The Pavilion at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

Title: The Pavilion at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

Award Category: Building Enclosure

Project Address/Location

1 Convention Avenue

Philadelphia, PA 19104
United States

Submitted By: Thomas McMullan III, PE

Company Info

WJE

601 Walnut Street, Suite 875W

Philadelphia, PA 19106
United States

215-567-0703

[email protected]

Project Description and Background: The Pavilion at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is a state-of-theart facility for advanced patient care and research. The integrated project delivery (IPD) team, known as PennFIRST was formed to design the new hospital and was comprised of renowned architectural firms (HDR and Foster + Partners), contractors (L.F. Driscoll and Balfour Beatty), facility and clinical staff from HUP and many other skilled trades. IPD creates a more collaborative approach among all stakeholders and brings everyone to the same table, ultimately delivering a better result for the client through value and performance-based decisions. The building is a 1.5 million square foot, 17-story, 504-bed facility that includes 47 operating rooms with a project budget of $1.6 billion. Much effort went into assuring that the hospital was designed to be sustainable inside and throughout its surrounding landscape, achieving LEED Gold Certification. The Pavilion was designed to carry advanced patient care well into the future, adapting to ever changing technologies; an enclosure consultant was required to help ensure the building enclosure performed in harmony with other building systems and provided long-term durability, value, and superior performance. The exterior building enclosure includes a custom, unitized aluminum-framed curtain wall with integrated corrugated metal cladding panels, a modified bitumen roof, and perimeter blindside waterproofing that extends six levels below grade. The project also included underground pedestrian tunnels, three pedestrian bridges, two large cisterns, and multiple green roof levels.

Scope: WJE provided full building enclosure consulting services and was an integral part of the design team from stem to stern, touching nearly every component of the exterior building enclosure. WJE was initially engaged during concept-level design to help with developing the building enclosure design approach, establishing the Owner’s Performance Requirements (OPR), and identifying a specialty contractor/fabricator to provide design assistance. WJE worked collaboratively with HDR/Foster+Partners and their consultants throughout the design phases of the project to provide technical design assistance and refine performance expectations related to air, moisture, and thermal control, as well as durability, compatibility, and constructability. In pursuit of a final design that met the stringent design and performance requirements for the project, WJE attended over 100 design-assist and charette sessions with project stakeholders, including key trade contractors and product suppliers that included Enclos Corp., Thomas & Company, and Soprema. WJE provided bid support and specified a comprehensive quality assurance and performance testing plan that included a full-scale, laboratory performance mockup and regular field verification testing. WJE also attended plant visits to evaluate the quality of supplied materials from vendors in Germany, Spain, and Richmond, Virginia. In addition, WJE provided quality assurance services during construction through completion of the project, including regular site visits to review work in progress and performance testing, construction troubleshooting, curtain wall anchor testing (self-performed), and a post-occupancy performance evaluation.

Solution: Despite the horizontal banding of the opaque cladding and glazed portions of the building facade, the project utilized a custom, 4-sided, structurally-glazed unitized curtain wall design approach. This differed from the original concept of stacking different opaque and glazed, ribbon window assemblies and combined them into one system for expediency of construction and sole-source responsibility as it relates to air, water, structural, and thermal control/management. The system provides fully integrated air, water, and thermal control layers and was designed through a design-assist process with the fabricator to limit the risk for condensation from thermal bridging through a series of thermal simulations and design modifications unique to this building design concept. To provide further protection in a humidified environment, the curtain wall system includes an internal weep system at stack joints between units and within spandrel areas, providing a means to capture, control, and dispense of potential condensation development (and incidental water infiltration) in the assembly. Extruded corrugated panels, both curved and flat, with a high-performance coating were integrated within the opaque spandrel sections of the unitized curtain wall along floor lines to provide rigidity and durability. Curved glass was also utilized in lieu of a faceted facade to provide smooth transitions along the extreme ends of the building. Performance testing for air, water, structural, and thermal was performed as part of a full-scale preconstruction mockup to verify the design concept prior to fabrication, and performance was validated in the field through a series of comprehensive water tests that started with the initial benchmark installation and continued at regular intervals throughout the installation. Structural load testing of the curtain wall anchors was also performed at representative “dummy” anchor locations on each floor to verify their load-carrying capacity.

Value: The IPD process, which included WJE as the enclosure consultant, provided for a very collaborative environment where the interests of all parties were considered throughout the design and construction phases of the project. Performance objectives for the building enclosure were established at the onset of the project and put at the forefront of proposed design modifications to ensure these decisions did not unintentionally impact the performance of the building enclosure and lead to potentially costly missteps. Thermal performance was also evaluated in concert with the mechanical design to provide an efficient and complementary system, and performance of the enclosure systems was validated through preconstruction testing to help mitigate the risk of in-service failure. WJE’s level of involvement during construction helped to quickly troubleshoot issues that arose during the fabrication and installation of the enclosure systems and helped to keep the project on schedule. This integrated approach ultimately helped to deliver—rather than simply promise—value, long-term durability, and performance that was consistent with the Owner’s expectations established at the beginning of the project.

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