Music Center at Strathmore, North Bethesda, Md.

   The Music Center at Strathmore totally breaks that mold by utilizing four different stones from Eichstatt, Germany-based JMS Jura Marble Suppliers Corp. Further pushing the design envelope, the architects at William Rawn Associates, Architects in Boston gave the stone a random appearance using a computer simulation to evaluate subtle variations in the stone’s color.
   There’s certainly nothing ordinary about the $100 million project, funded jointly by the state of Maryland and Montgomery County. Opened earlier this year, it provides a Washington-area home-away-from-home for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, among other users.
   Mary K. Donahoe, AIA, an architect with the capital-projects management section of Montgomery County’s department of public works and transportation in Rockville, Md., explains that the music center is the result of a partnership between the Strathmore Hall Foundation, which occupies an historic mansion on the site, and Montgomery County, which owns the property.
   “Strathmore had done a master plan for the site and envisioned the need for this type of facility,” Donahoe says. “We have a relationship with them over the mansion, which is used as an art center. It was easy to move from that to the concert hall and operate it in the same way.”
   However, that relationship did put some constraints on the development of the music center. The project had to respect existing views from the mansion while dealing with a complex site that includes a steep hill. And, Donahoe says, it had to be of the highest quality.
   Following funding of the design phase of the project in 1998, the county went through its standard process of putting out a request for proposals and interviewing the top three applicants before choosing William Rawn Associates to handle the design work.
   Clifford Gayley, associate principal with Rawn, believes that his firm was chosen based on the body of its experience. However, he suggests that one particular project – the Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass. – may have also influenced the selection.
   “It has subsequently been hailed acoustically as one of the top concert halls in the world, based on a survey of musicians and conductors worldwide,” Gayley says. “With that kind of endorsement, it made a strong impression on the group making the decision for the Strathmore project.”
   Gayley agrees with Donahoe that the site and the nature of the project presented some significant challenges. One, he explains, is to achieve the acoustics required; that requires plenty of room above the stage, creating a big, bulky building.
   “How you handle the bulk is a major architectural challenge,” he says. “On this project, it was even more intense because the Strathmore mansion sits on the top of a knoll commanding a wonderful park setting, and we wanted to make sure we were not in any way competing with that building.”
   In that respect, the site’s sloping hillside actually proved to be a benefit, he says, because by nestling the building into the slope the architects were able to hide some of its 105’ height.
   The architects were also quite concerned about the appearance of the project for a number of reasons, including its civic nature and the importance of its flagship user, the Baltimore Symphony.
   “We wanted it to have an appropriate feel, given that this is a civic building in a public park that has sculptures throughout,” says Gayley. ‘We felt by combining glass and stone we could bring the outside in and the life of the inside out.”
   However, choosing just the right stone for the project was not a simple process. While the state of Maryland approved funding for what ultimately became a $100 million project in 2000, “cost is always an issue,” says Gayley.
   And, the architects wanted something that could handle the bulk of the main concert hall, as well as a four-story classroom area with high-ceiling rehearsal rooms that is also part of the project.
   “We were trying to find a stone that would be within our budget and also be something that would capture the sense of civic presence,” the architect says.
   Helping to resolve the architects’ dilemma were the contractor, the Bethesda, Md.-based Clark Construction Group LLC, and its stone supplier for the job, Rugo Stone LLC.of Lorton, Va.
   “We knew the project was considering natural stone, and Clark Construction was interested in getting a bid from us,” says Rugo’s manager for the project, Bill Lazar. “They were looking at different materials and determined a limestone would be appropriate, so we worked with JMS Jura Marble Suppliers Corp. on creating a palette of stones that would be acceptable to the architects.”
   Gayley says Rawn has done quite a few stone buildings over the past decade and has come to appreciate its strengths as a natural material. He says the designers were also attracted to the idea of using stones from different layers of the limestone to eliminate what he says is homogeneity created by some North American limestones.
   “We could create a range between the stones that, even at 500 feet, you could tell something was going on,” he says. “It looks stonelike from a distance, but we were also captivated by the warmth of the stone. There’s a warm tonality to it similar to the warmth of the hall inside. It also feels quite comfortable in that parklike setting.”
   Still, being a natural material, the architects were reluctant to simply go ahead without visiting JMS’s Eichstatt, Germany, facilities. Gayley says the designers are always concerned about how the stone looks as something other than a 12” X 12” sample.
   “We like to know how much variation there is from stone to stone, and if there are weird characteristics that one starts to see, or if imperfections are predictable,” he says. “We also like to visit the quarries to see what level of sophistication they have in terms of both producing the stone and meeting schedules.”
   In this case, the visit was noteworthy for a couple reasons. First, the visit, which included representatives of Rawn, Clark, Rugo and Montgomery County, went a long way toward creating a solid team relationship that continued through the completion of the project.
   It also changed the architects’ thinking on the stone itself. Initially, Rugo provided Rawn with samples from eight different layers. In the office, the architects narrowed their selection to four, and then requested JMS have a 10’ X 10’ mockup waiting for their arrival.
