Lessons of Form and Function for a Large Door
According to the chief facilities officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies, when it comes to the buildings on its campus, “it’s all about ideas.”
The buildings at the world-renowned MIT are not just for containing students and faculty. The facilities are expected do their part to support innovation, experimentation and rigorous thought. Contributing to this is the well worked out and defined ideas that go into the function and the look of every feature of a building, including the doors that are used on them.
As an example the recent 6,000 sq. ft., three-story Robert C. Seamans Jr Addition to the 50,000 sq. ft. MIT Daniel Guggenheim Aeronautical Building provides an open, flexible, creative space that contains both the traditions of this great program and innovations to come. For this building a large door was needed to accommodate the sizable projects that are worked on here.
So, to provide reliable service and yet carry out the ideas behind this building, the project’s architect Cambridge Seven Associates specified a Wilson Doors Premier™ Vertical Bi-Fold Door, featuring 6061 T6 Aircraft Aluminum construction. This door is 23’ 7” wide by 16’ 8” high and when open has a clear height of 13’ 8”.
This door is typically used on aircraft hangars and is a natural choice for this project, but the architect wanted to go beyond the door’s strict function because of the mission of the project. According to project architect Steven Imrich, “before renovating this space, you had a building that was quite innocuous.”
Wilson Doors has considerable experience doing large hangar doors. However, this type of door if provided in standard form for a project of this scope would be rather drab and detract from the overall impact. As Wilson Doors consultant Del Lucas pointed out, “before the MIT project we had installed a glass covered door on a rather up-scale helicopter hangar. The private owner was very particular about the overall look of his building.” The result was a door that aesthetically enhanced the building and satisfied the customer’s needs.
This redo of the lab building was quite important to MIT for many reasons. Attracting high caliber students is top of the list. Imrich points out, “You certainly couldn’t tell as a visiting parent with an interested freshman that anything important took place in a building that looked like it was a maintenance facility.”
The vein of history runs deep at the Guggenheim Laboratory. The Robert C. Seamans Jr. Addition is named after the member of the MIT faculty who convinced John F. Kennedy to aim for the moon, immediately putting the institution in the forefront of rocket technology and the legendary space race.
The 70’s saw international competition to design the first human powered aircraft with MIT very much in the thick of it. Though they were not the first to come up with the working design, the staff noted that many of the people involved with the project went on to accomplish great things in aeronautics, making this the ultimate teaching experience.
MIT recognized a problem in that much of the work for this and other projects had to be done in a variety places. This led to the notion that what takes place in terms of designing, building and testing a new aircraft, spacecraft or satellite within this teaching space should emulate the industries in which these students would eventually work.
MIT came up with a name for this teaching approach – Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate – or CDIO. In carrying out CDIO, the building is zoned according to function to integrate the study and hands-on aspects of the Aeronautics Department. The classroom area on the second floor is above the ground level hangar space. Along with the learning resource library they have different fabricating shops where students can work on composites and metals. In effect, a satellite project that starts out in the design classroom moves just 15 to 20 feet over to be fabricated and then the mock-up goes into another area for testing.
Important in the building carrying out this mission was modeling the “real-world” processes and workflow for a truly educational experience for their future aeronautics engineers. The addition is symbolic of the aerospace industry. Like working aircraft facilities, metal was a natural choice for the building’s important elements. Stainless steel batten seam roofing provides cover for the barrel-vaulted hangar space and the idea of using a hangar door on the addition seemed to be a natural conclusion.
But, for the architects this door had to carry out the design they had in mind for the addition. According to Imrich, “we had considered other kinds of doors.”
They checked out fully cantilevering, single leaf doors and counterbalanced single leaf doors that did not fold overhead but pivoted. They also weighed going with the traditional slider hangar door – but did not have the room. What the decision came down to was the doorway seal, the vertical bi-fold design delivered classroom comfort and energy conservation.
C7a was looking for door that would not stand out against the overall theme of the building but merge into it. Wilson Doors fit on to its frame a Kawneer 1600 Curtain Wall System to hold blue tinted windows, such as those seen on all three sides of the building. The steel used in the building frame would create too much weight on the door, so
Wilson
went with an aluminum frame.
Wilson Doors bought dies to match the tubing that was part of the building structure. In addition, Wilson Doors engineers were aware that a door this large could amplify any twisting in the frame that might occur during operation. This action would cause the glass inserts to pop out of the door. Mathematical models enabled the engineers to calculate the right size frame members to achieve proper rigidity and also run were computer desktop wind load tests.
The door’s 6061 T6 aircraft structural tubing was jig welded in alignment with the Kawneer Curtain Wall System. One-inch windows (two ¼’ laminated glass panels with an energy-saving ½” air space in between) on the both the curtain window and the door cuts both noise and UV rays going into the building to enhance the learning environment.
The finished door features automatic self-latching, a sensing edge and battery back-up for emergency use. The
Wilson
bi-fold door has modular construction, so installation was quick, easy and economical.
C7a was brought onto this project off of a portfolio of buildings, which reflected the advanced thinking that went into the Seamans Laboratory Addition. As this is not strictly just a lab or a classroom facility, “our firm has done quite a bit of work in museums and academic settings as well as transportation and hospitality where the whole project is a blend of features that commonly would not be seen together,” assesses Imrich.
According to Lucas, “what
Wilson
brought to this project along with a fully functioning door was a willingness to explore design possibilities that would mirror the overall approach of the building.”
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CAPTIONS
MIT Door – This nearly 24’ x 17’ bi-fold door fits in with both the look and the mission of the addition to the
Daniel
Guggenheim
Aeronautical
Building
at MIT.
