Blue Ridge Commerce Center Bldg. 1

Summarize the project's program, features and achievements?

This 143,000+ SF project is thoughtfully designed as a speculative industrial building, intended to seamlessly accommodate a diverse array of occupancy scenarios to ensure maximum suite flexibility for potential tenants. The building boasts a combination of materials – concrete tilt-up wall panels, bold and modern accent colors placed thoughtfully to highlight building entrances and features, and ACM canopies and wrapped structural outriggers to accentuate the main entries. The contemporary design highlights the latest technology capable of the concrete tilt-up methodology through these varying materials, varying depths of panel overlaps, parapets, and reveal design all aiding in achieving a sense of comfort and human scale amongst its vast size, which sets a new standard for industrial speculative warehouse design.

What obstacles were overcome related to the schedule, budget, program, specification, site, etc. on this project?

The site created a unique challenge, as it is situated in a small valley between two smaller mountain ranges, with severe grade changes that required several retaining walls, as well as a creek that needed to be diverted onsite. Two separate detention ponds were created to handle the water mitigation, as well as the relocated creek bed. Rock mitigation proved to be a challenge onsite, with several locations requiring blasting and relocation to achieve the correct foundation requirements. While the initial sitework caused some delays, the building design also went through a series of value engineering exercises, while still maintaining the integrity of the design, to bring the total cost of the project down as the budget was tight.

Please communicate any engineering complexities or unique features of the panel design for this project?

In order to create a modern, yet timeless design, the engineering team was able to accommodate multiple panel overlaps, varying panel heights, and multiple panel thicknesses to achieve the design vision. The layering of the ACM materials to align with concrete tilt panel reveals and colors is flawlessly integrated into the design to emphasize the base building concrete-tilt up design. The structural steel outriggers, wrapped in ACM at each corner entry, allows the shadows to play with the modulations of the façade, prompting visual interest at different times of the day.