Office dA, In c. - The Witte Arts Building

Office dA, In c.
The Witte Arts Building
Green Bay Wisconsin

Image courtesy Office dA, Inc.

Green Bay is aggressively investing in its downtown area as a way of reconnecting its residential neighbourhoods to the Fox River, giving a social and commercial life to it streets, and investing in the city’s physical and cultural infrastructure.

The intersection of Broadway and Hubbard Street, once the center of its downtown, fell prey to urban decay from the post-war period into the era of suburban sprawl and massive expansion. An extension of the Historic District Zone the area is marked predominantly by load-bearing brick buildings.

The Witte Arts Building site (100 ft. X 30 ft.) straddles the corner of Broadway and Hubbard Street and stands diagonally across from the future Market Building/Plaza.

The program called for a Gallery and Café on the first floor and a design studio on the second floor. Portions of the second floor may be rented to independent designers as necessary, arranged in an open loft scenario. The layout maximizes the public exposure of the first floor to the street while maintaining a more insular and introverted attitude towards the second floor.

Given their latent connections and the internal infrastructural requirements, the strategy was to create an interpenetration between the two programs by drawing the light through the second floor into the gallery below while inversely bringing the mechanical cores from the underground through the central core up into the second floor.

Image courtesy Office dA, Inc.

This was achieved by means of two devices. Firstly, the bathroom and HVAC core is constructed as a single geological mass, a “volcanic neck” of sorts, extending the wood surface of the first floor up the shaft of the core.

Image courtesy Office dA, Inc.

Secondly, suspended skylights are slung from the roof down through the second floor, bringing light into the gallery while producing ominous crystalline boxes on the second floor. All boxes stand autonomously detached from the floors, emphasizing the penetration of the inserted elements. In this way, each program is able to maintain the required autonomy to secure operational closure, while simultaneously capitalizing on each others proximity to blend the public and private realm bring the space of production into the space of presentation - blurring traditional boundaries between back-of-house operations and staged spaces of appearance.

Image courtesy Office dA, Inc.

Working singularly with brick as construction medium, the three faces are treated as “slipped” elevations, wrapping around the building and marking the corners as the site of privilege. Composed on the oblique, the buildings elevations reveal allusive symmetries about the building’s corners giving tentative compositional stasis on its diagonal axes.

Image courtesy Office dA, Inc.

Capitalizing on local steel mill industries and their accompanying digital manufacturing technologies, the design proposes a composite structural system that develops both conventional and extraordinary brick curtain-wall connections. Brick is used not merely as a cladding system, but moreover, as a vehicle to spatialize the scheme - among other scenarios, to “carve” out the vault, to give thickness and depth to the Broadway elevation, and alternatively to give thinness to the balcony wall. Thus, brick is embraced in its brute materiality to intensify tectonic variations, using the medium of curtain wall-masonry construction as its vehicle.

The Broadway Elevation, addressing the constraints of the historic commission, radicalizes the weight of the facade by making it even deeper than a conventional load-bearing wall. Using the dimension of the shelving system on the second floor, the brick is clad around and into the face of the building to produce the illusion of exceptional depth authenticating the facade on programmatic terms.

Image courtesy Office dA, Inc.

The Parking Grove Elevation exercises an architecture of thinness, whereby a ribbon window provides a panoramic view towards the Old Fort Howard Neighbourhood. The brick is clad like a rippled curtain wall, as if a suspended piece of fabric. The Hubbard Street elevation plays out the conjunction and contradictions of these two opposing facades, producing conditions of heightened depth and thinness in delicate juxtapositions, of slippages between glass and brick, of carved spaces and suspended surfaces. The edges of this facade dovetail into the adjoining elevations exposing the brick veneer in relationship with thickened zones of load-bearing proportions.

Image courtesy Office dA, Inc.

The public stair produces the most characteristic moment of this wall, whereby the inner liner of the stair is conjoined with the outer elevation in an unprecedented masonry grafting of separate surfaces. Brick is corbelled out over the ascending promenade covering the walkway up to the second floor entry. The weighty corbelling is produced as a light curtain-wall system suspended by laser-cut steel angles.

Image courtesy Office dA, Inc.

The Witte Arts Building is slated for construction in early 2002.

