Photo: Courtesy of Metl-Span
The 54 Middlesex Turnpike office building was renovated with several monochromatic metal panels. The entrance is clad with dark gray metal composite material (MCM) panels. Light gray and white insulated metal panels (IMPs) wrap around the entire 140,000-square-foot building.
The metal panels give the building a modern appearance, and they unified the exterior with a monolithic design. The original building was built in the 1970s in two phases that looked slightly different, says Michael Frechette, AIA, of Dacon Corp., which designed the project. IMPs allowed us to pull it all together and provide the updated aesthetic the owner was seeking in an energy saving system.”
Dave McGrath, sales engineer at Controlled Environment Structures LLC, which installed the IMPs, says, “The original façade was ripped off and we installed the insulated metal panels. We installed insulated metal panels to metal studs and to the masonry.”
To attach the IMPs to split-face masonry, Controlled Environment Structures developed a custom clip. Some IMPs were attached to metal studs as well. “It’s a lot more difficult to do a horizontal renovation than a new vertical installation,” McGrath says. “We had to line up our seams with the mullions on the storefront windows. There is a lot of custom field work because we weren’t working off a blueprint; these are field conditions.”
Frechette says, “It was a dramatic transformation. The original CMU (concrete masonry unit) was a very rough surface, but Controlled Environment Structures came up with a clever solution to attach the insulated metal panels to a subframing system. Now, you’d never know there was basically a concrete block building under there.”
Controlled Environment Structures installed 16,000 square feet of Metl-Span’s 22/26-gauge, 3-inch-thick CF Architectural IMPs in Regal Gray and Polar White.
For dark gray panels at the entrance, New England Panel Systems LLC and R&R Window Contractors Inc. fabricated and installed MCM. The project utilized 5,600 square feet of Mitsubishi Chemical Composites America Inc.’s 4-mm-thick ALPOLIC MCM with a polyethylene (PE) core in three colors: AGT Grey Mica, BGY Grey Mica and DCX Dark Copper Metallic.
“The smooth finish adds to the crisp geometry the owner wanted. It is a clean aesthetic, an upgrade from the typical embossed finish,” says Frechette.
