Defying Gravity
UNM Architecture Building Raises Expectations

By Neal Singer

The new $21.5 million UNM School of Architecture seeks to inspire future architects through its use of exposed building materials and a unique cantilevered wall design.

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New Mexico builders don’t always have the money nor time to be extravagant. The structures they erect often are modest and provide sound value for the dollar, with just a few special features or design flourishes.

The UNM School of Architecture and Planning’s new building is something dramatically different. Its southern face, visible from across Central Avenue, consists of huge, brown concrete walls that almost resemble the arms of a giant bear. 

And the walls cantilever 40 ft out beyond any visible support.

 These cantilvered walls enclose a student courtyard floor formed of 2-in.-thick granite (donated by Albuquerque-based Rocky Mountain Stone Co.) and four stories of study space sheltered by a glass curtain wall. 

The building was designed by Albuquerque-based architect Antoine Predock, who in 2006 was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects for his works. (Among earlier winners were Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan.)
This particular building - also called the George Pearl Hall after the well-known local architect - has generated praise from contractors and subcontractors.

It also has caused some challenges among those who had to accomodate the changes caused by value-engineering less costly designs for the $21.5 million, 108,000-sq-ft teaching facility.

“It was fun to build differently from what we usually do,” says Darrel Massegee, senior superintendent with Albuquerque-based Jaynes Structures, a division of the Jaynes Corp., which is the concrete contractor on the project. He says the cantilevers took 650,000 lbs of concrete.

“It is the structural gymnastics that make it special,” says Jon Anderson, who teamed with Predock as executive architect for the project. “The cantilevers are an aesthetic decision that let light come in the full height of the center.”

Anderson agrees that the same effect could have been achieved with more conventional designs. “We could have stuck a column under there and saved some rebar, but it’s not that much of a difference,” he adds.

The building’s thick outer walls are a vertical transport space for the air system. “They’re 5 ft thick with a 3 ft void in the middle that we can use to push supply and return air through the center,” Anderson says.

Eddie Aragon, president and CEO of Albuquerque-based Post-Tensioning Reinforcing Service Inc., calls the job the “toughest concrete job I’ve ever seen. We did the Albuquerque Balloon Museum (another unique structure) and it was nothing compared to this: huge amounts of wall cantilevered over nothing when the walls are 80 ft high. Yet, there were no injuries and Jaynes did an outstanding job in seeing this through.”

To figure a way to reinforce the concrete structure, Aragon had to travel to Las Vegas to look at designs of the big high-rises built to meet seismic zone requirements.

“With (Albuquerque-based) Chavez-Grieves Consulting Engineers Inc., we came up with a system that made it buildable,” Aragon says. Changes included exchanging some rebar for metal plates with studs and adding reinforcing steel terminators over doorways.

But then “if every building was square, it would be pretty boring out there,” Aragon says.

Because the building was constructed on a small space, there was almost no room to stack materials. Several subcontractors praised Massegee’s coordination that kept materials arriving in a timely manner - and removed when they came too early. 
The space was so cramped that the building rose from west to east, rather than all at the same time, because only one crane could fit in the space available for construction.

Massegee says that one of the special features of the building is the use of fiberglass ties rather than snap ties to hold forms together while pouring cement. “Snap ties are better, but the fiberglass prevent a small honeycomb indentation” that the snap ties would have caused which would have marred the look of the building.

Ductwork, conduits and huge I-beams were left visible without soffits or furring so that student architects can learn about building design.

The design called for architectural concrete that gives smooth joints but magnifies cracks or bleeding.

“It’s an exciting project,” says Rick Brown, a partner in Westwind Landscape Construction Inc., which installed the irrigation sleeving so that bubblers have hook-ups for installation later in the project. “It will be noticed.”

Sue Mortier, UNM’s landscape architect who worked with Brown, adds “no matter what people think of the building, they can’t help but be a little wowed by it.”

Mortier had to alter the architects’ original plan slightly by combining two small strips of landscaping designed to separate pedestrians from the street and from the building, into one larger area between the pedestrians and the building.  “I’m all for a buffer between the pedestrian and the street, it’d be nice to have it that way, but there wasn’t enough room.”

One person whose job changed during the project was Frank Moser of Albuquerque-based Yearout Mechanical. “The biggest issue we had during the value engineering was that the height of the building was lowered,” he says. “They cut almost a couple of feet off each floor.” 

That left the mechanical people with coordination issues with fireproofing and electrical, Moser says. “We got it done, but it took a lot of extra coordination we don’t normally have to do,” he adds.

Moser says that because the deep I-beams cut down on space, “we didn’t >> have a flat plane to run stuff in. We had to jump our stuff up and down. Before they cut the ceiling space down, there wouldn’t have been an issue.”

The mechanical work was completed on time.

Anderson says the job was first bid in April 2005 and then was value-engineered to reduce cost. The re-engineering saved $3.5 million, he adds.

“We reduced the building’s height by 3.5 ft,” Anderson says. “We changed the mechanical system from radiant to a traditional forced-air system, and one of the mechanical systems was moved from below grade to the roof.” That meant that the ductwork in the fourth-floor library “which was quite small, is now quite large, but it saved building a concrete vault,” Anderson says.

Other items which had to be left off due to the budget included an ultra-quiet rubber floor and a green roof with live native grasses and plants.

“We hoped for more,” says project architect Graham Hogan of Antoine Predock Architects. Inc., “but we got done what we expected to get done.” The project has gone through many changes, including the addition of a fine arts and design library on the building’s top floor, “but there’ve been no big hiccups,” he adds. 

Key Players

Owner: UNM Dept. of Facility Planning
General Contractor: Jaynes Corporation
Architect: Antoine Predock Architect; Jon Anderson Architect
Structural Engineer: Chavez-Grieves Consulting Engineers Inc.
Subcontractors: McDade-Woodcock Inc.; Yearout Mechanical; Jaynes Structures Inc.; Post-Tensioning Reinforcing Service Inc.; W & W Steel Co.; Westwind Landscape Construction Inc.; Custom Grading, Inc.

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