Drivers Club

An Enthusiastic Design

There are certain hobbies that attract people who devote themselves to the hobby with a devotion beyond mere interest. Among those types of people are high-performance car enthusiasts. They blur the lane line between vocation and avocation.

For such enthusiasts, a facility needs to deliver more than just mundane storage capabilities, and the Drivers Club, Redmond, Wash., is a clubhouse that provides storage, of course, but also a showroom, and a true clubhouse where members can gather for social activities.

TVA Architects Inc., Portland, Ore., was charged with meeting those needs that included making a facility secure enough to house rare cars, but open enough to host events. And do it with an eye to cost control while presenting a design sophisticated enough to coincide with high-end automobiles. To achieve it, they built two pre-engineered metal buildings from Butler Manufacturing, Kansas City, Mo., and clad them with a combination of insulated metal panels from Kingspan Insulated Panels Inc., Deland, Fla., and single-skin metal panels from Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp., Louisville, Ky.

The result was a project worthy of an award. “It was just a clean use of metal. It doesn’t have any ambiguity to it,” says judge Michael O’Connor, AIA, ACHA, principal/director of healthcare, Nichols, Melburg & Rossetto Architects + Engineers, Redding, Calif. “It was easy to see the different components of the building. The use of ribbed and smooth panels gave it a very nice rhythm.”

Alan Reed, FAIA, LEED AP, president and design principal, GWWO Architects, Baltimore concurs, saying, “When you look at the design intent there is a sense of motion here that gets at what the use of building is.”

The Panels Make a Statement

The use of metal panels on the exterior also reflects the role of the building. As the judges noted, the pattern of profiles creates a rhythm and sense of movement. TVA Architects achieved this heightened design concept while working with building materials often more associated with warehouses and manufacturing facilities. “At no point did we feel like we were customizing something that would normally just come off the shelf” says Wybenga. “We did break some standard conventions, though, and I’d say the biggest two things would be the Metal Sales overlay panels on the street-facing façade and the incorporation of the parapet and the internal gutters,” which were a suggestion and innovation from Span Construction.

“It was our intention to actually use the inherent properties of the panel system to elevate them. We started with looking at standard panel modules and looked to create visual interest using the differences in sheen and pattern of the various standard finishes that were available to us. We also looked at the form of the building, which has a huge effect. We worked with Span to develop details that allowed us to have a consistent parapet around the building rather than the low-slope gable that most people can quickly identify as a pre-engineered building with that distinct industrial look.”

2020 MCA Chairman’s Award Winner
Institutional Category

Read the Full Article Here: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/2017-chairmans-awards