RPC Exceed

Rob Pelletier Construction, Inc. Houston Texas

Rob Pelletier Construction, Inc.

contact@rpcinc.com
p (281) 227-3577
Central Texas: (512) 962-9522
10189 FM 1960• Dayton, TX 77535

The Ashton

The spectacular new Ashton luxury apartment tower is a $96 million, 36-story multifamily development in the heart of downtown Austin, Texas. Ashton offers 259 luxury living units, including a seventh-fl oor pool deck and two-story penthouse level, as well as fi ve levels of below-grade parking for an adjacent offi ce tower and six levels of above-grade parking for residents. Overlooking Lady Bird Lake on one side and downtown on the other, Ashton is located in Austin’s popular 2nd Street District with retail, dining and entertainment venues. At 36 stories, Ashton is now one of the tallest buildings in the city and makes a bold addition to the “New Austin” skyline. The project was initiated in August of 2006 and will be completed in October, 2009.

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SPECK STREET PARKING GARAGE

Texas State University-San Marcos, founded in 1903, currently serves more than 28,000 students in 110 undergraduate and 96 graduate programs. Distinguished alumni include the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson. The main campus in San Marcos, Texas is situated on the edge of the beautiful Texas Hill Country. Construction of the university’s Speck Street Parking Garage with 735 parking spaces was completed in August, 2008 and designed to address the urgent need for more student and special events parking. The facility is located at a principal campus entrance and borders a quiet residential neighborhood. The design team was challenged to develop a highly-attractive façade that concealed parked cars, supported the Spanish Colonial architecture utilized throughout the campus, and met the mechanical ventilation requirements for the enclosed parking structure.

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MIAMI BEACH CITY HALL PARKING GARAGE

The Vision

This seven-story City Hall Parking Garage in Miami Beach, Florida was completed in 2009 as the final addition to the city’s Civic Center Campus. It poses a stunning architectural statement while serving as a gateway to the city’s historic Art Deco district. The 300,000 square foot facility includes 38,550 square feet of office space and connects to the city hall administration building via a pedestrian bridge. The garage also provides event parking for the nearby Miami Beach Convention Center and Lincoln Road Mall commercial center.

 

CHANDLER-GILBERT COMMUNITY COLLEGE WILLIAMS CAMPUS

The Vision

Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Mesa, Arizona, serves more than 16,000 students at three different locations in the Southeast Valley of the Phoenix metropolitan area. The 753-acre Williams Campus was originally created from a portion of the former Williams Air Force Base and is in close proximity to Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. In December, 2008, the college completed construction of Engel Hall, a spectacular new 20,778 square-foot nursing classroom and faculty office building and 6,000 square-foot covered outdoor plaza on the Williams Campus. The first floor of the facility houses student classrooms, laboratory spaces and lounge areas; the second floor houses faculty offices.

Engel Hall was developed as part of the Williams Education Research and Training Master Plan and with an administration directive to provide the college with a new standard of design and architectural materials for future expansion projects across the campus. Achieving maximum energy efficiency and indoor air comfort by minimizing the impact of the hot Arizona sun and a minimum LEED Gold Certification were key requirements of this project. Materials and products employed in the facility were selected based on their insulative value, their durability under extreme regional weather conditions, their visual and textural intrigue, their recycled content and their regional availability.

The Airolite Look…

Architects positioned Engel Hall’s building footprint and created exterior facades to establish a revitalized street presence to the adjacent avenue. The building’s low-profile and sleek lines are visually integrated with the expansive horizon that surrounds the campus. Engel Hall’s engaging but understated exterior immediately projects a progressive, contemporary image for the college and helps support the Master Plan’s recommendation to create new space that “represents the place of this institution in its community.”

A sweeping veil of Airolite sun controls spans the entire length and height of Engel Hall’s second floor providing a very distinctive, visual intrigue to the building during daylight hours and a stunning presence when backlit from the interior at night. The stylish second floor wall of Airolite sun controls also provides a dramatic framed view of the Superstition Mountains for visitors standing in the outdoor plaza where graduation ceremonies, concerts, trade fairs and other campus events will be held. The sun controls’ Kynar 500® Pearlescent Warm Silver finish matches the adjacent storefront and ceiling systems.

