Baton Rouge's shining light

Shaw Center transforms cityscape with artistic exterior

By Angelle Bergeron

To create a symbol of inspiration and innovation architects of the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge were challenged to design a unique multi-venue cultural center that would literally transform the city's visual landscape.

The $55 million Shaw Center, which opened in early March, is the result of a collaboration between Schwartz/Silver Architects of Boston as design architects, Eskew + Dumez + Ripple of New Orleans as executive architects and Jerry M. Campbell and Associates of Baton Rouge as associate architects.

Designed as the home for the Douglas L. Manship Sr. Theater for the Visual and Performing Arts, the LSU Museum of Art and LSU School of Art classes, the Shaw Center will serve as a cultural haven that also features an Arts Council arts incubator and a restaurant.

The design has already garnered several awards, including recognition from the American Institute of Architects' Gulf States Region, New England Region and Boston Society of Architects Chapter.

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Perhaps the most unique aspect of the structure is its exterior channel glass cladding system, which creates an ever-changing palette reflecting the nearby Mississippi River, the surrounding cityscape and varying degrees of sun- and moonlight.

"All the people on the steering committee wanted to see this building lit up and shining, and symbolic in a sense," said Warren Schwartz, a principal partner with Schwartz/Silver along with Chris Ingersoll.

Ronnie Patton, jobsite superintendent with general contractor The Lemoine Co. of Lafayette, said the German cladding system was a challenge to the contractor since it had never been installed in the United States in this way.

The glass product, developed originally for industrial cladding, has been used more recently in the United States for commercial and institutional uses, but never in this fashion, Ingersoll said.

"Normally, channel glass is used as an exterior wall of the building," Schwartz added. "That is different from the way we are using it, which is as a rain screen to protect the exterior wall of the building."

The glass channels have been placed with a 2-in. gap between each piece over a layer of waterproofing metal siding. This creates a protective, 8-in. cavity and an exterior in which the metal and glass reflect light off of one another.

"In an art museum, you have to hang paintings on the walls, so we had to create a situation where the outside of the building is light and bright and the inside is dark and solid," Schwartz said.

BHN of Memphis erected the glass.

"They used two pieces of machinery to make the lift on the glass because the pieces were so long and awkward," Patton said. Channel pieces have a light-green hue and range in width from 9 to 13 in., up to 23 ft. long. BHN used nine 60- to 120-ft. boom lifts to piece together the intricate system.

"We had to support the pieces along the back so they would be strong enough in hurricane force winds," Ingersoll said. The square, aluminum supports look like "shiny square buttons," he said.

"The metal siding was essentially left as anodized aluminum so it could reflect the colors of the rainbow."

Because the channel glass cladding system is so unique "there were a lot of information and constructability issues that Lemoine and their subs were extremely helpful in solving, such as the installation sequence, delivery and storage," said Alan Eskew, founding principal of Eskew+Dumez+Ripple. "Each piece of glass was barged for sequential installation and it was a real logistical challenge to have it all work out and be sorted piece by piece."

Lemoine mastered the challenges specific to building a museum environment with numerous interior controls such as air quality, temperature and security, he said.

"Lemoine's experience with the complications of medical work provided technology that could be transferred to a museum environment," Eskew added.

Creating and maintaining the special finishes on the project equaled the complexity of constructing the exterior system, Patton said.

"One of the challenges was the difficult finishes of the interior, to protect the architectural concrete columns and the placement of the topping slabs in a finished environment," he said. "We had so many finishes that had to be poured at the beginning of the job, yet had to be protected."

Throughout the museum and lobby the contractor placed 1.5-in.-thick charcoal gray topping slabs on top of the 5-in.-thick structural slabs.

"We poured the structural slab during the construction and then came back at the end and put on the topping slab," Patton said. "That was the look they wanted to achieve and that was the only way we felt we could do it."

The Shaw Center is comprised of three distinct adjoined structures, including a six-floor museum and theater building, a two-floor theater support building and a three-floor administrative/classroom building that incorporates two walls from an existing parking garage.

Cantilevering the fifth floor of the six-story structure over the garage portion proved difficult since an 8-in. slab had to be placed in the area of the fifth-floor cantilever to help transfer the load through the structure to the foundation.

Patton said hanging the main steel beams in the cantilevered area also proved a bit tricky.

"Everything had to be done in a sequence because of the load and we had to monitor elevations and movement," he said.

"Throughout the whole project, we were in the limelight of all the attention, which was kind of a test for the Lemoine Company," Patton added. Indeed, that was the case for all parties involved in the project.

"The Shaw Center brings together everybody who is interested in all the cultural events going on in Baton Rouge and in that respect it is like the center of the city," Schwartz said. "The hope is that this building will generate lots of economic activity, which it already has."