Anything worth doing is worth doing right. The five-story parking garage at 112 East 5th Street in Austin, Texas was treated with custom colors on perforated façade panels from McElroy Metal. The install required a little extra care to ensure the color pattern was right.
“Every new building in Austin has to make an architectural statement and this one certainly does,” says Dave Stone, president at Engineered Metals Company of Fair Oaks, Texas. EMCO was onsite for 60 days to complete the installation of McElroy Metal panels.
Aluminum coil (.0400-inches thick) was coated by Precoat Metals in Valspar custom colors and shipped to a perforator. Specifications called for the panels to achieve 60 percent perforation. After going through the punching process, the coil was re-coiled, shipped to McElroy Metal, where it was formed to the company’s Multi-Cor profile. Many standard McElroy Metal panel profiles can be perforated for use as a screen façade.
“It’s an open parking garage, but we still needed the panels perforated to meet code,” says Stephanie Guariglia, senior associate at Sixthriver Architects in Austin. “It’s a large and tall building so the perforation provides a variation from a solid face.”
Guariglia established a specific pattern for the panels. “The four colors were chosen from Sherwin-Williams paint colors,” she says. “The green is associated with environmentally friendly colors and it provides an energetic feel along with some pop to the building. The other colors varied from gray to black, so we established a pattern that provided the look of movement as opposed to a flat checkerboard. We definitely had a specific pattern to where each color would be.”
The green color, for the non-perforated panels designed to block headlights of traffic inside the garage, is named Lounge Green; the remaining colors applied to the perforated Multi-Cor panels are Software, Cyberspace and Online.
The facility serves as a parking garage for businesses located at 501 Congress. The largest occupant there is Dropbox, a company that provides a file hosting service to back-up or transfer photos and videos.
Stone said his crew was very careful to install the panel pattern to specifications. EMCO constructed the framing to support the panels and installed the panels. By the time EMCO crews were allowed to work on the garage, the project was a little behind.
“When we started working, the attached office building (at 501 Congress) was already occupied,” Stone says. “And they wanted it done before the South by Southwest celebration in Austin, which takes over the whole downtown. We were able to get it done on time.”
South by Southwest conferences and festivals offer a “unique convergence of independent films and emerging technologies.” The 10-day event started days after the installation was complete.
“McElroy Metal really stepped up on this project and I think everyone is pleased with the way it looks,” Stone says.