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
