April 30, 2010

ARCHITECTTURA

Glazed unitized glass panels form the exterior of two walls with one foot building separation creating a climate control effect and preserving building’s original brick veneer.

FEATURE | Building Envelope

MediaPlex at St. Clair College helps in revival of Windsor’s core

Project merges old with new to create a ‘wow factor’

RON STANG

correspondent

WINDSOR, Ont.

It’s called the MediaPlex. It’s St. Clair College of Applied Arts and Technology’s new hi-tech journalism school located right in the centre of downtown Windsor.

The school is equipped with state of the art news studios. It brings journalism training from St. Clair’s suburban campus into the heart of the city.

The building, paid for with more than $5 million in federal stimulus money, will help revitalize Windsor’s core, which has long suffered from too many vacant storefronts in an often less than pedestrian-vibrant atmosphere.

More than this the building stands out as an architectural landmark. In terms of wow factor there is nothing quite like it in the city or perhaps anywhere else.

The remarkable fact is that the design and construction were all done in just over four months.

Windsor’s innovative architectural firm Architecttura Inc. Architects came up with a striking exterior curtain wall. The state of the art unitized system accomplishes several functions.

First it gives the glazed opaque and colourful green glass panels the complex’s aesthetic appeal. Next it allows the college to merge new with old. The curtain wall is not melded on to the original 1950s-era building — formerly home to Windsor’s Salvation Army headquarters – but attached one foot away, keeping the original brick veneer underneath and exposed around the corners, side and back. Finally, it provides climate control.

“It’s a canvas of expression,” Architecttura’s Dan Amicone said.

The south wall also sports, in huge Arial font, the name “MediaPlex” on the south side, and “St. Clair College” on the east.

At the corner there is a huge video screen, which currently carries announcements but will report news live as the students produce it inside the building.

“The exterior glazing concept design is about news and the changing nature of news throughout the day,” Amicone said. The architects designed the new wall just on two building sides.

“We didn’t want to totally wrap the existing building,” Amicone said. “We wanted to show some of the history” of what was a well-known and well-preserved structure in Windsor’s relatively intimate downtown.

Second, the gap allows air flow creating a blanket effect.

“It’s very unique,” for large building design, Amicone said. But the basic principal is what’s known as “double skin curtain walls” with two exterior walls where the space “technically acts as an insulator.”

Windsor’s Contract Glazers Inc. (CGI) was the glazing contractor that assembled each unitized panel from nine glazed sections, and lifted them into place on site.

“Installation took only a week and a half,” Dave Lester from general contractor Amico Design Build, said. “Normally this would have taken over a month.”

This unitized panel design — consisting of about 20 individual unitized glass panel sections – also helped the construction schedule. Work had to be carried out over winter (federal government rules tied the grant funding to March 31 completion). If the panels could be assembled inside and then put up in a much shorter period it was all to the good.

The panels were connected by aluminum struts, the same used for the new interior windows in the partly-gutted building.

The accent on hi-tech news presentation extends from the building exterior to inside. A visitor walks into the main building and is confronted with a mural of a map of the world. It will be a backdrop for news anchors who want to report from that space.

“It’s really to express the vision that they can broadcast from anywhere,” Lester said.

Meanwhile a walk up the stairs takes one to the open concept newsroom, a cavernous studio with news anchor and reporting desks, TV cameras, four editing suites, a radio broadcast booth and an electronic central command booth.

A giant plasma screen will create an infinity effect of images like a blue screen behind the presenting news anchors.

The building has a total 17,000 sq. ft. and the newsroom was carved out of the first floor. There are also classrooms, which can be temporarily divided, on the floor below. The management system, such as temperature and access, can be controlled from the main St. Clair campus.

Amicone and Lester said the major challenge was coordinating the project on a tight schedule.

“The construction and design was going on at the same time,” Lester said.

Meanwhile the design and construction teams worked closely with an advisory group of St. Clair administrators and journalism teaching staff.

“The key factor was site coordination,” Lester said. With as many as 20 sub-trades the scheduling was extremely tight. “We had two different electrical contractors in here at the same time, two different structural steel companies.”

They also installed an elevator. “Even with this time frame that had to be a world record,” he laughed.

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