IPD Process Leads To Custom Morin Panel For Portland Ambulatory Surgery Center

David Staczek	David Gonrowski

By: David Staczek, Principal, ZGF and David Gonrowski, Associate Partner, ZGF

Integrated Project Delivery is often hailed as a collaborative process that increases project efficiency by bringing all stakeholders together early and often, eliminating misunderstandings and redundancies.

At the site of Oregon Health & Sciences University’s Center for Health and Healing - South (CHH-South), in Portland, Ore., the IPD process resulted in all that and more. The partnership between engineers, designers, suppliers and installers, all co-located at the project site, enabled real-time product concept and creation of an entirely new metal panel, at no cost and of great value to the client.

The new Morin Z-12 was exactly what the design team was seeking to complement CHH-South's design aesthetic.

Idea and Inspiration

At CHH-South, a 430,000 SF, 14 story ambulatory surgery center, the IPD process included a co-location office, with designers ZGF Architects working elbow-to-elbow with contractor Hoffman Construction, metal panel supplier and installer General Sheet Metal, and other project team members.

During the schematic design phase, the ZGF / Hoffman team was seeking a concealed fastener façade panel that could be both field-installed and glazed into the curtain wall, with a texture dynamic enough to interact well with the building’s scale. After researching textured stainless steel, extruded aluminum and ACM panels, the team came across the MORIN W-12, a foot-wide panel with a single fold in the center affording a nice texture to the building’s exterior. The panel is traditionally popular with both installers and designers because of its visual appeal, ease of installation and overall flexibility.

Given the scale of CHH-South and the designers’ plan to incorporate panels in both one- and two-foot sections, the design team was looking for a panel with slightly more dynamism and movement. Designers had only to swivel around in their chairs and ask the on-site panel expert, Ric Olander from General Sheet Metal, if MORIN would be open to creating a custom metal panel for the CHH-South exterior.

Rather than a single fold of the W-12, the newly developed Z-12 features a pair of folds for a more dynamic profile.

From Paper to Panel

That same day, Olander was on the phone with Northwest Regional Sales Manager Bob Mohr and product vice president Scott Evans of MORIN, to inquire if MORIN could produce a 12” panel similar to the W-12 offering, but with an additional fold in the panel profile. Like the designers, Mohr and Evans too saw the potential of this design, and less than a week later Olander had mocked up a prototype panel.

At MORIN’s Fontana, Cali., facility the panel evolved from a paper sketch to final product. Morin’s technical team, excited to bring the contemporary design to life, took just two months to turn around the custom-roll forming tooling and begin panel production. The final panel retains attractive elements of W-12—dynamism, flexibility and ease of installation—but offers designers more options in terms of texture and reflection.

Industry Value

From eureka moment to final product, the process of creating the new metal panel took roughly eight months – a true testament to innovation, creativity and collaborative spirit born from the IPD process. The panel was named Z-12 in homage to both the W-12 panel that inspired the design and the ZGF designers that proposed the idea. The extra fold is estimated to provide twice the amount of faceted rigidity as the W-12 panel, creating a stronger product that still reflects light dynamically.

MORIN, keenly aware of the Z-12 panel’s potential applications beyond the CHH-South project, has since added Z-12 to its 2018 product line.

Forty-one thousand square feet of the panel is currently being installed at CHH- South, slated to open in 2019, and serves as a testament to the limitless possibilities created when industry players team together to make their ideas a reality.

About ZGF Archtects

ZGF Architects is a design firm with an intentionally diverse portfolio that includes healthcare and research facilities, academic buildings, mixed-use developments, corporate campuses, museums, transportation facilities and ecodistricts. A practice with more than 600 professionals and offices in Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York City, and Vancouver BC. In addition to receiving more than 1000 design awards, ZGF has been honored with the American Institute of Architects’ highest honor, the Architecture Firm Award, recognized for “creatively transforming client needs and aspirations into elegant, inventive architectural form, and establishing a standard of excellence and expectation of quality to which other firms aspire.”

About Morin - A Kingspan Group Company

Morin, a Kingspan Group Company, is a leading producer of single element metal wall and roof panel systems for commercial, industrial and residential construction. To learn more, visit www.morincorp.com.