LDA Architects
A collaborative effort with Hemingway Development (led by Michael Panzica and Jim Doyle, Sr.) and GRAMMAR Properties (led by Marika Shioiri-Clark and Graham Veysey.)
All Steel Mid-Rise
1,604 Load-bearing panels with fast flash, air vapor barrier and windows
Turner Construction Company
Cleveland, Ohio
In Cleveland, Ohio’s Westside, Hingetown has become an increasingly sought after residential location thanks to the area’s proximity to downtown, an active restaurant and bar scene, and general walkability. This location's rising popularity helped draw this collaborative partnership to develop a $60-million mixed-use building, unlike any surrounding complexes.
Church + State is two buildings, 6 and 11 stories, and was designed to create outdoor community spaces, anchored by various retail and provide 161 multigenerational apartment homes ranging from studios to three bedrooms. The complex features a retail hub of 20,000 square feet and a subterranean/elevated parking garage. Amenities include a rooftop pool and community area.
Creative design with unique materials: Designed by LDA Architects, the building’s design features a unique checkerboard balcony on every other floor. The exterior is clad with a unique Spanish slate and white extruding planes planked in white aluminum to emphasize the varying depths of the multidimensional façade and pop-out window boxes.
Building with USGBC’s LEED Silver standards: The development team constructed the building to qualify as a LEED Silver residential building. This certification meant that every material and process was audited to ensure the construction team was in line with the USGBC’s sustainability standards.
Limited laydown in a busy area, with no room for schedule shift: The construction site’s urban setting had an extremely tight laydown area surrounded in high traffic, making just in time deliveries essential.
As usually is true in urban areas under construction, there’s no excess of space for storing materials. Maintaining an aggressive schedule for building occupancy was also critical. To maximize efficiency and speed, without compromising quality, the development team sought a prefabricated, panelized building enclosure system that could meet the intricate design of the building.
The team ultimately selected Mammoth's prefabricated load-bearing panels with custom façade, fast flash and windows. Georgia Pacific’s Denselement, air and vapor impregnated gypsum board, and Prosoco Fast Flash were used to treat the sheathing joints and the rough openings. With the schedule of the building, both products significantly reduced the time needed to be applied.
Mammoth prefabricated exterior cladding panels were beneficial to the architectural team due to design flexibility and quality control in a controlled manufacturing setting. Because panels are prefabricated and assembled following a standardized process in a controlled environment, and no worries of inclement weather or other outside factors, the architect can rest assured that these specialty exteriors will be completed precisely to the specified design. Panels were also completed with added rainscreen design benefits for weather protection and full windows.
Due to the complexity of the project, it was in design for two and a half years before selecting a prefabrication partner. The ease of panel installation and the benefit of air and vapor barrier installed on each panel provided significant schedule savings. Despite being built on the Lake Erie shoreline throughout the harsh winter months, the building exterior was quickly complete. Windows were preinstalled into each panel and successfully transported from Mammoth’s prefab shop providing additional schedule savings.
As one of the most highly engineered buildings the team had ever encountered, to maximize efficiency, prefabrication provided time and labor savings without sacrificing quality. The exterior load-bearing panels with windows preinstalled provided dramatic cost savings by optimizing the construction schedule, saving costs on foundation, insurance, and shortening the time-frame of scaffolding and cranes needing to be on-site.
The owners saw the immediate benefits of the pre-engineered wall system panels that were installed in just under nine months. A quickly dried-in area provided a condensed project timeline and schedule savings that were needed for quick building occupancy and revenue generation. The apartments at Church + State are now quickly leasing after opening in the Fall of 2020.
Image credit: Ken Krych of Properties Magazine
Learn through in-depth case studies and articles how prefabricated building enclosures are changing the industry.
