Lab’s Helix Design Curves with Zinc

by Jonathan McGaha | 30 June 2015 12:00 am

By Christopher Brinckerhoff, Associate Editor

A conical node functions as a hinge between new and future research space

Curved zinc panels and a curtainwall link the inside and outside of the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Conn. Tsoi, Kobus and Associates Inc., Cambridge, Mass., and Centerbrook Architects & Planners LLP, Centerbrook, Conn., co-designed the project. Stephen Palumbo, AIA, LEED AP, associate at Tsoi, Kobus and Associates and project manager for the laboratory, says the zinc panels appear to be a single, monolithic wall from the interior and exterior. “We wanted to really blur the line between interior and exterior, and one of the ways we did that was to essentially continue that curve of the exterior wall and the curve of the material into the lobby,” he says.

Andrew Santaniello, AIA, associate at Centerbrook Architects
& Planners LLP and project manager for the laboratory, says the zinc used to clad the interior and exterior lent itself to being bent and curved and can expand and contract even with all the locks and seams. “What’s wonderful about the project is there’s a transparency that allows you from the exterior to see the zinc travel to the interior portion of the lobby and public spaces in the building, and you can also see that same effect while standing inside the building looking outward.”

Santaniello says there is alignment in the coursing of the zinc panels, but it is thermally broken from the exterior to the interior. “It’s one wall, but it’s one wall that is broken by an insulated envelope on the exterior of the building,” he says.

Palumbo says a lot of focus was put on the theme of transparency throughout the project, which utilized aluminum-framed glass partitions supplied by Ennepetal, Germany-based Dorma Group in the interior. “In areas in the lab bar where the building is 100 feet wide, you can literally see from one end of the building through the windows on the other end of the building,” he says.

A large curtainwall on the south side of the building provides views of the courtyard from the lobby. “You can very much understand and see that zinc wall coming from behind you all the way through the lobby and all the way out the other side of the building,” Palumbo says.

Palumbo says one reason the building was designed to blur the line between interior and exterior spaces was to relate it to Jackson Laboratory’s first location in Bar Harbor, Maine, adjacent to Acadia National Park. “They have a long history of being within a very powerful, natural environment,” he says.

Though the environments in Bar Harbor and Farmington are different, Jackson Laboratory wanted to keep the connection to nature as strong as possible, Palumbo says. “The goal really was to maximize that connection to nature in a different way in Connecticut, and that was really about more glass, more transparency into and through the building so that there are very few places in the building where you can’t see to the exterior.”

Conical node attaches to rectangle

The 189,000-square-foot building includes a long, rectangular portion that contains primarily laboratory spaces, and a conical portion at the northwest corner of the rectangular part that houses administrative and educational spaces and some laboratory space.

Palumbo says the conical portion of the building was designed with zinc to distinguish it from the long, curved, rectangular, limestone portion of the building. The design team reviewed multiple materials to contrast with the limestone façade of the laboratory building. Copper was considered, but zinc was specified instead for a number of reasons including environmental concerns and cost, Palumbo says. Santaniello says zinc was specified, in part, because it is a naturally occur- ring material that patinas over time.

The conical portion of the building is significant because it will be the link to future growth of the facility, Palumbo says. The Jackson Laboratory may expand in the future with additional research space constructed on the opposite side of the conical building portion. “This kind of node that’s connected to the big lab bar becomes a more critical hinge-point once that next portion of the facility gets built,” he says. “So that became the primary reason for its location, its shape and it signified the location for the entrance to the building.”

Walls slope and curve

There are two major wall components in the entrance area, one that slopes at approximately 4 degrees and one that slopes at approximately 8 degrees, Palumbo says. “How they all connect appropriately, how they all relate to the windows and the window locations, those were all the emphasis for why those ridges were put in place, and where they were put in place.”

Palumbo says the sloped, curved walls and detailed ridges in the zinc panels at the entrance on the conical portion of the building were designed to create comfortable proportions and connected all the façade elements. “It’s about making that volume a little less stark of a straight up and down elevation,” he says.

The sloped wall recedes as it comes around and outside of the building and sweeps around the western portion of the volume, Santaniello says. “The wall is sloped at an 8-degree angle and as the sloped wall extends outward from the building, a piece of that wall is taken away. As the wall comes down into the ground, it recedes away to diminish the scale.”

Peachtree City, Ga.-based MetalTech-USA supplied 14,000 square feet of Woburn, Mass.- based RHEINZINK America Inc.’s 1-mm prePatina Blue Gray Zinc. RHEINZINK America’s Blue Gray Zinc from the Protect Line was supplied for the interior panels because it adds a coating to protect the material from fingerprints.

Michael Love, project manager at MetalTech- USA, says when the architects, fabricator/installer and his company were discussing whether the zinc panels would need to be supplied in custom sizes, Alex Ross, project manager at fabricator/installer Ernest Peterson Inc. in Hartford, Conn., and he agreed the panels could be typical sizes including 16 inches by 36 inches and conformed to the radius wall during installation. “The finished product turned out beautifully and allowed us to give it a consistent uniform appearance,” Love says.

Ross says during the zinc panel installation it seemed like they were working in four dimensions. “It’s an inclined, tapered radius structure; it’s not just a radius, and it’s not just tapered,” he says. “So as your panel goes up, you’re trying to keep your lines when your panels go around. Your panels have to actually shrink and grow in order to keep your line straight as they run around this wall system.”

The design has a radius, but it is not a straight radius, Ross says. “It changes in terms of the tightness of the radius,” he says. “It’s tapered; it swoops in the gutter at the main entrance, which actually has a swale in it. A bunch of it you just couldn’t accomplish with a flat stock piece of metal with the radius and the swoop. So we had to segment some of it.”

Ross says much of the zinc for the project was shop-fabricated. If one or two rows of panels were an inch bigger or smaller, Ross says they grew or shrunk panels. “We have to custom shrink a panel or a whole row of panels,” he says.

Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, Farmington, Conn.

Construction manager: Whiting Turner Contracting Co.[1], Baltimore

Architects: Centerbrook Architects & Planners LLP[2], Centerbrook, Conn., and Tsoi, Kobus and Associates Inc.[3], Cambridge, Mass.

Civil and structural engineer: BVH Integrated Services PC[4], Bloomfield, Conn.

Fabricator/installer: Ernest Peterson Inc., Hartford, Conn.

Insulated metal panels: CENTRIA, Moon Township, Pa., www.centriaperformance.com[5]

Interior glass partitions: Dorma Group, Ennepetal, Germany, www.dorma.com[6]

Metal wall panels: MetalTech-USA, Peachtree City, Ga., www.metaltech-usa.com[7]

Structural steel fabricator: Schenectady Steel Co. Inc., Schenectady, N.Y., www.schenectadysteel.com[8]

Zinc: RHEINZINK America Inc., Woburn, Mass., www.rheinzink.us[9]

Source URL: https://www.metalconstructionnews.com/articles/labs-helix-design-curves-with-zinc/

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