Curtis Miner Architecture projects receive Utah Masonry Council awards

Curtis Miner Architecture is honored to be the recipient of four esteemed Utah Masonry Council Excellence in Masonry Design awards for 2018.

The American Heritage School Athletics Facility was awarded the Institutional Private Projects Honor Design Award.

The Athletics Facility at American Heritage High School is the first phase of the campus expansion. Traditional American materials such as red fired brick, and details such as classical white cornices reinforce one the building’s purposes – to teach of the founding of America.

The new athletic facility utilizes the same architectural language as the original school. Throughout the exterior the red brick detailing incorporates, soldier coursing above the windows as well as at geometrical transitions in the building’s facade. Uniform stepping of the brick allows the architect to create shadows that give definition to the building. On the interior, the architect utilized the same CMU as the main building finish.

In order to give a high-end finished look to the interior, a number of CMU styles were used. Honed units were combined with split face units to give variety in texture. Earth tones were used to give a conservative natural look to the interior.

Other less public areas such as mechanical and storage spaces utilized standard grey CMU units that would be durable and withstand abuse. The masonry both on the outside and the inside provide long lasting, durable, and beautiful materials for this project; as well as reinforce the client’s goals and values.

Spectrum Academy Charter High School earned the Merit Design Award for Institutional Private Projects.

The use of masonry successfully expresses the design concept of this building. Autism affects individuals on a spectrum from mild to severe. The architect took the spectrum of autism as a concept and translated it into the masonry design. The exterior design took common CMU block, strategically placed into a physical metaphor of the autism spectrum.

Mild autism is reflected as ordered bands of masonry, while more severe autism is represented in a scattered array of masonry patterns. The irregular design features, in contrast to the progressive banding and solid masses, serve as a reminder that autism can be manifest in many varieties, all of which are recognized and embraced in this specialized learning environment.

The combination of CMU finishes contrast texture and color. The use of opposing material finishes emphasized key locations on the building, such as the front entry, gymnasium, vocational entry and vocational shop. CMU was used for durability and speed of construction, which also contributed to the project finishing on time and on budget.

Creekside Senior & Assisted Living was awarded the Multi-Family Residential Projects Merit Design Award.

Masonry, including brick and stone veneer, was used to accentuate and enhance the natural beauty of the project’s location at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, and to create a warm, comfortable ambiance, both inside and outside the facility.

The main entrance to Creekside was designed to be a focal point from the entry drive and from the main road. A large porte-cochere directs guests to the main entrance and provides shelter for those who enter the facility. The porte-cochere is supported on one end by stone clad columns that taper from the foundation up to the structural steel columns and on the other end by the 3 ½-story grand entry clad with full brick and punctuated with large windows to the gathering spaces inside.

The complementary theme of brick and stone veneer repeats around the perimeter of the building. These striking yet comforting effects of the masonry and stone architectural design were not achieved without complication, however. One of the biggest problems was to accommodate up to 5 inches of differential movement above the second floor level. The solution was to provide a slip joint at the second story line. To hide this slip joint, the height of the masonry was lowered–with the exception of the main entrance where a full height masonry look was required.

In order to accommodate this design feature, a brick ledger was designed to carry the load above the slip track, independent of the masonry below, and the joint was filled with a flexible sealant colored to match the grout. The combination of innovative structural design and creative architectural and landscape design creates a stunning living environment that feels cohesive, warm, and luxurious, as the eye is drawn upward and outward to the mountains and the Creekside scenery that gives the senior community its name.

 Deseret First Credit Union’s Operations Center earned the Citation Design Award for Commercial Projects.

A wide range of modern materials, finishes, and colors provide a fresh, professional, and clean setting for the work environment. Masonry material was an integral part of the exterior and interior design. The exterior design utilized 130,000 standard sized bricks as the primary exterior material.

The interior used 49,000 thin sized bricks on selected walls to create the connection of indoors to outdoors. Using a thin brick on the interior allowed the owners to save on the cost of material and reduced the weight for the required building engineering. During the interior installation, masonry contractors had to follow a strict schedule to keep in line with the other interior finishes within the building.

Utilizing the masonry material for the exterior and interior design greatly enhanced the overall success of the project allowing conformance with the office park design guidelines and providing a connection of the interior finish materials to the exterior finish materials.