That Works

Vital shading provided by the sun controls contribute to energy-efficient cooling and desired thermal comfort for faculty offices without obstructing interior views of the surrounding campus.

Six-inch Airolite airfoil blades form the continuous length and height of the second floor. Blades are arrayed horizontally at 6 inches on center with a solar orientation of 30 degrees and were delivered to the site in approximately 10 feet wide x 6 feet high factory-assembled sections. Each sun control section is secured to steel trusses which also support the overhanging second floor. In addition, the flexibility of the Airolite sun controls relative to solar orientation helped with the user’s thermal comfort, and their recycled material content helped in achieving LEED Gold Certification. Airolite’s sun controls provided shade for the faculty offices, which in turn created a more pleasing visual environment and a more comfortable thermal environment for the users. The sun controls helped contribute to reduced solar heat gain which resulted in reduced cooling and energy consumption. “Airolite’s architectural louvers provided a design element that subtly and successfully addressed the functional needs of the users, energy efficiency requirements of the building, and our own aesthetic goals as a design firm,” stated Paul Goldammer, project manager for Gabor Lorant Architects, Inc.

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DONALD M. PAYNE, SR., SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY

The Vision

The construction of the Donald M. Payne, Sr. School of Technology brought a new level in career technical education to Newark, New Jersey. Named for the late educator and congressman, the school offers students classes that serve as steppingstones to programs offered by local colleges and universities.
More than 1,100 students attend the school. Its three-story footprint is 320,000 square feet and holds 58 traditional classrooms and 30 larger spaces for specialized programs including the building trades. Students can choose from a wide variety of technical programs that include music production, cyber security, culinary arts, forensic sciences, green energy, and cosmetology.
The facility’s size required several rooftop air handling units to meet the ventilation needs. Wanting to maintain
a clean look for the rooftop, specifications called for using louver screens to hide the equipment from view. The contractor selected Airolite’s inverted blade louver screen, model ENCB609 to hide the equipment from view and offer an attractive appearance for people looking at the facility.

 

The Airolite Look…

The specifications called for using more than 1,500 linear feet of louver screens to hide the rooftop equipment in more than seven locations on the roof. Airolite’s model ENCB6096 with its horizontal and inverted blades and six-inch depth offered an ideal aesthetic look while ensuring people saw none of the equipment on the roof. Many sections of the louvers had varying height dimensions. The neighborhood around the school also posed a challenge to the setup and installation of the louvers. Fully-assembled louvers in shipment crates were too large to navigate the narrow streets and surrounding property. Contractors asked if the louvers could be delivered in a knocked down (unassembled) form on three separate shipments.
The staggered delivery schedule required coordination between Airolite and the contractors to ensure the louver screens were available when needed. Airolite coordinated the special crating, sequencing and labeling for a smooth and easy install. Since the screens were unassembled, the blades needed to be snapped in place on the louver “tree,” long brackets on which the blades are attached. This assembly required precise placement to maintain the continuous straight lines created by the louver blades. The contractor used a laser to ensure the lines of the louver blades were straight.

 

That Works 

Airolite louver screen ENCB6096 is a versatile, horizontal and inverted blade louver screen that functions extremely well as a sight and security barrier. Its inverted blades help deflect sound upward and away from the surrounding neighborhood, keeping rooftop equipment noise to a minimum.

The completion of the Donald M. Payne, Sr. School of Technology was on time and under budget. Several factors contributed. Many cited Airolite’s ability to work with contractors and deliver the louver screen in the knockdown form. The well-marked, knockdown crating allowed for on-time delivery and easy assembly without overwhelming the assembly area because of narrow streets and limited space. Others mentioned the long spans of the screen.  They remarked how it not only hid rooftop equipment but added to the sleek design of the building.

Mammoet USA South, Inc.

A global company headquartered in Schiedam, the Netherlands, Mammoet serves petrochemical, mining, power generation, natural resource development, civil and marine industries worldwide with tailor-made heavy lifting and transportation solutions for onshore or offshore. Structural elements are exposed and finished in Mammoet’s brilliant corporate red signature color to match the company’s logo; metal wall panels demonstrate bold, continuous, horizontal, ribbed profiles that are finished in a reflective metallic gray color; and, each window frame is painted white to enhance recognition and visibility. The design team chose a canted wall design to reflect Mammoet’s commitment to innovation. Like each of the structural elements in the envelope, Airolite’s load-bearing outrigger elements incorporated in the cantilevered Airolite sun controls are painted Mammoet red to emphasize their structural contribution and complement the color of the corporate logo. The metallic gray bar blades, configured in a progression from 10-1/2-inches to 4-5/8-inch wide members, and round fascia elements in the sun controls pose yet more linear horizontal sightlines and complement the color and profile of the metal panels.

