The Pterodactyl office by NAST Enterprises Corp. in Culver City, California, is perhaps the most visually arresting of the winners of this year’s American Institute of Steel Construction’s (AISC’s) 2017 Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel (IDEAS2) Awards. The awards were given for use of structural steel; creative solutions to program requirements; innovative design approach to connections, gravity systems, lateral load-resisting systems, fire protection, and blast; inventive use of architecturally exposed structural steel; and steel-related technical or architectural advances. Thirteen projects were honored, including the Pterodactyl, in the under $15 million category.
The building was completed in spring of 2015 and is perched atop a four-level parking garage that was built in 1998. It is formed by the intersection of nine rectangular boxes that are lifted one level above the garage roof and stacked either on top of or adjacent to each other. Highlighting the façade are more than 19,000 sq. ft.of Rheinzink prepatina blue-grey flat lock tiles. In addition, 3600 sq. ft.of Rheinzink flat lock tiles were used in a low-slope roof application.
The Pterodactyl is the final phase of the Wedgewood Holly campus: office buildings that were originally part of a grouping of contiguous warehouses in Culver City that had been added to incrementally since the 1940s. The complex consists of five buildings, all designed by Eric Owen Moss Architects: Stealth, Umbrella, Slash, Backslash, and now, Pterodactyl.
— Rheinzink and AISC
