175-185 Wyman Street Office Complex, Waltham, Mass.
Posted
07/28/2011
Featuring two new buildings at the foot of the
Hobbs Brook Office Park, the Class A office space project earned
LEED Gold certification and Innovation in Design credits in all
five categories. Totaling 335,000 square feet of new construction,
the 175 Wyman Street building features 224,800 square feet in two
stories and the 185 Wyman Street building features 110,000 square
feet in two stories. Both buildings are constructed of steel frame
with a pre-cast terra cotta exterior and concrete slabs. The
high-performance building envelope of terra cotta and aluminum
rainscreen tiles provides thermal insulation, reduces energy costs
and balances air pressure.
Situated on a prominent site along Route 128 in Greater Boston,
the designers created significant dramatic architectural elements
to emphasize the uniqueness of the buildings. The prow, located at
the southwest top corner of 175 Wyman and tied into the rainscreen
system, is the most dramatic element of the buildings and features
metal and LED lights visible from the highway. Approaching the
buildings from each of the three driveway entrances, visitors
notice metal "mini-prows" that accentuate the corners of the
buildings and draw the eye. The series of corner elements relate to
the main prow and offer a surprising piece of architectural
drama.
A significant design element, metal is a key component to the
exterior skin "rainscreen principle," and is used as a
high-performance material to make the building weather tight. Metal
was applied to the exterior building envelope in a "slipping and
sliding" design pattern interwoven with terra cotta panels. Metal
was also used to emphasize all the entrances to both buildings. Use
of locally obtained, recycled metal also helped the project earn
points toward LEED Gold certification.
Hobbs Brook Management requested that the design team develop an
exterior wall system that would allow the contractor to make the
building weather tight very quickly. Additionally, the buildings
were to obtain LEED Gold certification, be easily maintained,
cost-effective and although contemporary looking, still appealing
to tenants who may appreciate a more traditional Boston aesthetic.
Since Hobbs Brook Management did not want to use brick or precast,
the design team decided to use terra cotta and metal panel
rainscreen systems, both of which serve as a high-performance skin
with similar rainscreen characteristics.
On the building envelope, metal provided a
contrasting material in texture, color and form, against the terra
cotta panels. The use of metal offered the design team the ability
to customize the texture of the cladding in a way that reinforced
the overall design intent of the "slipping and sliding" theme. The
metal also helped beak down the scale of the large buildings and
emphasized unique architectural design elements such as the
prow.
For the exterior metal wall panels and roof cornices, Lymo
Construction Co. Inc. provided its Lymo 3000 Rainscreen Panel
System, using 4-mm Reynobond aluminum composite material with a PE
Core from Alcoa Architectural Products. The dry joint panels
feature a PVDF three-coat, smooth, flat finish in Reynobond Bright
Silver Metallic.
For the roof equipment screen, CENTRIA supplied 13,075 square
feet of its 24-gauge BR5-36 exposed fastener panels with a
three-coat finish in 9957XL Silver. The panels are 1 1/2-inch-deep
with 36-inch coverage. The exposed fasteners were painted to match
the panels.
Stainless-steel mesh screens at the garage came from Cambridge
Architectural, who supplied 650 square feet of its stainless-steel
mesh in the scale pattern with a 62 percent open area. Rods and
eyebolts with tensioning screens help the screens retain their
shape, while connections are concealed with aluminum channels.
Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope supplied the Vistawall Reliance
Curtainwall System and Vistawall Standard Medium Stile Doors, both
with a 70 percent Kynar finish in Bright Silver II. Oldcastle
BuildingEnvelope also supplied the sunshades for the project.
Owner: Hobbs Brook Management LLC,
Waltham
Builder: Columbia Construction Co.,
North Reading, Mass.
Architect: Margulies Perruzzi Architects,
Boston
Panel and roof cornice fabricator: Lymo
Construction Co. Inc., Merrimack, N.H.
Aluminum composite material: Alcoa
Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga.,
www.alcoaarchitecturalproducts.com, Circle #61
Curtainwall, sunshades, aluminum entrance
doors: Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope,
Santa Monica, Calif.,
www.oldcastlebe.com, Circle #62
Roof equipment screen: CENTRIA,
Moon Township, Pa.,
www.centria.com, Circle #63
Stainless-steel mesh screens: Cambridge
Architectural, Cambridge, Md.,
www.cambridgearchitectural.com