The Dallas City Performance Hall is a 70,000 sq. ft., 750-seat professional theater located in the 68-acre renowned City of Dallas Arts District. The $40.5 million facility opened in September 2012 and is designed for theater, music, and dance performance companies.
This outstanding building is topped with a dramatic roof made of varying ribbon-like forms that mimic the flow of music and sound. The innovated roof design is also engineered to meet stringent acoustic and thermal programmatic requirements. The 25,000 sq. ft. roof utilizes Kalzip Alupluszinc 65/400 continuous panels in varying lengths to form the natural layered wave. Kalzip Alupluszinc has an aluminum base with a natural zinc finish.
The project was designed by a joint partnership of the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP as design architect, and Dallas, Texas-based Corgan Associates Inc. as architect of record. R. Kirk Johnson, associate at Corgan, was the project director responsible for project delivery and sustainability. Kalzip engineers provided product information, technical advice, construction submittals, and onsite supervision.
“Kalzip’s products and engineering allowed us to incorporate the continuous roof form with a minimum number of joints. Kalzip’s international experience was a major contributor in the product selection process. Their portfolio of work communicated how the products could meet the rigorous acoustic, geometric, aesthetic, sustainability, and thermal requirements of the project,” said Johnson.
Kalzip’s zinc-coated aluminum panels were used as the visible exterior surface and Kalzip’s sound dampening material was added to the roofing assembly for additional acoustic mass.
”Kalzip’s data base of acoustical information allowed Jaffe Holden, the project acoustician, to provide guidance for product usage. A multi-layered sandwich assembly consisting of structural metal decking, high density acoustic batt insulation, rigid board roofing insulation, Kalzip sound dampening mat, plywood, weather barrier, anti-drumming membrane, and zinc coated aluminum panels was used as the acoustic and thermal barrier. All of the roofing assembly was applied onsite,” Johnson added.
McCarthy Building Companies, Dallas, was the construction manager. The roofing sub-contractor for the project was Castro Roofing, also located in Dallas. According to Scott Brown, sheet metal manager for Castro and manager for this project, logistics were a primary concern on his portion of the work on this downtown Dallas facility.
“The location and restrictions on getting materials in and out were a major consideration. But our biggest challenge was getting the panels up to the roof. The panels were different lengths, with the biggest ones being 305-feet long. To get those panels up we had to close off the area because they reached out into the street. So we closed the street at three in the morning to run the panel up to the roof. It took 22 men to handle the panel coming out of the fabricating machine and 22 more men to pull it up on the roof. It was more of a logistical challenge because the panels are not heavy and they have a natural finish. This was our first experience with Kalzip and we were pleased with the engineering they provided for all the roof panels,” said Brown.
The project has received the North Texas Roofing Contractors Association’s 2012 Golden Hammer award and is being submitted for a Silver certification in the USGBC’s LEED program.