Projects:
Blue Wall Centre
Cleveland, South Carolina
Civic
in design
A LEED Platinum visitor center will be the first in a series of sustainable structures integrated on the 175-acre wooded site. Situated at the base of a sloping terrain, the partially cantilevered, rectangular volume frames an outlook to the site and beyond, creating a covered grotto below. Studio Gang and HP worked together to shape and refine this expressed structure: two parallel concrete walls rise supporting the 60 foot clear span roof and floor structures, and cantilevering 40 feet over the grotto. The focus was maintaining an elegant and economical structure – while integrating the openings, voids and cantilevers that make this form beautiful and site appropriate. In close dialogue with the geotechnical engineer, HP devised a economical spread footing scheme to support the structure along the steep sloping sub-surface, encouraging additional soil testing to reduce seismic design requirements that would have been costly and challenging for this unique form.
