elemental

On July 19^th and 20^th 1848, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held, resulting in the drafting of the Declaration of Sentiments which became the foundation for the struggle for full equality for women, including the right to vote which was not granted until the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920. The 1848 Convention was held at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, NY.

In the decades following the Convention, little attention was paid to the meeting place which went through a number changes. In the mid-1980’s, by which time the building was being used for snowplow storage, apartments and a laundromat, the National Park Service recognized its significance and purchased the Chapel as a National Historic Site. NPS, along with the National Endowment for the Arts organized a competition for a design that would commemorate the Convention utilizing the surviving fragments of the Chapel and some vacant, adjoining land.

(Image courtesy of National Park Service)

Beginning in 1985, NPS, along with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) organized a competition for a design that would commemorate the Convention utilizing the surviving fragments of the Chapel and some vacant, adjoining land. In 1987, the competition was won by Ann Marshall and Ray Kinoshita, then students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. They joined forces with The Stein Partnership (now Elemental Architecture) to complete the project. An adjacent building, originally designed as a car dealership but later used as a Municipal Building for Seneca Falls, was added to the scope to provide a Visitors Center and administrative facilities for the park. Two floors of interpretive material were designed by Chermayeff and Geismar.

The completed Chapel Block which presented the Chapel fragments in a way that spoke compellingly to the neglect long accorded to women’s rights, was dedicated in 1993 on the 145^th anniversary of the first Women’s Rights Convention.  In 1995, it received a Federal Design Award from the NEA. To read more about the award-winning design here.

In 2009, in order to provide year-round climate mitigation, the NPS opted to fully enclose the Chapel space by reconstructing the exterior walls based on projections of what the original might have looked like.

(Image courtesy of National Park Service)

Although more versatile, the current configuration lacks the elegant poignancy of the original design and, further, compromises the authenticity of the visitor’s experience.

Yesterday, May 31st, commemorated Walt Whitman’s 191st birthday. His modest birth-home, a farmhouse,  is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Our design of the adjacent interpretative center was conceived to shelter the farmhouse and visitor experience from the bustle of twenty-first century Long Island; the natural and built environments are joined with the presentation of cultural history through a curving cedar wall time-line that starts within the exhibit space and leads across the grounds to a point directly in front of the house where Walt Whitman was born.

The Interpretive Center brings together several design aspects that have characterized the work of elemental – environmentally sensitive, energy efficient architecture. The use of passive solar gain and thermal storage, and gravity ventilation — both characteristics of nineteenth century vernacular building design — can be seen in the large, south facing windows of Whitman’s house.  Similar features have been incorporated into the Interpretive Center.

The new facility serves three interpretive functions: the building is a gateway from the modern world to the historic site; it includes the exhibit space which encourages the visitor to experience Whitman’s life, writings, and philosophy in an environment that reflects the poet’s lifelong concern with the interrelationship between humankind and nature, and in full sight of the birthplace building. Once the visitor has passed through the gateway onto the historic site, the building and the extended cedar wall establish a peaceful precinct, shielding the view of cars, trucks, signs and neon lights.

To learn more about the Birthplace Association, click here.

In recognition of Earth Day, the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (COTE) annually recognizes the Top Ten Green Projects in the profession. The COTE Top Ten Award is considered by many as the best recognition program for sustainable design excellence. In 2000, the South Jamaica Branch library was honored to have been selected as a winner of this prestigious award. It is one of only five such projects in New York City. It was also the first building designed under the NYC High Performance Building Guidelines.

Among the building’s many features, the library reduces the embodied energy and embodied pollution through the use of low energy and recycled materials and provides enhanced indoor environmental quality through the use of chemically and physically stable materials and special filtration systems.