   “They selected some of the layers and we made our mockup accordingly,” says JMS’s managing director, Gerhard Ruf. “Then, when we took it out, they decided it had too much contrast. There was a big discussion and we blended some of the other stones and made a final mockup, which they accepted.”
   “Originally, we had a different fourth stone in there, a grayer stone,” Gayley explains. “It looked good in the 12” X 12” sample and it increased the range. When we saw it in real life and real scale, it really jumped out too much.
   “In the afternoon, we asked them to put a different stone in there. We substituted, for that fourth stone, a more-selective version of one of the other three types – in the process, losing the extreme contrast and gaining a greater consistency.”
   Rugo’s Lazar describes the stones utilized in the project as JMS’s BA 17, NB 15, NB 17 and NB 17 select.
   To create a special look for the exterior utilizing the four different stones, a Rawn associate developed a computer program allowing the designers to quickly evaluate subtle blends through some 28,000 pieces. The strategy ensured the desired color variations. while retaining the stone’s random appearance.
   “It wasn’t so much a program as a person in our office who used CAD to start generating variations in a very systematic way,” explains Gayley. “We started with a 10’ X 10’ area, with a certain amount of variation built in. As he started to see patterns, he’d change things accordingly to eliminate the patterns. The goal was to have a wall with variations. We wanted it to feel random.”
   The end product might appear to be random, but there was certainly nothing random about the challenges created by the idea. For instance, Lazar says ordering the stone required some higher math on Rugo’s end.
   “We knew how much stone there was overall,” he says. “It came down to trying to come up with a percentage they were looking for of each variety. They reissued the drawings after the material-range-selection meetings and put a designation on what type of stone was going to go on each panel of the building.”
   Fortunately, he adds, certain modulations appeared throughout the façade, so there were repetitions of panels in terms of size and materials.
   After the stone was quarried and finished and had the holes drilled for the anchors, each piece had to be numbered as it was crated. While Ruf says the job wasn’t that hard, “it was more difficult than just doing one color. We realized it was not as easy as we thought.”
   From Germany, the crated pieces were shipped to New York, and then trucked to the Niagara Falls, Ont., plant of Modern Mosaic Ltd. Both Clark Construction’s Dennis Darling and Modern Mosaic President Tony di Giacomo say the two firms have a long history, and the Canadian firm has 35 years experience precasting concrete with both stone and brick facades.
   From di Giacomo’s standpoint, the job was definitely out of the ordinary.
   “With this, we had to have a team of four or five people whose sole purpose was to sort out the numerous pieces of limestone that were involved,” he says. “We had to keep track of the color pattern they wanted.”
   To get the job started, di Giacomo says the company cast a full-sized sample panel for review by both Rawn and Montgomery County. Then, it was simply a matter of following the shop drawings.
   “The limestone pieces varied in size,” di Giacomo adds. “Fortunately, most of them were able to be handset – 2’ X 2’, 3’ X 3’. Every once in awhile there was a piece large enough that it had to be set by machine. We got a variety of sizes, and on some of them we had to cut or grind a bit.”
   Once the selected stones were placed in the form, the job was pretty straightforward, he adds. A bond breaker was installed on top of the stones, the anchor pins were set and the panels – most of them 6” thick – were poured.
   The following day, each panel was removed from the form, the stone faces were cleaned and the joints tuck-pointed.
   Ultimately, the job involved approximately 85,000 ft² of concrete in about 800 panels, which were cast at a rate of 10-15 pieces per day.
   The finished panels then went onto trucks for the ride to the jobsite. The bulk of the panels measured a fairly standard 12’ X 20’, according to Clark’s Darling.
   “They varied in some size, but there were no big variations,” Darling says.
   They also require some careful handling, says di Giacomo.
   “They’re not fragile, but you have to know what you’re doing or you’ll have cracks and bends and it can arrive in pieces,” he says. “We have special trailers that we use.”
   Darling says the precast panels went up as expected. The building opened on schedule in February, and everyone seems pleased with the process and the new concert hall.
   “Most people seem to really love it,” says Darling. “They love the way it looks. They love the outside and they really love the inside, the concert hall itself.”
   Rugo’s Lazar agrees. He says everyone he’s spoken with is pleased with the structure, both inside and out.
   “When you walk up, it’s a very presentable building,” Lazar says. “It makes a statement and it’s unique to the area.”
   “It’s kind of a hidden gem,” agrees Montgomery County’s Donahoe. “You don’t see it from the major roadway, and from the mansion it doesn’t appear to be as large as it actually is; but, when people see it from the front where you can see the actual size of the building, they’re very pleased with it.”
   Architect Gayley says he believes the trip to Germany to visit the JMS quarries really solidified the participants as a group, making the entire process easier.
   “As a project manager, Mary K. Donahoe was exceedingly good at keeping everyone playing on the same team,” he says. “For a project of this size and complexity and schedule, that was remarkable.”
   As for the stone itself, Gayley uses the word marvelous. He notes that Rawn Associates has since used one of the Jura Marble shades as cladding for a music building the firm recently did at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.
   “As for the Strathmore Music Center, we’ve been back there many times since the opening, and it just feels right,” he says.

Client: Montgomery County, Md.
Designer: William Rawn Associates, Architects Inc., Boston
Contractor: Clark Construction Group LLC, Bethesda, Md.
Stone Supplier: Rugo Stone LLC, Lorton, Va.
Stone Quarrier/Fabricator: JMS Jura Marble Suppliers Corp., Eichstatt, Germany
Precast Contractor: Modern Mosaic Ltd., Niagara Falls, Ont.

This article first appeared in the November 2005 print edition of Stone Business. ©2005 Western Business Media Inc.