The WETA Ferry is the Way to Go Home

by Paul Deffenbaugh | October 1, 2019 12:00 am

“The Bay Bridge was down for almost a year, and traffic was a horrible snarl,” says Kent Royle, principal, Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects, Berkeley, Calif. “They needed a plan B, which was the ferry service. They’re trying to grow and expand the service, but also with an eye toward emergency functions.”

Today, as a result, commuters in Richmond, Calif., on the north side of the bay are treated to a sculpture-like ferry terminal that features twisted metal fins. It not only handles the increased demand for ferry service to downtown San Francisco, but provides an enticing transition for commuters from the land to the ferry.

On Location

The terminal is situated on a spit of land next to a channel that leads to an adjacent marina. “The ferry couldn’t encroach on the channel,” says Royle, “so we pulled the terminal back toward shore. But that conflicted with some ADA requirements during extreme tide conditions.” To meet slope requirements for protected passenger classes, they ended up sloping the entire building, not just the ramp.

There were other restrictions that forced the hand of the designers. The terminal sits at the end of a road, and they didn’t want to block views across the bay, so the height needed to be kept low. In addition, the east side of the terminal faces a historic building, the Ford Assembly Plant, which was designed by Albert Kahn and built during the Great Depression. The 500,000-squarefoot building dominates the landscape and the terminal needed to work in context with it.

The blond brick façade and huge fenestration serve as a counterpoint to the smaller glass building with its copper-colored fins. “Compared to that huge building, it’s a pretty small thing,” says Royle. “We also wanted to align it as much as possible with the terminus of the main street approaching it so passengers would see it as they were driving up.”

Passenger Experience

The designers also needed to account for a 10-foot tidal swing. To meet ADA requirements, stay clear of the channel and provide security, the passenger shelter itself serves as the security point. The doors at the top open 15 minutes before the ferry boards, and passengers queue up inside the shelter, then pass through a security door with a card reader to access the gangway to the ferry.

The south and west elevations are encased in glass to give passengers views across the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge and to protect them from the wind. “The other sides could be something else,” says Royle. Describing the concept for the fins, he says, “We didn’t have any idea of what material to use, just that there were some lines on paper.”

“Mostly, we looked at metal options,” he says. They also considered glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC), “but we decided on metal for its longevity and durability.”

Fin de Sequence

Twisting the metal, though, caused fabrication and installation challenges. The design team found a fabricator in England that makes twisted aluminum sections similar to these, but since the project used federal highway funds, everything needed to be sourced in the United States. Eventually, they discovered Nor-Cal Metal Fabricators, Oakland, Calif., who could twist the stainless steel elements. A retired detailer from Nor-Cal, Steve Bailey, provided the experience to twist the steel and worked with a façade consultant—Front Inc., Seattle—to create the shop drawings.

After getting the steel twisted, the fins needed to be installed. But the twists created visual problems in aligning them. The twist makes one end of the fin look narrower, and running them across the façade so the edges were parallel meant hanging them at a slight slope. Add to that the dissimilar metal between the fins and the galvanized steel structure itself required shims to prevent corrosion. “We also needed to make sure that potential expansion and contraction didn’t stress out all the joints,” says Royle, “so we had to figure out which could be loose and which were fixed took a lot of design attention.”
The design team, fabricators and installers overcame those challenges and created a building that will last in the harsh salt water environment while still providing a pleasantly rewarding experience for harried commuters.

Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/the-weta-ferry-is-the-way-to-go-home/

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