Project: Rice University New Engineering and Sciences Building
>>>The Rice University Engineering and Sciences Building, now known as the Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science, is a 250,000 SF research facility that replaces the Abercrombie Engineering Laboratory and is the largest research facility on Rice University’s historic campus. Masonry components are featured heavily throughout this building at both the interior and the exterior. Handmade St. Joe brick, Belden molded brick, cast stone, and Texas limestone were used in nonconventional forms to limit solar heat gain through a solar responsible enclosure and provide masonry elements in keeping with the architectural vernacular of the campus.
The facade features brick and punched recessed windows complemented by a series of ornamental details inclusive of angled brick, massive cast stone sills (many of which were lugged), and cast stone pilasters. The design reduces energy demand by leveraging natural light through the use of the series of angled pilasters and vertical brick fins to strategically allow an appropriate amount of daylight to enter the perimeter offices and penetrate further into the lab fronts. Over 350,000 bricks were used to complete the building and an astounding 10% were special shapes from the factory (approximately 37,000 special shapes in 32 different profiles). Handmade St. Joe brick is the primary brick used on the façade and Beldon brick was chosen for the sawtooth patterns. An interesting detail on the façade is the brick and cast stone bands utilized a Fibonacci sequence to determine coursing at the level one walls and at the stair wing walls that extend up and past the roof.
An arcade along the building’s western face completes a shaded walkway around the engineering quadrangle and is equipped with a brick and cast stone shading screen, commonly referred to as ‘the veil’, that modulates sunlight and is supported by an elaborate cantilevered steel tube structure. The design of the veil includes alternating bands of Belden brick and two different colors of cast stone expertly spaced with aluminum tube to allow for exact rotation of the bricks. The two different color cast stone units used in the veil wall appear to be placed randomly but, in fact, are in specific locations. Belden brick was chosen for the veil due to their slightly more uniform shape when compared with the handmade St. Joe brick. The solid Belden molded brick and the cast stone were cored to allow galvanized steel all-thread rods to pass through them, then they were spaced with aluminum pipe that was individually cut in various sizes (almost 20,000 in total) to account for slight fluctuations in the molded brick while maintaining the precision required of the veil. All brick had to be secured at specific angles to the wall plane and the aluminum pipe spacers had to be centered on the all-thread. This required a non-staining dense adhesive fill for the brick holes and aluminum pipe in order to keep everything temporarily in place. The all-thread sections were joined with couplers that were intentionally positioned to be hidden inside the brick. The veil was divided into smaller sections that were encapsulated by horizontal steel elements that were first secured by tensioning the all-thread passing through them. This post-tensioning technique compressed the brick assemblies and ensured that all units would remain in their intended location. Then, the horizontal elements were fastened to the adjacent vertical tube structure. Ultimately, the brick veil wall uses sixteen times less embodied carbon than the implementation of an aluminum screen.
This project presented a few unique conditions.
The veil wall was not fully detailed and CMS provided significant input in order to create the final design. Mockups were built with different spacer and stone materials in order to demonstrate the technique to be used and its visual outcome.
The stone cladding on the first level corridor was erected on two walls that were not parallel to one another. However, the vertical joints were designed and drawn to align perfectly across the corridor thus requiring more piece sizes of stone than typically used.
Inside, a cantilevered sculptural stair in the atrium that rises the height of the building had to be installed prior to the installation of the brick wing walls. The elaborate scaffolding for these walls (a combination of tubular welded frame, systems and tube and clamp) was within 3’ of the stair units severely complicating material distribution and installation.
The brick mortar joints are intentionally not consistent throughout and are a combination of field brick using a reverse weathered strike on the bed joint and a healed head joint and lower-level brick, sawtooth brick and soffit brick with flushed joints.
The new arcade known as the “Maxfield Connector” that replaced the previous one on the Abercrombie Building incorporated a concealed lintel system to create the archways that tied the two buildings together.
The installation soffits required innovative thinking along with skill and craftsmanship due to the following conditions and requirements:
Since the structure was in place prior to the masonry contract, the soffit embeds were placed at 4’oc without the benefit of layout drawings for the intricate brick soffits.
The brick soffits were constructed onsite in small fabrication facility utilizing solid St. Joe brick laid up vertically as shiners.
The solid St. Joe bricks were cored at our Houston warehouse in order to receive the panel reinforcing and anchorage accommodation and the brick with exposed edges had to have a ‘stop core’ so as not to be visible.
Due to the necessity to have the soffit panel joints align with the window mullions and terminate at the angled pilasters and vertical fins, there were 660 panels with very few typical sizes thus complicating the panel construction and engineering.
Some panels were approaching 7’ in length. Steel strong backs were incorporated into the back of all units to limit deflection and to provide anchor flexibility for the 4’oc embeds.
Further complicating the soffit building process was the acute angles at the ends of many panels which required field measuring of actual conditions prior to angle creation. Also, due to the extremely tight schedule, the punched windows and the exterior veneer flashing were in place prior to soffit panel erection; essentially creating a pocket enclosed on three sides to place the units in.
The most unusual soffit challenge was the task of aligning the exposed exterior brick panel edge such that it appeared bonded with the wall veneer above. This gave the impression that the wall began suspended in space with no support. The task required that the entire perimeter of the building be laid out for bond prior to the erection of soffit panels.
Finally, CMS was tasked with the removal and storage of William McVey’s Indiana limestone bas relief sculpture of Prometheus harnessing energy from the sun that adorned the main entrance of the Abercrombie Engineering Laboratory before it was demolished. CMS dry laid all of the delicate reclaimed stone at its warehouse, photographed the artwork, cleaned and patched the stones, cut the perimeter to match its new location, transported everything to the site and installed the sculpture in its new home at the main corridor of the building.
The sustainable design strategies of the Ralph S. O'Connor Building for Engineering and Science along with the use of St. Joe brick and limestone balances aesthetics and impact, thus creating a functional and environmentally responsible building that is visually compatible with the other buildings on this historic campus.