PROJECT OVERVIEW
The Catholic University of America (CUA) Conway School of Nursing is a 3-story, 102,000-square-foot nursing education facility featuring multi-functional clinical learning and instructional support areas. The stone exterior of the new Conway School of Nursing at CUA is a collegiate gothic style that complements several older buildings on the campus.
Precast concrete was chosen to achieve complex aesthetic design features, to meet an aggressive construction schedule, and to deliver a more affordable solution than hand laid stone. The stone – a Port Deposit Granite – was applied at the precast producer’s plant and coordinates with other campus buildings. Since precast is prefabricated to precise standards in a quality-controlled manufacturing environment tight tolerances were achieved for highly consistent panel results. Panels could also be delivered for quick installation at the job site, minimizing site disruption on an active campus located adjacent to a busy public street.
PRECAST SOLUTION
In total, approximately 700 precast concrete pieces were used on the project. These included sandblasted finished precast concrete wall panels, thin veneer stone-applied precast concrete wall panels (flat and radius), thin veneer stone-applied precast concrete columns, accent-featured precast concrete types (balconettes and entry-way piers), and copings and stair treads.
Matt Krebs, project executive for High Concrete Group, says the ornate and intricate aesthetic design with building projections involved a lot of coordination with the cast-in-place concrete and steel work, as well as the other trades. “High Concrete Group was involved for three months in weekly multihour design assist meetings with the design team, GC, and owner prior to any other trades being awarded.” In addition, due to the thin veneer stone installation process, designing the pieces to be handled in numerous orientations was challenging.
In producing the precast concrete, most pieces used their own forms with minimal repetition. Production forming used combinations of wood and foam forming to achieve the complex shapes required. “The project also had to be scheduled precisely to ensure that we could produce and install the stone in time for erection,” Krebs says.
Transportation and delivery, fortunately, did not pose any challenges. “Based on having to design for handling in multiple orientations, shipping was not a major hurdle,” Krebs says. Installation and erection also went smoothly. “With the very involved engineering efforts and planning with our erector, the installation went smoothly, with minimal precast-related issues,” Krebs says.
RECLAIMED STONE INNOVATIVE, SUSTAINABLE PROJECT FEATURE
“One of the most compelling and interesting stories on the construction side of the building is that all of the stone was reclaimed from the Transfiguration of Our Lord Church, which was built in Philadelphia in 1924. The church was demolished in 2009, and the stone salvaged from it was stored in a quarry in Delaware. RAMSA suggested that Catholic University consider it for the Conway building façade.
The quarry took the big blocks of stone that the church had been made from and split them down to the architectural sizing RAMSA wanted. The veneers ended up 2 to 5 inches thick, depending on the application.
There is something poetic about the stone coming from a church and going into a nursing school on the Catholic University campus,” noted Aaron Mengel, senior project manager at Clark Construction (excerpted from “New Building Enhances Nursing Education," Building Washington, Winter 2023).
The CUA Conway School of Nursing was also featured in the PCI Journal March-April 2024 issue as the Project Spotlight. Read the entire article HERE. |