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Guildford Town Centre Expansion, Phase II

Owned and managed by Ivanhoé Cambridge, Guildford Town Centre in Surrey, British Columbia was built in 1966 and has undergone multiple expansions and renovations since then. The second phase of a five year expansion, one of the largest shopping center redevelopment projects in Canada, was completed in August, 2013 and added a dramatic new entrance, a complete refurbishment of the interior and 213,000 more square feet of retail space for 70 additional retailers and a new Food Court.

Today, Guildford Town Centre offers over 1,200,000 square feet of leasable area with over 250 stores and restaurants. Airolite architectural louvers are featured prominently on top of the rotunda over the new entrance to the mall.

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UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO HOSPITAL

The Vision

On February 2, 2004, the University of Colorado Hospital opened the beautiful new Anschutz Cancer Pavilion on the new Fitzsimons Campus located in Aurora, Colorado. Physicians, employees and patients participated in the design of the state-of- the-art $148.8 million hospital, helping the architects achieve a functional, efficient building with spectacular views of the nearby Rocky Mountains. An important sustainability goal was to maximize the use of natural daylight, while using energy efficient controls to turn-off light fixtures in corridors and exterior areas during bright daylight hours. The reliance on natural daylight resulted in the design team’s need to control glare and heat transmitted through glazing and window systems.

The Airolite Look…

A massive curvilinear window system frames the western view of the mountains from the ambulatory care center. This ten-foot high wall of glass paints a constantly evolving image of the changing seasons evidenced in the roof garden and the majestic Rocky Mountain backdrop. At the same time, this large expanse of glass poses monumental challenges for maintaining energy efficiency. The height of the glass wall dictated a monumental horizontal sun control projection of more than eight and one-half feet to shade the windows to inhibit thermal heat transmittance and glare during peak daylight hours.

A complimentary sun control design with a comparatively modest maximum 4′-0″ projection is utilized over windows in patient rooms located in the south-facing wall to support operation of the patient-operated environmental controls. A special fascia element maintains continuity of the horizontal linear configuration across the red masonry façade.

That Works

Notwithstanding the use of extruded aluminum elements to reduce the weight of the eight and one-half foot sun control assemblies, the extended projection resulted in significant moment forces transferred to the structure by the sun controls. This problem was addressed by departing from the window supplier’s standard frame, which was not designed to accommodate the substantial moment forces transferred by the sun control outrigger. Instead, a horizontal steel member was incorporated in the exterior wall design to address the loads transferred by the sun controls. The sun control outriggers are secured to the steel member with brackets which project through painted aluminum cladding. In addition, the maximum wind design forces required the use of diagonal stainless steel support rods to mitigate the moment forces transferred to the steel member located in the exterior wall design.

The designer elected to utilize vertical extruded aluminum tubes spaced six-inches on center to achieve crisp, uniform, and sharply defined sight lines for the sun control infill. The close center spacing of the vertical tube blades yield a sun cut-off angle that prevents sunlight from passing between the blades except at its maximum height. The hollow shape dissipates heat easily and is a rigid member that can accommodate the 5′-0″ maximum span without difficulty. To alleviate the costly and cumbersome task of fabricating each tube blade to the constantly changing radius, the factory-assembled sun control sections were designed to be segmented about the curvilinear window configuration.

Surprisingly, only the fascia element is radiused to lend the perception that the entire sun control system is comprised of a series of non-linear segments. Lastly, selection of a white fluoropolymer coating enhances the sun control’s capacity to deflect sunlight, head and glare from the windows below and through windows located above the sun control to enable diffused daylight to be projected across interior spaces.

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Nueva School

The Vision

Learn by doing, learn by care is the driving force behind the culture of the Nueva School. The private school, founded in 1967, develops and nurtures gifted children to maximize their potential. They engage students using project-based and social-emotional learning, tailored the needs of each student.

