With the sounds, tastes and smells of Thanksgiving still fresh in our minds, let’s travel to Thanksgiving Station, a relatively new residential and commercial mixed-use community located within Thanksgiving Point, located in Lehi, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Appropriately named to express gratitude after receiving the land as a gift from her husband, wife of tech giant WordPerfect co-founder first established Thanksgiving Point in 1995 as a nonprofit indoor and outdoor farm, garden and museum complex. Much growth and expansion has occurred over the past 20 years including the Thanksgiving Station Office Park, a 1,000,000-square-foot mixed-use development that has offices, restaurants, fitness centers, a park and access to public transportation.
When architecture firm Beecher Walker sought to create the 150,000 square-foot building Thanksgiving Station 3, the fourth of five buildings, to embody the innovation associated with prospective tech company tenants, they turned to a design that integrated boxy forms clad with metal composite material (MCM) and glazing.
Jory Walker, principal and president at Beecher Walker, says, “[Tech] companies are out-of-the-box thinkers that challenge the status quo. To attract such cutting-edge companies, the building design had to be just as progressive. So we literally took the typical office box and pushed and pulled it as if the contents were busting out at different junctures. The result is more like an additive and subtractive sculpture piece, hence the use of metal and glass, typical sculpture materials.” (Source: Metal Construction News)
To construct the tech-inspired exterior, Noorda Building Envelope Contractor fabricated and installed 14,000 square feet of Mitsubishi Chemical Composites America Inc.’s 4-mm-thick ALPOLIC MCM with a fire-retardant core in two finishes: Mica MZG Grey and clear anodized. For additional durability, the MCM were treated with AGC Chemicals Americas Inc.’s FEVE Lumiflon, a thin, clear coating. For the glazed portions, B&D Glass Inc. installed 47,000 square feet of Kawneer Co. Inc.’s 1600UT curtainwall.
Besides shaping the building’s boxy and sculptural massing, Anthony Lyman, junior partner at Beecher Walker, says the glazing and metal panels embody the reputations of prospective tech company tenants in other ways. “The symbolism of using these materials goes further,” he says. “Just as [tech] companies exhibit vision and light bulb moments, so do the wide spans of glass allow for clear views and an abundance of natural light. And just as these companies exhibit toughness and mettle to break the mold in their industries, so does the use of metal to provide visual and physical strength to the building and define the distinctive lines of the building form.”
- Owner: Stack Real Estate LLC, Lehi, Utah
- General contractor: Jacobsen Construction Co., Salt Lake City
- Architect: Beecher Walker, Holladay, Utah
- Curtainwall installer: B&D Glass Inc., West Jordan, Utah
- Fabricator/installer: Noorda Building Envelope Contractor, Salt Lake City
- Coating: AGC Chemicals Americas Inc., Exton, Pa.
- Curtainwalls: Kawneer Co. Inc., Norcross, Ga.
- Metal wall panels: Mitsubishi Chemical Composites America Inc., Chesapeake, Va.
Click HERE for full article as it appeared in Metal Construction News.
For more information on MCMs, click HERE for an in-depth overview from the Metal Construction Association, the industry’s source on the use of metal in the building envelope through marketing, education, and action on public policies that affect metal’s use.
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Thank you for noting that they used a design that included boxy forms coated in metal composite material (MCM) and windows to reflect the innovation associated with potential tech business tenants. My father claimed that his client was interested in using metal composite for a structure. I’ll instruct my father to purchase metal siding so that the building can reflect innovation.