Terracotta Cladding System Elevates Cornell University's North Campus Residential Expansion
Project Overview
The Cornell University North Campus Residential Expansion project sought to expand the University's housing capacity while maintaining its commitment to quality and sustainability. This ambitious undertaking involved constructing a collection of LEED Gold, three-story and six-story buildings in order to provide 2,000+ new beds for freshman and sophomore students.
The Design Challenge
A key challenge for the project was to design a modern building envelope that would complement the existing campus architecture while meeting budgetary constraints. The University sought a solution that would enhance the visual appeal of the new buildings while helping fulfil Cornell’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2035. The design and construction team advocated for the use of a precast wall system, which offered speed of installation in the short construction season and off-site quality control.
Cladding Concepts' Terracotta Solution
After careful consideration, Cladding Concepts partnered with Shockey Precast to incorporate 70,000 terracotta tiles into the 240,000 square feet of architectural precast panels. Various shades and textures in gray and red German-made Agrob Buchtal terracotta tiles were selected by Ikon.5 Architects and provided by CCI.
Why Terracotta?
Enhanced Aesthetics: The terracotta tiles added a distinctive and visually appealing element to the building façades, creating a contemporary interpretation of the traditional brick and stone architecture seen around the campus.
Durability: The terracotta tiles are known for their durability and long-lasting performance, ensuring the building's façade will maintain its beauty for years to come.
Sustainability: Cladding Concepts' terracotta tiles are a sustainable choice that supports the project's LEED Gold certification. The terracotta cladding, enhanced with the patented permanent HT Coating, offers a unique solution for both aesthetics and environmental performance. This innovative coating not only self-cleans the façade but also actively purifies the surrounding air using the energy of the sun.
Customization: Cladding Concepts offers hundreds of terracotta color and texture options, allowing for a customized and unique design to fit into the architectural vision for the project.
As per the University's review and approval process, mockup dies and tiles were fabricated and dispatched to the United States for rigorous testing. This involved numerous test panels, such as the one illustrated below, which depicts the removal of wax from a mockup panel at the Winchester, Virginia facility. The use of wax sprayed onto the face of each terracotta tile allowed the panels to be easily cleaned of concrete matrix that might leak during casting.
Creating the Façade
The delivery plan for such a large quantity of new dorm rooms required the construction of two large buildings separated by roughly one hundred yards. The programmatic need to construct both building shells simultaneously meant that terracotta tile for both buildings would have to be run in a three-week period at our terracotta plant in Schwarzenfeld, Bavaria. Given the size of the façade, roughly 240,000 square feet that would have to be ready for the precasting sequence in a time frame that no other manufacturer had the capacity to meet.
The design of the precast sandwich panel was 3 1/2” outer leaf, a layer of 3” of insulation, and a 3 ½” inner leaf of concrete, with an interior finish of gypsum board over furring strips. The exterior of course would be terracotta, but first the tile system itself had to be created.
The Precast Terracotta Tile
To ensure the tiles were straight and flat enough to fit in the formliners with minimal leakage they had to comply with the Part A of the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute standards. Once their dimensional straightness was confirmed, the next -- and more demanding tests -- were performed.
To ensure durability, the tiles underwent third-party testing for freeze-thaw resistance. Agrob Buchtal's low water absorption rate was crucial in meeting PCI standards and ensuring the tiles could withstand New York's harsh climate.
The second requirement was pull-out strength, or the assurance that the cycle of freeze and thaw would not loosen the tiles over time, as delineated in Part B of the PCI standards. To address this, a special tile keyback was designed create a mechanical connection with the wet concrete during the casting process. The next step was to test the connection of tile to panel after repeated freeze and thaw cycles. The use of custom designed formliners allowed Ikon.5 Architects to achieve the mortar joint color that mimicked the shadow line of a rain screen façade.
Once the terracotta tiles were produced, they were shipped on 1,350 pallets to the Port of Newark and then either direct to formliner for waxing and fitting or to the Cladding Concepts International warehouse in East Rutherford for storage until the production line was ready for the next round of material, seen above.
Site Erection
It is possible to see the entire precast technology in one single photo below. A panel is being lifted by a crane so within a few minutes that portion of the façade will be set in place on the steel framed building. The four lifting points carry the wall section -- weighing seven or eight tons – as workers inside the building guide the panel until they can bolt it securely into place. At the left side of the panel – an inside corner -- one can see the wall section showing the inner leaf of the dyed black concrete, the insulation, and the outer leaf.
A Sustainable and Award-Winning Project
The best way to fully comprehend the enormity of the project is with aerial photos. Below one can see Ganedago and Toni Morrison Halls in the foreground while in the distance, Hu Shih and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Halls.
Ikon.5 selected a palette of colors, textures, and accents that combined with careful landscape planning reduce the scale of the buildings, themselves large enough to create a system of exterior courtyards.
The buildings were designed and built with Cornell’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2035. In addition to the one-foot-thick precast walls, the complex boasts rooftop solar panels and the capacity for connection to natural heating and cooling sources.
The project has garnered numerous awards, including the New York Association of General Contractors and ENR's New York Project of the Year in 2022, solidifying its position as a leading example of sustainable and innovative design.
Cladding Concepts' terracotta played a pivotal role in the success of the Cornell University North Campus Residential Expansion project. By providing a durable, aesthetically pleasing, and sustainable solution, we helped create a modern and inviting living environment for students. The project's success demonstrates the versatility and effectiveness of terracotta as a building material for high-quality architectural projects.
