In its heyday Detroit was known as the Motor City, producing grand automobiles with sleek styling and a modern attitude. With visions of chrome detailing and muscle cars in mind, the owner of Detroit’s MotorCity Casino Hotel commissioned architect of record Giffels LLC, Southfield, Mich., to design a new entertainment venue that would capture the essence and vitality that once characterized the city. Working in conjunction with executive architect NORR Ltd. Architects and Engineers, Detroit, the project team brought in the award-winning automotive designer Chip Foose as a consultant on the project to add a bit of retro automotive flare to the design.
“Our client requested a design that would be characterized as distinctly Detroit,” said Frank Panici, OAA, principal of NORR Ltd. “We chose to build upon the Motor City connection to create an aesthetic that celebrates the era of the American car.”
The completed MotorCity Casino Hotel complex is comprised of four buildings linked by bridges on the second floor: the casino, food and beverage building, convention center and stand-alone hotel.
Part new construction and part retrofit, the more than $300 million, 1.1 million-square-foot (102,190-m2) complex seamlessly blends the existing Continental Baking building and the casino, which is housed in the historic Wagner Banking Co., a Wonder Bread bakery originally built in 1915, with the newly built hotel, bridge and valet buildings. The work was done over a three-year period—from July 2006 to final completion in January 2009—during which the casino continued to operate.
The Riverside Group, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, fabricated 82,000 square feet (7,618 m2) of 0.16-inch (4-mm) Reynobond ACM with a PE core from Alcoa Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga., in a Valspar Champagne Metallic finish for all light bands on the casino, hotel and valet buildings. An additional 45,000 square feet (4,181 m2) of 0.16-inch Reynobond Natural Brushed Aluminum with a PE core and clear Valspar finish was incorporated on all façades of the Continental, casino and valet building, the entrance canopies and the column covers. Minneapolis- based Valspar manufactured the panel coatings.
“Reynobond ACM was selected to reinforce our concept—the play between the old and the new,” Panici said. On the casino building façade, the architects created a three-dimensional “grille” by alternating ACM panels on the old brick façade. Single-skin stainless-steel sheeting was used to create the rounded and flared roofline, mimicking the sleek lines prevalent in 1950s auto detailing.
The flared roofline of the casino required precise engineering. “At the curved areas that interface with the light bands (pleats) there are definitely challenges,” said Stuart Salonen, production manageof The Riverside Group. “Basically you have a ‘chevron’-shaped panel that meets up to a radius. The only way to determine the precise size and shape of this end condition was to recreate a 3-D model incorporating all of the site dimensions and then unfold it for CNC cutting from flat ACM sheets. The 2-D ACM shapes were then meticulously welded together by a group of skilled craftsmen. A variety of additional fabrication processes were utilized to assemble and reinforce the components into their final multifaceted and curved 3-D form.”
The Reynobond ACM and Reynobond Natural Brushed Aluminum materials were selected for the project by the architect and owner after weighing various options from cost, flatness, formability, manufacturing lead-times and overall aesthetics standpoints.
American Glass & Metals, Plymouth, Mich., installed the ACM light bands for the hotel, and C.L. Rieckhoff, Taylor, Mich., installed the Reynobond ACM panels on the façades using a galvanized steel sub-framing to set the R4-300 pressure equalized rainscreen system off of the existing structures. MiG Construction, Detroit, was the general contractor on the project.
Charged with the requirement of reducing overall framing cost for the rainscreen cladding system, Riverside Group engineered the “chevron”-shaped Champagne Metallic light band panels to span from top to bottom without any fixation to intermediate supports. “Since the overall height exceeded the maximum composite sheet width, the light bands were fabricated out of two separate panels and unitized together prior to crating and delivery to site,” Salonen continued. “The unitized section had to be engineered to withstand wind and snow loads, which necessitated custom gusset reinforcements on the back side to hold the overall shape together. Due to the massive size, we could only fit five of these units in a crate. The crates needed to be constructed in such a way that each light band panel could be removed in the order they would be erected on the building façade. With many hundreds of light bands required, the fact that our firm was a local fabricator [only 15 minutes from the project] allowed the owner to realize additional savings in freight costs alone.”
Alcoa Architectural Products, www.reynobond.com
Valspar, www.paintandcolor.com
