Modern and stylish woven metal fabric panels from Cambridge Architectural add visual interest and facilitate solar shading for Taylor Place – Arizona State University’s premier residential community in downtown Phoenix, AZ.
Taylor Place is the first urban residence hall on campus, featuring a communal ground floor and two 12-story towers that accommodate nearly 1,300 students. Each floor contains a laundry facility, meeting room, lounge, and screened porch area.
The first floor of the Taylor Place development is open to both the students and the public. Featuring a number of retail venues, a dining facility, and a 4,000-square-foot shade garden, ASU wanted the establishment to have an urban atmosphere that facilitated interaction between students and city inhabitants. The look and feel of the Taylor Place development is chic and contemporary, thanks in part to Cambridge’s sophisticated steel mesh accents.
The Cambridge Architectural Solucent™ mesh system makes a unique decorative statement on the Taylor Place establishment exterior. The metal panels dress the outer surface of the building’s elevator shaft and function as vertical walls, providing shade along the pedestrian bridges that link the two towers on each floor.
On every odd-numbered floor, the bridges feature a cubic steel projection, formed from Cambridge’s mesh panels. The metal fabric functions as a heavy-duty screen to create a shaded outside porch area, complete with lounge furniture. Cambridge’s metal fabric is open yet closed, providing ventilation, scenic views, durability and safety.
“Cambridge’s woven mesh, on its own, captures the eye,” says Luke Brandt, Project Manager with Kovach Inc., the installer of the project. “Once installed, we were really impressed with how its long expanses were seamlessly connected on various levels of the building to create a massive sunshade.”
A glass and metal mesh element vertically extends along the building as well, enclosing the student lounge on each floor. When illuminated from the inside, Cambridge’s mesh fabric on the exterior allows light to escape, creating an artistic scene from the street view.
“Arizona State University is a renowned institution, focused on the future,” says Heather Collins, Director of Marketing for Cambridge Architectural. “The Taylor Place development is no exception, and we were really excited to contribute our resources to a project fostering urbanization and modernity.”
Aside from its aesthetic and shading benefits, the Cambridge Solucent system is 100% recyclable and virtually indestructible, outlasting most other materials in durability. Mesh holds up incredibly well in the extreme heat of the Arizona climate, with a greatly reduced need for repair or replacement.
Cambridge is committed to assisting the design and construction team from initial concept to final installation on each and every project. For Taylor Place, Cambridge worked closely with project leaders to ensure issue-free installation and a comprehensive, long-lasting architectural solution.
The system was fabricated with a modified version of Cambridge’s Cubist metal fabric pattern, featuring large-scaled, flexible open weaves that shade and screen structures including facades, parking garages and pavilions.
Cambridge’s Scroll™ tension attachment hardware was used to install the modified Cubist product. The only tension system to keep the focus on the metal fabric by hiding the attachment behind it, Scroll conceals the support by quarter-wrapping the bracket that attaches to the structural support. The unique hardware grips the metal fabric and holds it in tension up to 100 feet.
Construction on the Taylor Place development was completed in Fall 2009. The project team consists of architect The Smith Group, Phoenix, AZ, and installer Kovach Inc., Chandler, AZ.
Cambridge Architectural is an active member of the USGBC, and helps architects take maximum advantage of LEED credit through the many categories in which architectural mesh systems apply. Cambridge has several LEED APs on staff as well as sales representatives who understand exactly how Solucent systems can contribute to a LEED certified project. Most notably, mesh can contribute to as many as four LEED points for optimized energy performance, and can help in acquiring additional points for incorporating recycled content and reducing glare into the regularly occupied areas of a building as a contribution to daylighting and views credits.