Our Company has the prestigious honor of being recognized by Modern Steel Construction for our contribution to the 2011 IDEAS² Award winning project – New Gateway Building, Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY.
The Gateway Center is a 70,000 sq. ft. academic building on the Valhalla, NY campus of Westchester Community College. The three-story building houses a welcome center, classrooms, offices, computer and language labs, an auditorium, and a cafe. Construction was completed in the fall 2010 for a total cost of $33 million, and received LEED Gold certification. The heart of the project is a 48 ft. tall glass cube that creates a striking lobby and connects the north and south wings at two levels. Early in the project, the team began to pursue a modular design, using prefabricated elements in a kit-of-parts approach. Ultimately, the structure and architecture of the lobby became the expression of a manufacturing process. Although this idea has been explored in various ways, including through the use of shipping containers in building construction, the team settled on a more customized approach; 233 architecturally exposed structural steel (AESS) “boxes” were assembled to create a light, transparent volume. The boxes were fabricated from channels and plates and based on eight basic templates to maximize repetition and efficiency in the shop. Almost all field connections were made with shims and bolts, minimizing field welding and cutting erection time. Curtain wall connections were made to steel plate tabs that were attached to the boxes in the shop. In addition to the boxes, the main lobby staircase and the bridge between the north and south building are AESS, with laminated glass treads and flooring. The bridge is supported in part by two steel hanger rods, which connect to the main stringers with custom pin and jaw fittings.1
1. May 2011 Modem Steel Construction Magazine