Redeeming Remnants

   But carte blanche in architecture, as in life, is rare; designs are normally restricted by a budget. Usually, a tight budget.
Holzman, however, is inventive. When it comes to incorporating the beauty of stone into a structure, that creativity surfaces – often on a wall or a floor or a column. Few things give him more pleasure than creating a palace from remnants.

PUBLIC LIBRARY: CHARLOTTE, N.C.
   ImaginOn is a place for the mind’s eye, a children’s place for telling stories. It is a building intended to stir the imagination, a blending of different forms, textures and materials.
   The structure joins together the youth services division of the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, creating the opportunity for engagement with stories in a manner unlike any before. Visitors experience the written, spoken and electronic word in an integrated environment.
   The building supports this integration; all programs once conducted by different institutions are now dispersed throughout – and coalesced within – one structure that occupies an entire city block. Two major performance spaces – 550- and 250-seat theatres – anchor the ends, with library space centered on the lowest and highest levels
   And stone? In a building intended to stir the imagination sensually, a building designed to provoke interest, production materials had to include stone – stone with rich color and texture.
   Dark Mahogany Granite from Dakota Granite of Milbank, S.D., seemed perfect. Dark Mahogany is part of impressive structures worldwide, from the Toyota Building in Tokyo to the USS Cole Memorial in Norfolk, Va. It’s beautiful, durable and, for the limited budget of this civic project, a bit out of reach.
   But then there is the grout pile.
   “A Scottish word for waste,” says Dakota Granite’s Rick Dilts. “Dakota Mahogany is a staple in the granite industry because of its durability; it’s been used since the early 1900s and looks as good now as when it was set in place back then.”
   Dakota Granite has been quarrying the stone since 1925 and operates three quarries of Dark Mahogany. “When a slab of stone is trimmed,” Dilts says, “the discarded rough edge is run out to the grout pile.”
   Here, Holzman Moss struck gold: 4’’ thick split-face granite was retrieved from the pile and fabricated into random lengths from 8” to 24” inches and 6” or 8” high. Set in spiraling ashlar courses, the granite now clads a 41’-diameter circular tower with a spiral screen wall.
   At the upper level, the tower serves as the blue-screen room; at the lower level, it’s the library’s round storytelling room with a puppet theatre and kitchenette. The embracing curved wall of the interior space can be made more-intimate by reconfiguring a dramatic floor-to-ceiling drapery.
    “The wall was referred to as the “helix” during construction,” says Brooke Steele of Pyramid Masonry of Charlotte, N.C., which set the stone. “It extends about 130’. In elevation, the random length stone spirals upward from about 10’ above grade at the tip of the screen wall to more than 40’ at the tower. The walls are capped with a 4”-thick slab of the same granite.”
   Just imagine.

CENTER FOR THE ARTS, MIDDLEBURY, VT.
   To accommodate an expanded educational program and make the arts more accessible to both students and the surrounding community, Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, selected Holzman Moss to design a Center for the Arts. The structure brings together music, theatre, dance and visual arts programs in a space that includes a 400-seat concert hall, a 250-seat black box theatre, a 200-seat dance theatre and art galleries.
   A large, dramatic lobby provides access to these separate departments – each of which retains its own identity – and also to common social spaces that promote artistic cross-fertilization.
   Liberal amounts of stone went into the construction, and parts of the building are clad in pink and grey granite that matches the 19th-century limestone and marble buildings on campus. The college achieved its goal by creating a beautiful centerpiece of academia – at a cost of $162 per ft².
   The granite facing for much of the exterior is Chelmsford Grey Granite from Fletcher Granite of Westford, Mass. Sixty percent of the granite extracted from the Chelmsford quarry is fabricated as granite curbing, and Holzman used 15,000 ft² of the curbing material to face large expanses of the Center for the Arts. Granite Importers of Barre, Vt., cut the curbing to a height of 16’’, and random lengths were run in courses.
   Granite Importers’s Mary Tousignant enjoys the building and the unique look of the curbing.
   “As is the case with curbing material,” she says, “the faces of individual pieces varied from concave to convex, and the masons were asked to enhance the irregular appearance of the walls by selecting and laying neighboring stones that had differing characteristics.”

