Metal, Food and a Helpful Hub

To provide a permanent and secure base for its operations and to address growing community needs, the food bank has built a new home. Nearly double the size of the previous facility, this new single-story building offers space for individuals to not only receive quality food, but also financial and housing assistance, mail delivery services and much more. It now serves 6,000 customers a month.

An Inclusive, Humane and Dignified Place

Creating an inclusive, humane and dignified place for community members often shunted into the least desirable paces in the city was this project’s first objective. The second was to ensure the new building could efficiently and safely maximize the food banks ability to meet its mission by reaching as many of those in need as possible. Designed to remove the stigma often tied to seeking help, the end result is an inviting space with a café, gardens and a resource hub. To accomplish this, the project restored a formally abandoned brownfield site.

Seattle-based Graham Baba Architects was tasked with rendering the food bank’s mission and identity into physical form. “While aiming to blend with the surrounding light industrial neighborhood, the design was also heavily driven by the program, starting with an understanding of how a diverse community of individuals and families would experience and navigate the site and building,” says Brian Jonas, principal owner at Graham Baba Architects. “The food bank [wanted] to maximize long-term durability and functionality, and work within its capital fundraising capacity. The response by the design team was to use simple materials in creative ways. Decorative and powder-coated metals were used strategically in places more closely seen and touched by the users, while two types of pre-finished metal siding were used for the main massing. Metal siding was chosen for its blend of low maintenance and durability, and its general cost effectiveness.”

Form and Function

The building form takes it cues from the program elements, with a larger industrial shed-like form housing the market and warehouse; and a smaller, more residentially scaled sloped roof form creating a welcoming entry and housing the kitchen, HUB and offices.

“The smaller, more residential scale of the HUB, entry and office area is meant to create a friendlier and more welcoming pedestrian experience, and nests against the larger block form of the market and warehouse,” Jonas says. “Design cues for the shopping area are taken from other markets in the community to create a dignified and normalized shopping experience, while the large and efficient long-span warehouse and outdoor storage yards serve the market and delivery programs.”

Metal siding and roofing were chosen as the primary exterior material, not only for their durability, but also in response to the older industrial structures that surround the site. According to Jim Moreland, technical representative at Fontana, Calif.-based AEP Span, this food bank features AEP Span’s Nu-Wave Corrugated metal cladding and Mini-V-Beam metal siding panels in 24-gauge Vintage and 2-gauge Midnight Bronze colors, respectively. These products were provided to installer and fabricator Seattle-based Ballard Sheet Metal Works Inc. as the primary siding components of the rainscreen wall system.

“Ballard Sheet Metal Works installed [these components] for the rainscreen wall system, and we also fabricated/installed 1/8-inch aluminum plate panels custom factory-spray coated in custom colors,” says Lisa Valadez, project manager/architectural estimator at Ballard Sheet Metal Works. “On the interior, we supplied/installed 0.125-inch stainless steel channels at shopping cart alcoves, along with 1/4-inch flat bar accents and custom corner guards.”

The standing seam roof selected was AEP Span’s 16-inch SpanSeam metal roofing in 22-gauge Zinc Gray and installed by Axiom Construction, Lynden, Wash. The steel trellis was fabricated by Yakima, Wash.-based Inline Steel. Edmonds, Wash.-based Wilcox Construction Inc. served as general contractor and coordinated the work of the various suppliers and installers of metal products. JRS Engineering, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, was the building envelope consultant.

“What makes this project unique is the variety of cladding, from exposed fastener siding panels to custom aluminum plate components and wood accents along with minimalistic custom flashing transitions between the different types of cladding,” Moreland says. “The roof combined TPO membrane roofing with mechanically seamed metal roofing.”

What was unique about this installation? Valadez cites, “the amount of heavy-gauge stainless components on the interior and the surface protection from the high traffic expected. The mix of metal materials and colors on the exterior, along with the signage directly applied over the prepainted metal siding surfaces perfectly suits the commercial/industrial area, yet only blocks away from residential streets.”