Stainless steel mesh creates distinctive, high-tech design for new landmark bio building
While touring Baxalta’s bio-manufacturing plant in Los Angeles, leadership at Georgia’s Quick Start were struck by the heavy use of stainless steel throughout the facility. The glistening autoclaves, hoods, precision tools and equipment soon became the inspiration for the Atlanta-based architect Cooper Carry‘s design and exterior branding of one of the firm’s newest projects-the Georgia BioScience Training Center.
Wrapped in an exterior veil of metal mesh fabricated by Cambridge, Md.-based Cambridge Architectural, the landmark facility, which opened in September 2015, serves a dual function for the state of Georgia: part work force training center for bio-manufacturing employees; part recruitment tool for attracting global biosciences firms to the state.
Recruitment Tool
Georgia enhanced its reputation as one of America’s best states for doing business by winning a 2012 competitive bid for the new $1 billion Baxalta immunoglobulin therapies plant. One of the state’s key incentives was the promise to build a $14 million workforce training center initially dedicated to new Baxalta employees.
Operated by Georgia Quick Start, a division of the Technical College System of Georgia, the new facility, located an hour from Atlanta in the small town of Social Circle, would also double as a research center, technology transfer incubator and workforce development tool to engage future businesses and their employees.
Hi-Tech Appearance/Passive Shading
Selected as the architect, Cooper Carry was challenged to develop a signature, hi-tech design that evoked the sophistication of 21st century bio-manufacturing and enhanced the center’s function as a marketing tool.
The façade design was a mix of metal mesh with glass behind it, as well as smaller areas where glass is directly exposed for views and a connection to nature.
The choice of a hand-woven stainless steel exterior veil offered the versatility of aesthetic benefits combined with solar shading, daylighting and solar heat-gain reduction.
Cambridge Architectural was brought into the design process early in the project’s life and began to exchange mesh samples and ideas with Cooper Carry. The team ultimately settled on a custom, semi-rigid mesh specification with a relatively fine weave.
Dubbed “Lanier” for the nearby Georgia lake of the same name, the new Cambridge pattern-now available in the company’s portfolio for use on other projects-has a 50 percent open area (in the case of Georgia BioScience) capable of reflecting-and not absorbing-half of the sun’s radiant energy. For other projects, Lanier’s open area can be expanded or contracted by removing fill wires as the pattern repeats.
Cambridge engineers used 3-D modeling followed by multiple mock-up processes with Cooper Carry to design an angular veil that would be suspended off the building on a steel frame. Most of the panels are not simple rectangles but trapezoids that are flexed and bent to create angular shapes. A total of 149 mesh panels covering 10,900 square feet were used on the façade.
“The mesh is expressed independently from the main façade with facets and plane changes to provide a dynamic, crystalline aesthetic with ever-changing shadows and reflections that suggest a sense of movement,” says Nathan Williamson, associate principal at Cooper Carry.
Interesting and compelling, it reflects light and changes in appearance throughout the day. At night, the mesh is a backdrop for a wall wash of LED lighting that glistens in a variety of colors.
Interior laboratories, classrooms, conference rooms and public spaces are shaded by the exterior veil, which reduces heat loads by 10 percent, and eliminates the need to install blinds or motorized shades.
The mesh is attached to the structure using Clevis, a fully engineered, in-tension system designed by Cambridge.
Inside Georgia BioScience, Matte, a Cambridge flexible mesh pattern similar to Lanier, was used to surround an open air, elliptical courtyard that is the focal point of the interior and is the initial vista when entering the facility. Mesh also provides screening for the Center’s main conference room. An Eyebolt system is used to attach the mesh on the building’s interior.
Georgia BioScience Training Center, Social Circle, Ga.
Owner: Georgia Quick Start, a division of the technical college system of Georgia
Completed: September 2015
Architect: Cooper Carry, Atlanta
General contractor: Whiting-Turner, Atlanta
Installer: L&S Erectors Inc., Litchfield, Ohio
Metal mesh: Cambridge Architectural, Cambridge, Md.
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Matt O’Connell is director of operations at Cambridge, Md.-based Cambridge Architectural, a full-service provider of architectural mesh systems for both interior and exterior building applications. For more information, visit www.cambridgearchitectural.com.