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LIC Stainless Steel Brings New Colors to Brookfield

Brookfield, IL is a village of Cook County just south of downtown Chicago. This thriving community combines the best of both city and suburban living just minutes from the city center. Known for having one of the largest Zoo’s in the Midwest, this town has become a major destination for all of Chicagoland.

A vital part of every community is their public library. The architects at Product Architecture + Design went above and beyond to create a space for the residents of Brookfield to gather, collaborate, and continue to grow. Incorporating Light Interference Color on the exterior façade was a crucial piece of the design, drawing you inside with the alluring colored stainless steel tiles.

The architects at Product Architecture + Design did a stunning job bringing the community’s vision to reality. The library wanted an exterior material for the building that had minimal maintenance and similar durability to masonry or stone. Along with the durability, they wanted the ability to clad the entire façade in one material without it being monolithic.

“We chose Millennium Forms tiles for these qualities and more so the texture, variation of tones, and the warmth across the overall elevation,” said Dan Pohrte, of Product Design + Architecture. “The community loves the way the building and tiles reflect the color of the sky, shifting the building from a cool blue at dawn to warm orange and pinks at sunsets.”

The micro park across the street on the site of the old library will be used by the entire community and includes a pollinator garden that was developed in coordination with and sponsored by the Brookfield Zoo. We are always excited for the opportunity to work on public libraries and to bring color and new life to these vital community centers.

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Pekin Insurance recently opened its new office located at 120 N. Parkway Drive in Pekin, IL. Since its beginnings in 1921 after the introduction of the automobile, Pekin has grown from providing auto insurance solely to Tazewell County to offering a complete line of Life, Health, Auto, Home, and Business coverage to six states. Pekin bought the 28,740SF building in response to their growth and a need for more space.

Designed by Dewberry Architects in Peoria, the new Property/Casualty Claim building was renovated and retrofit with TerraClad terra cotta panels and two different colors of Swisspearl’s cement composite panels – Carat Sapphire 7060 and Black Opal 7021. The integrally colored cement composite panels were supplied by Arcspec and installed by Zobrist Construction based out of Morton, IL.

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Often thought of strictly for roof shingles, stainless steel tiles offer a unique and durable façade alternative. Whether designing in neutral tones or bright colors, Millennium Tiles, the only manufacturer of Stainless Steel Tiles, uses several different manufacturing processes to produce tiles with dimensionality and endurance. The Natural, Pewter and Zalmag tiles offer more subtle gray colors in a range of sheen. Colored tiles are available in both the LIC and TiNi products.

LIC (Light Interference Color) tiles are made from “an electrochemical process which thickens the naturally occurring chromium oxide on stainless steel. The clear oxide layer acts like the raindrop which creates the rainbow.”

The color is produced by light interference on the surface of the stainless steel; therefore, the color will vary based upon the amount of light and the angle from which it is being viewed. Since the color is merely perceived, the tiles are not affected by UV and will not fade over time.

Manufactured using vapor deposition, the TiNi product comes in rich colors, including imperial gold, permanent copper, antique bronze, royal blue, and peacock. LIC and TiNi tiles are available in several sizes, including sheets up to 48” X 120” giving architects numerous layout alternatives for designing exterior facades.

According to Architectural Record, the roofing tiles are “competitively priced” and “are made of approximately 75 percent recycled material and are 100 percent recyclable”. Since all Millennium Tiles’ products are permanently colored tiles, they are maintenance free and come with a 50 year warranty. The timeless beauty, recyclability, and longevity of stainless steel tiles make them an exceptional value for any type of building project.

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Designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect, Thom Payne of Morphosis’, 41 Cooper Square is the first academic laboratory project in NYC to receive the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest honor. Plasterform, one of the largest architectural casting manufacturers in the world, contributed to both the exterior and interior of this high profile project.

According to Crain’s magazine, as part of a progressive green building initiative, this LEED Platinum project has a double skin exterior consisting of a coated window wall system enclosed by perforated metal panels which improves the energy efficiency of the building by reducing the amount of heat penetrating the building in warmer weather and reducing the loss of heat in the winter.

Interwoven into the exterior façade of this building is Plasterform’s Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC) rain screen system, a more sustainable option than conventional construction. The GFRC rainscreen has a complex shape that had to conform to the shape of the perforated metal fabricated by A. Zahner.

According to Mario Botelho of Plasterform, this was accomplished with the use of BIM (Building Information Modeling). The Architect created a 3D electronic model of the building that was passed on to each manufacturer. A. Zahner and Plasterform then used their CADCAM (Computer Aided Design Computer Aided Manufacturing) capabilities for prefabrication which allowed for the seamless integration of both materials despite being hundreds of miles apart from each other.

Sustainability wasn’t the only driving force behind the design of 41 Cooper Square. “Internally, the building is conceived as a vehicle to foster collaboration and cross-disciplinary dialogue among the college’s three schools, previously housed in separate buildings.”

At the center of the nine-story, 175,000 SF building is a vertical piazza with a full height atrium with grand stairs, sky bridges and skip stop elevators. As the center of the social hub, Plasterform’s randomly perforated Glass Fiber Reinforced Gypsum (GFRG) panels were installed throughout the atrium to help with sound absorption. The use of GFRG on the ceilings speaks to its versatility as a “lightweight material that can be made into just about any shape imaginable”.

Plasterform’s contribution to the Cooper Square project exhibits their diverse capabilities due to their extensive product range and use of the most innovative technology.