From: metalmag May 2009
Posted on: May 29, 2009
Special

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Stainless-steel Mesh Makes a Parking Garage Disappear

By:: Christina Koch

Credit: Scott McDonald

Parking garages often don’t create much of an impression on those who use them. If a garage does conjure feelings, they typically aren’t good ones. Parking structures tend to be dark, dirty and smelly, as well as frightening places to be caught after hours. Despite the fact that it doesn’t easily fit into one of the four categories in metalmag’s third-annual Architectural Awards, Car Park One at Chesapeake Energy Corp., Oklahoma City, is so different from the parking-garage norm that the judges believed it deserved recognition.

Peter David Greaves, AIA, LEED AP, principal of Weber Thompson, Seattle, and one of the judges in metalmag’s Architectural Awards, notes: “A most elegant solution to a very humble building type, the ubiquitous parking garage. The taut metal scrim wrapping the exterior disguises and reveals the bones of the building at the same time. It’s a handsome design and an innovative use of metal.”

Consequently, the judges determined the project should receive the first Innovative Use of Metal award.

Extraordinary Design

Oklahoma City-based Elliott + Associates Architects has a 20-year relationship with Chesapeake Energy and designed nine buildings on the natural-gas producer’s campus. The firm’s reputation for designing out-of-the-ordinary buildings made it a perfect choice to create a new parking structure to meet corporate growth needs. “In Oklahoma, there aren’t great numbers of any one project type, like hospitals or museums,” says Rand Elliott, FAIA, an architect on the Car Park One project. “Our firm has designed a wide variety of project types. We find ourselves most excited when we do projects that are off the beaten path.”

The new parking garage was to be the first of several modern structures built across the street from Chesapeake Energy’s existing campus. What could have been a ho-hum project for the design team quickly became an exciting opportunity. Elliott recalls: “We know parking garages generally are awful places, so at the beginning we asked ourselves how we can reinvent what the parking experience is. How do you make a parking garage a place employees want to go to on a daily basis? The client very much agreed with this point of view and began to see the parking facility as a recruiting tool. That’s very different from a company that says, ‘this has to be done; let’s do it as cheap as we can’.”

Elliott and his design team also thought about how they could control the enormous scale of the parking structure. At 298,907 square feet (27769 m²), Car Park One would house 791 cars on four levels. “Parking facilities generally are giant rectangular boxes that can be very intrusive no matter where they’re located,” he notes. “From a mass and scale point of view, we wanted to make the structure disappear. Because we didn’t want anyone to see the cars in the building, we looked carefully at mesh. We were also looking for something that would respond to sunlight and add value to the building.”

A 3/8-inch- (10-mm-) flat-wire, stainless-steel mesh in a basket-weave pattern provided the team’s unique requirements. The mesh surface reflects the sky, and, according to Elliott, during certain times of day when standing at the base of the building and looking up, the top edge of the stainless-steel mesh disappears into the sky. “It’s an amazing and beautiful phenomenon because it accomplishes exactly what we wanted, which is to reduce the building scale,” Elliott notes. “The payoff occurs when employees go to get their cars at the end of the day; the west façade turns to gold, purple, yellow and blue. The setting sun makes it magic.”

Detailed Installation

The design team found a manufacturer that could custom-fabricate 32,959 square feet (3062 m²) of woven stainless-steel mesh for the project’s dramatic façade. Elliott was impressed by the company’s attention to detail when it came to fabrication of the system and installation guidance.

According to John Rosbottom, architectural business manager for the mesh manufacturer, the company provided ongoing support throughout the project.

Typical mesh installation involves the tensioning of wire-mesh panels between an engineered substructure or the manufacturer’s standard receiving brackets. However, the installation at Car Park One was atypical. “The desire to minimize the visual aspect of the attachment method resulted in a custom system that is quite unique,” Rosbottom explains. “When the mesh elements were attached to the custom substructure, then tensioned from the inside, the result was a system in which all the attachment hardware is virtually invisible.”

The material handling of the product created challenges; special tooling was designed to enable the large woven panels to be lifted into their final position. “The corners were especially difficult,” Rosbottom recalls. “We had to design, fabricate and attach wooden substructures to each of the corner elements to prevent any damage as the corners were lifted into position. It was a very delicate process for almost 35-foot- [11-m-] long panels but the installation crew was very quality conscious.”

In addition, the structure incorporates outriggers, or aluminum tubes, to further animate the exterior. The outriggers, which are 9 feet (3 m) on center and 4 inches (102 mm) in diameter, cast a shadow on the stainless mesh. “The outriggers are placed at the width of a parking stall,” Elliott remarks. “If you look closely, you notice the outriggers’ shadows look like parking stripes. The shadows are telling you in an artistic way what’s going on inside the building.”

Rosbottom says the position of the outriggers was critical. “The design called for reinforced cutouts in specific locations on the east and south elevations to allow the outriggers to protrude through the mesh panels. There was little margin for error; the accuracy of the outrigger support brackets and subsequent on-site measurements were critical.”

All in a Day’s Work

Each morning as employees of Chesapeake Energy drive into Car Park One, they are greeted by signs that say “Have a Great Day” and “Welcome Back.” Not only do the signs reflect the company’s concern for its employees, but the bright-white paint inside the parking structure, colored lights identifying parking levels and interior atrium that floods the space with natural light set a mood for a positive day.

“It’s hard to imagine using a word like luminous to describe a parking garage, but this is a really beautiful, luminous space,” Elliott says. “Parking garages are very practical building types. There always is a challenge when you take a building type people have written off as not having aesthetic value and reinvent it. I know for a fact Chesapeake Energy is proud of the parking garage; we have had employees say they love it. You rarely hear people talk positively about a parking garage experience; to hear people say that it’s great is incredibly fulfilling.”

Rosbottom also is pleased with the project. “From the first day we arrived on the job site, we realized this was going to be something special. With each panel we installed and tensioned, we became more excited about how the finished project would look. We are very proud of it and believe this is one of the most remarkable parking garages we have ever seen.”