- Project SCAD Museum of Art
- Location Savannah, Georgia
- Type of Precast CarbonCast High Performance Insulated Wall Panels
- Project Size 65,000 sq. ft.
- CarbonCast Surface Area 155 panels
- Architect Sottile & Sottile, Savannah, Ga. Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architects, Atlanta, Ga. Neil Dawson Architects, Associate Architect, Savannah, Ga.
- Engineer W. Hunter Saussy III, PC, Savannah, Ga.
- Contractor The Carson Company, Savannah, Ga.
- Owner Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Ga.
- Precaster Metromont Corporation
Aesthetically versatile CarbonCast High Performance Insulated Wall Panels were used as part of the $26 million, 65,000-square-foot landmark restoration project at Savannah College of Art and Design’s Museum of Art. The existing museum was housed in an 1856 Greek Revival structure that was once home to the headquarters of the Central of Georgia Railway.
“It contrasts the old and the new and the past and the future,” SCAD’s design architect Christian Sottile said, “We have centuries of layering throughout the site. It’s a building that could only have happened in Savannah and at SCAD.”
Before the restoration, most of the roof structure and brick was in ruins. About 150 CarbonCast High Performance Insulated Wall Panels were fabricated and erected to provide a new, integral enclosure for the museum. The panels were typically 12’ wide and 22’ or 33’ tall.
Each wall panel uses C-GRID® carbon fiber grid as a shear connector between two-inch thick inner and outer wythes. They wythes sandwich four inches of continuous EPS insulation for an R-12 value.
The architect specified a contradistinctive finish to unite the precast with the original 19th-century Savannah gray brick. The panels used a standard structural gray mix. Baking soda was used as a retarder and broadcast onto the form before concrete was poured. Panels were stripped of dead cement with a moderate sandblast finish to impart the look of a broken texture. Salvaged bricks and original heart pine timbers appear throughout the museum.
Sharp horizontal and vertical 1/4” reveals were sawed into the face of the panels to resemble plywood form lines and complement other elements. Atlanta Artist Bill Spence hand-cut the patterns for the SCAD letters onto the concrete with a custom font.
