Above: New England Biolabs’ Garden Site Facility features 29,610 square feet of custom copper wall panels
September, 2025-
NEW ENGLAND BIOLABS
The Copper Development Association named 10 project winners of its 2025 North American Copper in Architecture Awards on June 30, 2025. One winner is a 165,000- square-foot addition to the campus of New England Biolabs in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Led by Architectural Resources Cambridge in Boston, collaborators included the fabricator A. Zahner Co., Kansas City, Missouri, Columbia Construction of Boston and installer Ipswich Bay Glass of Rowley, Massachusetts.
In continuing its commitment to science, nature and design, New England Biolabs’ Garden Site Facility features 29,610 square feet of custom copper wall panels designed to complement the copper cladding on the earlier 2006 laboratory building. Working with A. Zahner Co., a rigorous prototyping process ensured the new copper panels visually aligned with the original panels. The result honors New England Biolabs’ environmental ethos and brand values while delivering aesthetic and functional continuity.
TOP OF THE ROCK
Winners of 2025’s Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel (or IDEAS²) Awards, presented annually by the American Institute of Steel Construction, Chicago, were announced in April. Winning the award for excellence in adaptive reuse was the Top of the Rock redevelopment project.
“It’s not easy to rig an amusement ride at the top of a 90-year-old building. The ride captures the spirit of steel and the ironworkers who brought it to life through the ages to celebrate the connection between a community and the structures that define it,” commented Jeremy Loebs, an executive with Schuff Steel and judge for the 2025 competition.
The Beam allows patrons to recreate the iconic “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photograph from the 1930s.
Top of The Rock, located on the 67th, 69th and 70th floors of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan, is a popular tourist destination. Rockefeller Center’s owners wanted to bring new interactive experiences to the observation deck. One is called The Beam, which allows visitors to recreate the iconic “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photograph from the 1930s. The other, the Skylift, is a telescoping platform that rises 30 feet above the 70th floor and rotates 360 degrees to provide panoramic city views.
The observation deck did not close while workers built both rides and the structures to support them. Work was performed between midnight and 8 a.m. Also, the project could not interrupt elevator operation. Space and access constraints were the biggest hurdle. The 67th and 69th floors are roughly 60 feet wide, and the 70th floor is only about 20 feet wide, with elevator machine rooms and other mechanical systems occupying nearly all the space along the core.
The backbone of The Beam’s support system is a new 36-inch by 150-inch wide-flange beam that spans 28 feet between two existing girders, which needed extensive reinforcing.
The Skylift’s substructure has four guideposts connected to the 70th floor framing. GMS performed the base-building work in the motor room and roof opening and turned over a turnkey space to accept the Skylift equipment. Two new girders supporting Skylift are each 28 feet long and weigh about 2 tons.
The steel team for the project included fabricator/detailer North American Manufacturing Corp. and erector Maspeth Welding Inc., both based in Queens.
At Portsmouth Abbey School, custom perforated and pre-patinated copper screens made from 48-ounce panels reference historic campus buildings nearby.
PORTSMOUTH ABBEY SCHOOL
A second winner of the annual copper in architecture awards is a new 8,000-square-foot student center at Portsmouth Abbey School in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Led by Ikon 5 Architects of New York, collaborators included the sheet metal contractor Crocker Architectural Sheet Metal Co. Inc. of North Oxford, Massachusetts, and metal finisher DLSS Manufacturing of Burlington, North Carolina.
As part of the Catholic coeducational Benedictine boarding and day school for grades nine through 12, the student center faces Narragansett Bay. It features a custom perforated and pre-patinated copper screen made from 48-ounce panels, referencing historic campus buildings nearby. Apart from their beauty, the copper screen panels moderate both heat and solar gain.
200 PARK
The winner for Excellence in Constructability in the AISC’s 2025 IDEAS² contest is 200 Park, a 300-foot-tall office tower in San Jose, California. The project used the SpeedCore structural system, cost effective because it can be erected three months faster while its substantial shear capacity reduces wall thickness by up to 18 inches compared to a concrete core wall.
The $500 million building’s framing system contains 10,000 tons of structural steel. The SpeedCore system accounts for roughly 4,000 tons of that.
The owner and architect wanted the terrace floor framing levels to be as slim as possible, requiring narrow custom-tapered shaped beams and girders and sloping steel columns that frame out these openings.
Most of the SpeedCore elements consist of ASTM A572 Grade 55 plates, 1/2 inch thick. Tie rods were designed using weldable 55 ksi round bars up to 1 inch diameter. Heavy gravity columns were designed using A913 Grade 65 steel to help reduce size where possible. Some of the trusses include 10 by 10 by 13/8- inch angles.
Schuff Steel, Phoenix, worked with Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Seattle, for all the lower-level specialized SpeedCore elements, and developed creative ways to configure them to optimize modularization. Thus, the difficult connections and weld joints could be fully completed in the fabrication shop, making field connections simpler. Schuff also worked with welding expert and engineering consultant Bob Shaw to optimize welds, develop qualified weld procedures and explore the best options for field welding to mitigate possible shrinkage or distortion in the core.
BMO CENTRE
BMO Centre—a Calgary, Alberta, venue for events and exhibitions since 1982— completed a 565,000-square-foot expansion, with the exteriors clad in Alucobond Plus. Developed by 3A Composites USA, Alucobond is a lightweight composite panel comprising two aluminum cover sheets and a fire-retardant or non-combustible foam-filled core.
Stantec (architect), Populous (design architect) and S2 Architecture (lead contractor) worked together, finding inspiration in Calgary’s rivers, rolling foothills and the annual Stampede, a 10-day event that includes rodeo competitions, agricultural exhibitions and cultural festivities.
This exterior cladding material needed to have the durability to withstand varying temperatures and the flexibility and integration necessary for a complex architectural form.
The fabricator, Flynn Canada, created and installed panels from 4-mm-thick Alucobond Plus ACM in brushed antique copper, Atacama bronze metallic, Almandine garnet metallic and custom mill finish antique copper.
The products were “instrumental in allowing us to achieve the design intent for the BMO Centre expansion,” says Matthew Craig, senior technical lead at Stantec. “Its ability to be formed into complex shapes and integrate seamlessly with other building systems was crucial in bringing the vision of a dynamic, copper-inspired façade to life.”
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Readers are encouraged to take a closer look at the above projects and browse more of the award-winning designs selected this year by the Copper Development Association and the AISC. These works are beautiful, inspiring and built to last. Companies with the right credentials and qualifications are also encouraged to enter these competitions with their own metals-intensive architectural projects.
3A Composites USA, 800/626-3365, http://alucobondusa.com/
American Institute for Steel Construction, 312/670-2400, http://aisc.org/
Copper Development Association, http://copper.org/
