Five Questions With: Mark A. Spaulding

BLUE CROSS & BLUE SHIELD of Rhode Island's new headquarters, shown here in a rendering, is designed to fit into other Capital Center buildings, including the Waterplace Towers at right. /
BLUE CROSS & BLUE SHIELD of Rhode Island's new headquarters, shown here in a rendering, is designed to fit into other Capital Center buildings, including the Waterplace Towers at right. /

With the steelwork for Blue Cross Blue Shield Rhode Island’s $114 million headquarters being built in Providence’s Capital Center, the building’s architect, Symmes Maini & McKee Associates Inc. Senior Vice President and Director of Architecture Mark A. Spaulding took a few minutes this week to tell Providence Business News about the building’s design, function and interaction with nearby buildings.

PBN: First, what are the numbers: How many square feet is the building? How many floors will it have? How tall will it be?
SPAULDING:
The BCBSRI building will have 326,811 square feet. It will be 13 stories and 200 feet tall. Portions of the glass façade rise above the roof as a screen wall.

PBN: This building will be highly visible – how will it fit in with other Capital Center projects, like the adjacent Waterplace Towers and nearby GTECH Corp. building?
SPAULDING:
Both the building’s visibility and its responsiveness to context were important design influencers for the BCBSRI building. Designed to be a distinct corporate office building and an addition to the skyline, it is also intended to complement and extend the architectural vocabulary of recent buildings in the Capital Center District.
The design for the BCBSRI building needed to address four significant fronts: The building’s adjacency to Waterplace Park, the street edges of Finance Way and Exchange Street and the courtyard relationship to the Waterplace residential towers.
The design solution is intended to respond to the near and distant context on which it fronts, while having a cohesive compositional form of its own.
It’s helpful to explore this question from the perspective of building massing and its materiality as well.
An important design goal was to make the Waterplace buildings work together as a three building set. Due to its office function and the floor plate size, the resulting overall mass of the building was larger than the immediately adjacent residential towers. Substantial attention was paid to designing the building so that it would have both a formal and informal relationship to these other buildings.
First, the BCBSRI tower was held back from the Waterplace Park side to maintain diagonal view corridors between the towers and to allow the adjacent residential building to take [their] important place in connection with the park and river basin. Similar lowered massing was employed along Exchange Street to provide a break in the street wall where views are once again visible between the towers. These lower portions of the BCBSRI building will have vegetated, green roofs as a visual enhancement when viewed from adjacent taller buildings and also reduce the urban heat island effect.

PBN: So in starting the design, how much consideration did you give to those nearby buildings?
SPAULDING:
The BCBSI building was designed to employ exterior materials similar to those of the surrounding projects such as the residential Waterplace project as well as the GTECH office building. The design objective was to ground the building with the commonality of materials surrounding the building but apply them in a distinct way to enable this new office building to create its own presence on the skyline.

- Advertisement -

Pre-cast concrete on the BCBSRI building is used as a vertical expression on the narrower east and west elevations to enhance the verticality of those facades. It is also used as a base material to establish a rhythm along the lower street edges and tie the building into its pre-existing parking garage base on which it is being constructed.
A more sculptural form is created using glass facades to the north and south. The glass is used in curved portions which enhance the overall form and diminish the impact of a massing with office building proportions against the existing Waterplace residentially proportioned buildings. The glass facades will be disengaged at the building corners and roof parapet from the overall building in order to enhance the fluid aspect of the material. Although not intended to be highly reflective, the changeable pattern of light and sky on the glass will enhance the building form and its relationship to the surrounding buildings.

PBN: Internally, how has the building been specialized for BCBSRI?
SPAULDING:
Much of the building is designed as flexible office space for BCBSRI to consolidate multiple facilities into this one location. On most floors enclosed offices are primarily placed on the narrower east and west facades corresponding with the vertical concrete and punched window façade expression. The central space is designed as open office floors that benefit from maximum access to natural light and view through floor-to-ceiling vision glass curtain-wall facades.
A data center housed on one floor will maintain critical operations while an employee fitness facility will be available in the lower extension of the building engaging the Stillman Street extension.
A lower floor is dedicated to large conference and training facilities. The accessible open patio and vegetated roof adjacent to Waterplace Park will be activated as a break-out space for these large groups. Immediately below is a café and employee gathering space that will have operable glass doors to open it up to the park as well.

PBN: Your building is helping Providence take another step toward modern architecture. What types of design would you like to see in future buildings in Capital Center?
SPAULDING:
The Capital Center District is anchored by the significant presence of the historic Statehouse. Envisioned as an area of revitalization and expansion of Downtown, contemporary architecture plays an important role in establishing a character “of its time” within the district. Each new building has a responsibility to be forward-looking while recognizing and respecting the true historical context. I believe future buildings of the district should be distinctive, modern and varied while responsive to the district as a whole.
This is an opportune time to mention the important positive role played by the Capital Center Commission, particularly its Design Review Committee, in realizing the full potential of the BCBSRI project on this site. The public review process was engaging, helped advance architectural design goals and reinforce the importance the BCBSRI tower plays as a distinguished contemporary office building contributing to its context.

More information about Cambridge-based Symmes Maini & McKee Associates can be found online at www.smma.com.

No posts to display