cultural buildings project report
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© Henrik Kam, courtesy SFMOMA
‘The longest (east) facade is covered by over 700 fibre-reinforced polymer panels which create an extended pattern of ripples mirroring the choppy waters of San Francisco Bay’
lightweight substitute material option for the facade. Their solution is an elegant hybrid curtain wall system
made up of FRP (fibre-reinforced polyester) cladding panels, almost all of them unique and malleable enough to hold the ripple design. Each panel is around three eighths of an inch thick and
comprises layers of FRP matting covered with a layer of epoxy and a surface layer of sand. The ripples, in combination with the epoxy, increase strength and stiffness, and a shallow return perpendicular to the surface attaches it back to an aluminium curtain wall sub-frame.
Standardising the facade
The sub-frame is similar to that used in office blocks, but instead of panes of glass, blank aluminium panels backed by a layer of insulation are installed between the mullions. The standardisation of the frame helped minimise costs as well as achieve the curving geometry in the FRP skin.
The sub-frame is composed of just two different types of
panels; the vast majority are flat, around 5 ft 4 in wide and anywhere from 14 ft to 25 ft tall, depending on the floor to floor height. The rest are transition panels, creased from one corner to the other and designed to accommodate the curvature of the facade. The combination of flat panels and transition panels made
it possible to wrap the building with a seemingly continuous skin of FRP over the top. The FRP was attached to the aluminium curtain wall panels in Krysler’s factory, then delivered to site on a flatbed truck and hung straight on the building. The modular design enabled easy installation by operatives
stood on the edge of the floor slabs, with no need for scaffolding, or post-installation exterior sealants or gasketing. “The extremely aggressive construction schedule and a
very tight site meant there was little space or time to build scaffolding, so it was key for us and the contractor to develop the facade system the way we did,” says McNeal.
Whole lotta shakin’
Snøhetta’s dance partner analogy extends to the way the two buildings respond to one another in the event of an earthquake. Each moves differently during tremors, due to the fact that
Botta’s building is wider and more squat in shape, whereas the extension is thin and relatively tall. A physical gap between
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