Canada’s Northwest Territories’ harsh landscape is incorporated to great effect in the McDonald Drive Condominiums in Yellowknife. The building’s curved, stacked form and perching foundations align directly with its site, a historic, massive outcropping of bedrock overlooking Great Slave Lake.
“The design intent was to express a sensitive integration of building with the site,” said Gino Pin, principal of Pin/Taylor Architects, Yellowknife. “We wanted to leave the rock intact and respect its scale and that of the surrounding environment. The building volumes were snuggled into the rock or perched with the building mass riding its rocky base, profiling its form.”
Highlighting the eight-unit building is an unusual installation application of metal panels from RHEINZINK America Inc., Woburn, Mass. The building is clad in approximately 13,000 square feet (1,208 m2) of 22-gauge, 0.03-inch (0.8-mm) RHEINZINK preweathered Blue-Gray material. Standard 0.3-foot- (1-m-) wide rolls of RHEINZINK were top-hung from the structure with minimal cutting and crimping. Stainless-steel washers and screws fasten the RHEINZINK material loosely in place, allowing for expansion and contraction. Pin was able to reduce labor costs due to his innovative installation of the cladding.
Native to the Northwest Territories, zinc was mined near Yellowknife. “It was logical to use zinc because of its longevity and its compatibility with the indigenous environment here,” Pin said. “It has a beautiful variegated patina that picks up on the ambient light spectrum-if the sky is moody, the zinc takes on a moody atmosphere; if the sky is bright, so is the zinc. The beautiful light we have here really plays on the zinc surface.”
The building has an oil-canned façade that may cause architectural traditionalists to take a second look. “Of particular importance and our principal objective in hanging the zinc sheets in verticals as it comes off the roll was not only to reduce fabrication cost but more importantly to obtain a surface in keeping with the rugged rocky terrain, both in texture and color and which picked up the reflective light and colors of sun and moonlight off water, snow and ice-truly a material of nature,” Pin continued.
“The intent was to achieve a wavy look with the sheets of RHEINZINK to capitalize on the reflections from the nearby water. It gives a beautiful effect,” Pin explained.
Tundra Construction and Development, Yellowknife, was the construction manager, and Arcan Roofing and Cladding Ltd., Hay River, Northwest Territories, was the installer.
RHEINZINK America Inc.