Nueva School started as a pre-K through middle school and in 2014 expanded to a second campus to house its high school program. The new campus in San Mateo provided the opportunity to approach secondary education with a greater connection to community. According to the school’s website, the San Mateo campus was, “designed to use 65% less energy than a typical high school,” and a “transit-oriented campus . . . conceived as a ‘living laboratory’ that will inspire . . .”

The architectural design of the San Mateo campus incorporated many custom sunshade products that provided functional thermal reduction while captivating the attention of all who see it.

The Airolite Look…

The design of sun control products from Airolite emphasizes reducing heat transfer while still permitting natural lighting. The sun control products for the Nueva School all were custom designed and included origami-shaped sunscreens for smaller windows and sun shades having dimensions up to 25’ 4” wide by 27’ 4”. A critical requirement for the large sun shades was the ability to install easily. Airolite products are designed for easy installation; however the sheer size of the sun shades demanded additional engineering to minimize the labor needed for field installation. Working with the contractors, Airolite engineers developed a plan to build and deliver the larger sun shades in several sections instead of assembling individual pieces on-site. This planning resulted in field labor savings of more than 50%.

Attaching the larger sun shades to the building also required a non-standard approach to ensure these products could stand up to the point load and wind loads. In place of traditional methods, engineers developed a process to attach the sun shades using brackets that went into the wall structure prior to the window system. The brackets attached to steel plates providing the necessary support to hold each sun shade in place.

Aesthetics also were important to the project. Architects and school leaders wanted to stimulate the young minds of the students, making it important that every aspect of the facility achieved this goal. All Airolite sun control products attached to the Nueva School had to match exact primary and secondary colors specified.

That Works

The San Mateo campus of the Nueva School opened in 2014 as a non-traditional approach to secondary education. The campus achieved LEED Gold certification, meeting its goal of using up to 65% less energy.

Airolite custom sun control products assisted in helping the school achieve its LEED certification. The sun shades prevented heat transfer from sun glare yet allowed light and air from San Francisco Bay to flow in the windows unobstructed. Airolite offers custom solutions regardless of the size of the product required.

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THE JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL CAMPUS

The Airolite Look…

The new clinical building consists of two towers, each 12 stories high, that join together at the eighth floor. Although no louvers are visible from the south-facing front entrance of the building, the sides and rear of the facility contain over 21,000 square feet of louvers. In total, over $1.5 million dollars worth of louvers were installed. Most of the louvers form a continuous sweeping span around the sixth floor. The sixth floor louver wall periodically rises up into the seventh floor and gently draws one’s attention skyward toward the eighth floor where the twin towers come together. Airolite storm class louvers (Type SCH7), extruded aluminum stationary louvers (Type CB609) and (Type K 609) and extruded aluminum drainable louvers (CB638HP) were painted with a custom color-match Kynar® pearlescent pewter coating to match other aluminum materials in the building. The sleek, clean lines of the louver walls with concealed vertical mullions complement the building’s impressive modern look. Six to seven inch louver blade depths add further interest to the building’s exterior design.

That Works

In addition to looking great, the Airolite louvers designed for this building provide much needed intake air and exhaust ventilation while minimizing or preventing water penetration. The building’s location on the East Coast makes it vulnerable to occasional hurricanes and high winds blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. Water penetration was minimized at reasonable cost by using a combination of Airolite storm class, stationary and drainable louvers.

Airolite’s Type SCH7 is a storm class combination louver designed and rated to provide high volume intake and exhaust ventilation and the greatest level of protection against water penetration. It was used on parts of the building with the greatest exposure to severe wind and rain off the coast. Airolite’s extruded aluminum stationary louvers (Type K609/CB609) are designed for applications that require intake and exhaust ventilation with moderate protection against water penetration and were used in less vulnerable locations. Extruded aluminum drainable louvers (CB638HP) are drainable louvers designed to provide high volume air flow and resistance to water penetration. The louver incorporates a drainable head-frame to prevent water from cascading from shear-walls onto the louver assembly and becoming entrained in the intake air flow. In addition to the louver walls, Airolite provided penthouses with louvers to protect equipment on top of the building.

Dan Higdon, ISEC, Inc. supervised installation of the Airolite louvers and was very pleased with the staged delivery that took place over one year. “They pretty much came on schedule,” he said. “At one point, they were coming faster than we could install them.”