZINK’s West Coast regional sales manager. “Most installers would end the panel at a corner rather than turning it-but that’s not what the design team wanted. Turning the flat lock panel is do-able, but it’s not easy and it requires a well-qualified installer.” Fabrication of the flat lock tiles was done by CSI Architectural Metal Inc., Carson, Calif. The Pterodactyl interior design also specified a considerable amount of the flat lock tiles to be used as strategic accents in areas that visually link the interior to the exterior façade.
According to Garcia, the project utilized Digital Project/Catia to provide advanced building information modeling (BIM), account for every detail of the building, and design complex structural and mechanical systems with a high level of control and precision. The model provided a direct interface with engineers and fabricators, increasing the accuracy and level of detail of construction drawings. Consultants collaborated directly in the model, providing a powerful tool for project management, cost estimating and scheduling.
“This was a challenging job for many of our contractors,” Garcia says. “The software modeling program allowed us to have many of the components laid out before the contractors stepped onto the site. That really helped make the project a success.”
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Sidebar: Pterodactyl, Culver City, Calif.
Completed: Spring 2015
Total square feet: 16,663 square feet
Building owner: Frederick and Laurie Samitaur Smith
Architect: Eric Owen Moss Architects, Culver City
General contractor: Samitaur Constructs, Culver City
Metal installer: Architectural Metal Cladding, Inc., West Hollywood, Calif.
Structural engineer: Nast Enterprises Corp., Los Angeles
Metal fabricator: CSI Architectural Metal Inc., Carson, Calif., www.csimetalinc.com
Glass: PPG Industries Inc., Pittsburgh, www.ppgideascapes.com
Metal wall/roof panels: RHEINZINK America Inc., Woburn, Mass., www.rheinzink.us
(click on image for higher resolution)