Piedmont Central Student Housing and Dining Hall

Project Description:

The project includes 1,150 beds in 252,000 gross square feet over eleven levels. The ground floor contains amenities and support spaces. Student residences are related amenity spaces occupy floors two thru twelve. The ground floor contains a 15,000 s.f. dining hall, community spaces, administrative offices and live-learn classrooms.

The design considered how an individual student emerges and succeeds within the environments that make up the college residential experience. Spaces for individual, group and community interaction were carefully placed and sequenced within the building to enrich the experience and developmental phases of a student and supportively promotes growth and interconnectedness as they develop interpersonal and social competencies and provides a safe and comfortable environment in which they can thrive.

The design/build team opted to use precast concrete for this project when preparing the winning proposal to the owner. The precaster was added to the design team and helped prepare the proposal, then assisted with construction designs. The two primary reasons for selecting a total precast structure were speed of erection to meet a truncated schedule, and to move the labor and staging from a tight urban job site to the manufacturer’s plant.

The precast structure was erected in six months, allowing the general contractor to jump start all trades and interior finishing in order to timely complete the dormitory for the start of the 2016 fall school year. The structure was erected by a six-man crew, loads were delivered just in time and only the space to park two loads was required on the job site.

The total precast structure used an innovative design with CarbonCast load-bearing, thermally efficient insulated wall panels for the exterior. The wall panels had an R-value that exceeded the energy code with the back sides hard-troweled and painted as the finish interior surface, thus satisfying all requirements for the wall system in one precast panel.

The floor system was a prestressed panel the width of a room that became the finished ceiling with no joints. The floor panels were cast with voids (formed by foam) to reduce the weight. A precast, load-bearing corridor wall supported two spans (one across one row of rooms and the other across a row of rooms and the corridor) and was the final finish on both sides after painting.

Project Details:

The total precast concrete structure consists of 1,803 pieces with 200,670 s.f. wall panels, 237,223 s.f. of prestressed decking, 27 beams, 69 columns and 46 stair tread and risers sections. The typical 11” wall panel is 12’ tall floor-to- floor by 24’ to 44’ long. The typical 8” prestressed deck panel is 11’ wide by 23’ long for the minor span and 29’ long for major span. The exterior consists of three architectural finishes: 126,695 s.f. of medium sandblast finish with a limestone color, 26,274 s.f. of cast-in red thin brick and selected vertical runs of precast panels painted the school logo color blue.