Children´s Deck and Data Center

Merit Award for Institutional - 2006 - The American Institute of Architects Alabama Chapter
Honor Citation - 2006 - The Americas Institute of Architects Gulf State Region
Member Choice Award - 2006 - The Americas Institute of Architects Alabama Chapter
Honor Award - 2005 - The Americas Institute of Architects Birmingham Chapter

Efficiency in structure and space are essential for a cost effective parking deck. Owners consider such buildings commodities. A good architectural solution addresses these concerns and finds a way to meaningfully engage the urban fabric and its inhabitants. The Owner asked the architect to design an 800-car parking deck addition with a data center on top. Through a series of studies, the design team convinced the client to invert the concept. By utilizing the adjacent deck’s entry and ramps, the large parking volume of the addition was pushed up and away from the street exposing the data center, generally embedded in a building’s interior, in
a two-story bar of clear glass at the street front. Because of the massing limitations of a deck, the designers looked to materiality to further the building’s layering, to define the masses and their functions and to create a textural richness for the city. The clear glass skin of the data center reveals the building’s structure and the functions it houses to the pedestrian. At upper floors, the design team worked to invent a cost-effective veil to neutralize the view of parked cars while still expressing the structure and its utilitarian functions. After studying digital and full-scale mock-ups, the architects developed a regular 5’x5’ perforated steel panel module assembled with standard hardware. Each panel is anchored to a vertical galvanized mullion with four pegs. Each peg varies in length and, when tightened with a bolt, creates a uniform deformation in each panel that attracts and reflects light. The perforations make the panel virtually invisible from the inside and opaque from the outside. At night,interior lights glow through the perforations adding new transparency to the skin. In a profile that promises to grow into its context as the neighborhood grows around it, the glass box data center and the metal-clad deck offer city views to users and an ever-changing palette to passersby.

Date of completion: 2005