The “saw-tooth” shape of its roof not only introduces sunlight into the main reading room, but also promotes hot air stratification, concentrating at the peaks. The building has two return/exhaust air systems; one collecting air at the peaks and one collecting air near the floor.  In the winter, the hot air from the peaks is recirculated throughout the building, its heat being stored in the slabs and masonry walls.  Exhaust air is taken from the cooler air near the floor.  In the summer, the hot air from the peaks is exhausted and the cooler air is recirculated.

The building established goals to consume significantly less energy than that allowed by the New York State Energy Code: 48% less for lighting; 62% less for heating; and 34% less for cooling. Unsurprisingly, the actual electric meter readings after two years of operation demonstrated that the building has out-performed these goals: by 30% for heating and 50% for electrical (lighting & cooling).

For more information on the COTE Top Ten and to see the other winners, click here..

Fabrication has begun of the models needed for the production molds for the thin-shell replicas that will replace the deteriorated terra cotta. Together with the previous nine phases, more than 60,000 pieces have been replaced making this by far the largest historic reconstruction of its kind in the world.

The thin-shell approach was developed in 1986-87 by Elemental (then The Stein Partnership) as a means to rebuild the failing structure on an accelerated schedule and still allow for a cladding that accurately reflected the original material.

At the project outset, more than one third of the original terra cotta had already failed and been removed to protect the public safety. As a result, many of the sculptural elements required either partial restoration or total recreation based on the surviving fragments and old photographs. Here, from the first phase (1986-1991) are original grotesques with missing heads, replicas awaiting installation and the rebuilt turrets with the new thin-shell cladding.

This process continues today. Because the contemporary manufacturing processes offer a much higher level of precision than did the original, care is taken to introduce the imperfections that are characteristic of the terra cotta. These include tooling marks, irregularities on flat planes and slight variations in the characteristic “white” color from piece to piece. Depending on the level of deterioration of the original terra cotta, the process of obtaining models can vary from the direct use of terra cotta originals as new molds, to partial reconstruction of damaged terra cotta and fabrication of complete recreations based on historic photographs and interpolations from other similar pieces on the building.

Here, models have been fabricated based on typical profiles found throughout the building

In other cases, terra cotta that had suffered minimal damage serves as models, such as these florettes

This unique grotesque from the building, missing pieces of his nose and and fingers, was carefully removed from the building

and restored to serve as a model for the new GFRC replacement.

When the models are finished, rubber-lined production molds will be created. The thin shell replacement units (TSRU) are then fabricated using a sprayed glass fiber reinforced cementitious system, about three quarters of an inch thick. The description of the process will continue as the project progresses.

Stay tuned for continued updates from the field.

Entry Ramp Takes Shape

Central to the entry redesign is the reconstruction of the original ground floor entrance. In addition to the salvaged schist stone wall, concrete retaining walls form the stair opening leading down to the original lower level stone arch entry.  Earth and gravel fill are compacted to serve as a supporting base for the new concrete stair slab.

Facade Reconstruction Underway

Scaffolding has been erected and selective demolition & removals have begun on the main building. The first step of the facade reconstruction is the selective removal of existing terra cotta sculpture to serve as models for new Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC) replicas.

A rigorously tested thin-shell GFRC, strong, light weight and durable, has been the material for all the terra cotta reconstruction. The entire reconstruction, totaling over 65,000 pieces, is currently the largest GFRC reconstruction project in the world.

Following careful removal of the representative sculptural pieces, demolition of the remaining terra cotta will begin.

Steel lintel Investigation

Meanwhile, the demolition of the existing terra cotta window surrounds exposes the original steel lintels that support the window openings. Each steel lintel is inspected to determine its structural viability. Where possible, salvaging the original steel is preferred.

Schist Stone Sounding

Local Manhattan Schist stone is the primary façade material of Shepard Hall as well as the other campus buildings originally designed by George Post.  Through a process called “sounding,” each stone on the building is struck with a mallet and the sound produced is an indicator of the stone’s integrity.  Stones that sound “hollow” or are visibly damaged or deteriorated are marked by the design team for replacement.

Stay tuned for continued updates from the field.