January 28, 2002

Office dA, Inc. arcspace features





				Features
		Office dA, In c. The Witte Arts Building Green Bay Wisconsin Image courtesy Office dA, Inc. Green Bay is aggressively investing in its downtown area as a way of reconnecting its residential neighbourhoods to the Fox River, giving a social and commercial life to it streets, and investing in the city’s physical and cultural infrastructure. The intersection of Broadway and Hubbard Street, once the center of its downtown, fell prey to urban decay from the post-war period into the era of suburban sprawl and massive expansion. An extension of the Historic District Zone the area is marked predominantly by load-bearing brick buildings. The Witte Arts Building site (100 ft. X 30 ft.) straddles the corner of Broadway and Hubbard Street and stands diagonally across from the future Market Building/Plaza. The program called for a Gallery and Café on the first floor and a design studio on the second floor. Portions of the second floor may be rented to independent designers as necessary, arranged in an open loft scenario. The layout maximizes the public exposure of the first floor to the street while maintaining a more insular and introverted attitude towards the second floor. Given their latent connections and the internal infrastructural requirements, the strategy was to create an interpenetration between the two programs by drawing the light through the second floor into the gallery below while inversely bringing the mechanical cores from the underground through the central core up into the second floor. Image courtesy Office dA, Inc. This was achieved by means of two devices. Firstly, the bathroom and HVAC core is constructed as a single geological mass, a “volcanic neck” of sorts, extending the wood surface of the first floor up the shaft of the core. Image courtesy Office dA, Inc. Secondly, suspended skylights are slung from the roof down through the second floor, bringing light into the gallery while producing ominous crystalline boxes on the second floor. All boxes stand autonomously detached from the floors, emphasizing the penetration of the inserted elements. In this way, each program is able to maintain the required autonomy to secure operational closure, while simultaneously capitalizing on each others proximity to blend the public and private realm bring the space of production into the space of presentation - blurring traditional boundaries between back-of-house operations and staged spaces of appearance. Image courtesy Office dA, Inc. Working singularly with brick as construction medium, the three faces are treated as “slipped” elevations, wrapping around the building and marking the corners as the site of privilege. Composed on the oblique, the buildings elevations reveal allusive symmetries about the building’s corners giving tentative compositional stasis on its diagonal axes. Image courtesy Office dA, Inc. Capitalizing on local steel mill industries and their accompanying digital manufacturing technologies, the design proposes a composite structural system that develops both conventional and extraordinary brick curtain-wall connections. Brick is used not merely as a cladding system, but moreover, as a vehicle to spatialize the scheme - among other scenarios, to “carve” out the vault, to give thickness and depth to the Broadway elevation, and alternatively to give thinness to the balcony wall. Thus, brick is embraced in its brute materiality to intensify tectonic variations, using the medium of curtain wall-masonry construction as its vehicle. The Broadway Elevation, addressing the constraints of the historic commission, radicalizes the weight of the facade by making it even deeper than a conventional load-bearing wall. Using the dimension of the shelving system on the second floor, the brick is clad around and into the face of the building to produce the illusion of exceptional depth authenticating the facade on programmatic terms. Image courtesy Office dA, Inc. The Parking Grove Elevation exercises an architecture of thinness, whereby a ribbon window provides a panoramic view towards the Old Fort Howard Neighbourhood. The brick is clad like a rippled curtain wall, as if a suspended piece of fabric. The Hubbard Street elevation plays out the conjunction and contradictions of these two opposing facades, producing conditions of heightened depth and thinness in delicate juxtapositions, of slippages between glass and brick, of carved spaces and suspended surfaces. The edges of this facade dovetail into the adjoining elevations exposing the brick veneer in relationship with thickened zones of load-bearing proportions. Image courtesy Office dA, Inc. The public stair produces the most characteristic moment of this wall, whereby the inner liner of the stair is conjoined with the outer elevation in an unprecedented masonry grafting of separate surfaces. Brick is corbelled out over the ascending promenade covering the walkway up to the second floor entry. The weighty corbelling is produced as a light curtain-wall system suspended by laser-cut steel angles. Image courtesy Office dA, Inc. The Witte Arts Building is slated for construction in early 2002. January 28, 2002 Office dA, Inc. arcspace features