Precast Solutions - November/December 2008 - (Page 10) Town Center are clad in some type of precast concrete or brick. The panel system consists of a lightweight architectural precast concrete, hot-dipped galvanized welded wire for strength, insulated Nelson anchors for attachment, and galvanized or stainless steel studs on the interior side. Architects originally intended for the Westin’s exterior to be made of an Exterior Insulating Finishing System (EIFS), but the building’s contractor and owner, Armada Hoffler, decided on a tougher system that would stand up to severe weather and the test of time. Ashley Smith, president and chief operating officer of Smith-Midland Corp., the precast provider on the Westin project, suggested the lightweight precast panels, as he knew they would allow for a direct swap of materials from EIFS without the need for additional structure. One of the major attributes that made the panels attractive to Armada Hoffler was its light weight. The product weighs about 30 pounds per square foot. In addition, the panels are only 2 inches thick. Traditional materials would have been much heavier than the panels, says Bahram Kamali, project architect and partner with Brennan Beer Gorman Architects, Washington, D.C. The lightweight precast panels meant they could be larger, as much as 35 feet tall by 14 feet wide, reducing the number of lifts for the crane as well as allowing greater speed in enclosing the structure and making it weather-tight, as obviously there were fewer joints to seal. The panels were installed vertically with each one covering three stories of the building. Smith-Midland Corp. developed a special connection system for the Westin project that allowed the weight of the panels to distribute evenly across the three floors to avoid adding extra steel to the building’s frame to support the panels’ weight. Had traditional materials been used, the builder would have had to add concrete beams around the structure’s perimeter to 10 PRECAST SOLUTIONS | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008 Courtesy Smith-Midland Corp. The interior 8-inch-thick precast panels offer sound control without the need for layers of expensive gypsum board. The interior auditorium demising walls achieve a sound transmission coefficient (STC) greater than 65.
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