PUREFOY MUNICIPAL CENTER, FRISCO, TEXAS
   The most important civic building in one of the fastest growing cities in Texas, Frisco City Hall and Public Library is located in the new 145-acre Frisco Square extension of the new downtown area.
   The centerpiece of that development, the George A. Purefoy Municipal Center, combines 97,000 ft² of city-hall space with the 53,000 ft² library; the building also houses the city-council chambers and a café. Holzman’s design continues the architectural tradition exemplified in Texas courthouses of the 19th and 20th centuries with a freestanding stone structure fronting on a common green space, offering the image of an imposing place for the people.
   To endow the building with civic presence, the team at Holzman Moss Architecture designed a strong TexaStone Quarries limestone façade centered on a striking clock tower that houses, at its summit, a public City Room. The red granite columns that flank the central entrance create an appealing contrast to the naturally warm hues of the limestone and are another example of Holzman’s inventiveness.
   The Texas Sunset Red granite that faces the columns is from Cold Spring Granite Co. It’s a beautiful stone and a beautiful color; but for columns this size on a civic structure – a bit expensive
   Cold Springs’s Scott Munter says that the stone is split-face granite from Marble Falls, Texas. “The same stone can also be seen in the Texas State Capital in Austin and Ameriquest Field in Arlington, Texas, home of the Texas Rangers.”
   Tracy Webster, project manager for Dee Brown Inc. in Garland, Texas, says that, “What you see in the 5’ diameter, 28’ 6’’ high columns at Frisco is Texas Sunset Red – but on edge. Remnants cut from slabs used for countertops or other slab applications of 1’’ to 1 1/4’’ thickness were cut into strips and used to face the columns.”
   The strips were drilled with holes for stainless-steel anchors and set vertically around precast quarter section molds; concrete of a similar color went into the molds, set back from the surface of the granite.
   “From a distance the ribs seem to be constructed of solid, fluted granite with a rugged, antique appearance, ” says Chuck Schoenfeld of Redondo Manufacturing in San Antonio, the column fabricator.
   The use of recycled material was also instrumental in acquiring LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the Washington-based U.S. Green Building Council.

FINE ARTS MUSEUM, SAN ANGELO, TEXAS
   The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts and Education combines fine arts, education and civic pride; its pivotal location and commanding presence establish it as the focus of this West Texas community.
   The museum’s long, rectangular plan runs parallel to San Angelo’s Paseo de Santa Angela, a landscaped walkway connecting Fort Concho, a preserved frontier military fort to the historic downtown across the North Concho River.   Several miles of pathways, parkland and the outdoor performance venue of River Stage bring the community together.
It was important that the museum embody a strong sense of place, blending with the limestone buildings of Fort Concho in shape, color and texture. But how do you clad a structure of this size and importance and remain within a civic budget? As is often the case with Malcolm Holzman, a visit to a local quarry inspired the answer.
   In 1990, extensive core drilling on ranchland revealed the vast limestone deposit of TexaStone Quarries that covers 36 square miles. Holzman was immediately impressed by the size and scope of the quarry and the fabrication facility. The proximity of the quarry meant that costs for transporting the stone could be kept to a minimum, allowing him to use large 4’ by 8’ blocks in his design.
   One of the interesting aspects of the deposit was that it had little earth cover, giving the stone on the surface a naturally rough appearance. Outer surfaces of quarry blocks are usually discarded by the quarry, but in this case Holzman realized the texture of the surface would lend an overall rugged appearance to the exterior of the museum.
   Holzman faced the entire building with the nearby TexaStone Quarries limestone in varying textures, with the majority of the facing from the frequently discarded rough surface stone. The result is striking. As the land slopes toward the river, the walls of the museum increase in height by 25’, curving above the public spaces and the town.
   In a tribute to the architect, museum director Howard Taylor emphasizes the feeling that the museum, “seems to grow naturally from its site, with the exclusive use of local stone adding to this sense of belonging, to the sculptural effect and inherent strength of the building.”
   Beautiful stone comes in many forms, some overlooked and lost forever. Inventiveness, persistence, skill and imagination reward the seeker.
   M.W.Penn is a freelance writer covering architectural and design topics.