dynamicsofmasonry.com ENERGY | SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY v2.4 2015 SMART |dynamicsofmasonry 33

Masonry Meets Police Department Objectives

Safety and Security with Openness and TransparencyEli Goldstein, AIA

Photos by Eli Goldstein

Jersey City Police DepartmentJersey City NJ

ClientJERSEY CITY New JerseyArchitectTHE GOLDSTEIN PARTNERSHIP Maplewood NJStructural EngineerSEVERUD ASSOCIATES New York NYConstruction ManagerEPIC MANAGEMENT Piscataway NJGeneral ContractorAPS CONTRACTING Paterson NJMason ContractorHIGH MOUNTAIN CONSTRUCTION North Haledon NJGlass Block InstallerGLASS BLOCK AMERICA Medina OHMasonry MaterialsBUZZI UNICEM USA | THE BELDEN BRICK COMPANY | EASTERN GLASS BLOCK |EASTON BLOCK & SUPPLY | GREEN GUARD | HANOVER ARCHITECTURAL PRODUCTS |HOHMANN & BARNARD | NITTERHOUSE MASONRY PRODUCTS | PITTSBURGH CORNING | QUIKCRETE |ROCKCAST DIVISION OF READING ROCK |SPEC MIXConstruction Cost $10.4 MILLIONMasonry Budget $1,025,000Size 30,000 SFCompletion MAY 2015

This glass block atthe second story

conveys a sense ofopenness, allows innatural light and is

also blast resistant.

Continuing Education

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During initial discussions with the client,concern for the safety and security of theofficers in this challenging neighborhoodwas expressed. There was also a strongdesire for the public spaces within thebuilding to convey a sense of opennessand transparency. To provide a toughbuilding skin, masonry was an immediatecandidate. Jersey City has a history ofdistinguished masonry buildings, many ofwhich house the City’s cultural institutions.

About 10 years ago, Jersey City initiated acapital program to gradually replace itsfour existing police precinct buildings, themost recent of which was built more than acentury ago. Jersey City is New Jersey’ssecond largest city. The western portion ofthe city is served by the West District Precinctof the Jersey City Police Department and wasthe first one designated for replace ment. It isthe busiest police precinct in the state.

Based on The Goldstein Partnership’sextensive experience in police facilitydesign, we were chosen to design the newWest District Precinct. The site is a prominentcorner, visible across a shallow pocket parkfrom a primary vehicular artery.

Sense of Lightness JerseyCity has committed to achieving a greencertification of at least LEED Silver for eachof its public buildings. To satisfy theproject’s requirements for energyconservation, security and transparency,the outside of the building is glazed withhigh‐performance insulatingglass units having bullet‐resistant inner lites, while thelobby is glazed with 3'' thick,bullet‐resistant block.

Historically, brick facades wereloadbearing elements in whichwindows were accommodatedby punching openings throughthe masonry wythes. Theseopenings are spanned witharches or lintels. In recentdecades, masonry facades have consistedprimarily of brick veneer anchored to studor block backup walls. Although theseveneers are not loadbearing, manycontemporary masonry buildings continueto employ the architectural vocabulary oftraditional masonry structures. On thisproject, the brickwork carries no load.Brick are laid in panels forming acheckerboard pattern in which the upperbrick panels are clearly not supported bylower ones. The result is a tremendoussense of visual lightness.

The sense that each brick panel is indepen ‐dent of those around it is reinforced byusing lipped brick at the first course of eachbrick panel. Lipped brick have a recess, justbehind their faces, to accommodate thethickness of the horizontal leg of a steellintel, plus mortar and flashing. As a result,the edges of the lintels are invisible fromoutside. To complete the illusion, upside‐down lipped brick at the top of each panelare incorporated.

Cavity Wall System For mostof the exterior, insulated masonry cavitywalls are used. They are composed of a 4"brick veneer, 4" cavity (the inner half ofwhich is insulated with a continuous layerof 2" extruded polystyrene), and an 8"block backup. The interior of manyperimeter walls are finished with 5/8"drywall applied to steel furring stripsanchored to the block backup.

Continuous insulation helps minimize thermalbridging and assures that the bulk of theexterior wall’s mass is within the thermalenvelope, helping to stabilize the building’sinterior radiant temperature. The averageR‐value of the masonry cavity walls isgreater than R14, more than 67% above theprescriptive requirement of New Jersey’scurrent energy code, ASHRAE 90.1‐2007.Having masonry backup walls enables thisbuilding to use about 4% less energy forheating and cooling than a similar buildingwithout the thermal mass.

Block backup isconstructed as infillbetween tubular steelcolumns. Horizontalsteel tabs are shop‐welded to the sides ofthese columns at 2' oncenter vertically sothat they project intothe hollow cores ofthe adjacent block.The cores of thoseblock are reinforced

with vertical bars threaded through holes inthose tabs. Grouting the cores lockseverything together, as required toaccommo date seismic forces.

Creating Identity As we walkedthe streets around the site to becomefamiliar with the context for this importantcivic building, I found a profusion ofcentury‐old masonry townhouses, and wasinspired by their spectacular and unusualbrick coursing and bonding, often usinglong shallow brick. At a design meeting

1 Explain ways in whichmasonry may contribute toLEED credits.

2 Identify qualities that makemasonry materialsparticularly well-suited to theneeds of a police building.

3 Discover ways that takingadvantage of masonry’smodularity can addefficiencies to buildingconstruction and design.

LEA

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Upon reading the articleyou will be able to:

Masonry givesform and

character toJersey City’s West

District Precinct,complementing the richarchitectural heritage of

Jersey City’s many publicbuildings. Its strength, fire‐

resistance, acousticperformance and

economy made it afitting choice for a

building having thespecific combination of

requirements of anurban police building. Bysourcing these materials

regionally, installingthem modularly to

minimize waste anddetailing to contribute to

the building thermalmass, they significantly

enhanced the building’ssustainability.

Code requires thatthese different uses [in mixed use buildings] beseparated from oneanother with firerated construction.

SAFETY AND SECURITY

soon thereafter, I learned that the PoliceDepartment’s shorthand name for thisdistrict is The West. The next time I lookedat design sketches, I realized that each ofthe two street facades had eight squarebrick panels along its second floor. I addedthe seven letters and one space of THEWEST to our sketches and realized thatcustom coursing could be used toincorporate THE WEST into the facade.

Visual Effects Ever since workingas a mason intern for several summers whilein architecture school, I have been fascinatedby the virtually infinite potential for patterningassociated with the incremental nature ofbrick construction. A brick wall is like adigital photograph with large pixels. Byvarying the color and arrangement of thepixels, one can achieve a wide range ofvisual effects.

To incorporate each of the large letters intothe street frontages, masons recessed aspecific group of bricks just 3/4" within thecontext of an unvarying running bond withmodular Roman brick (4" deep x 2" high x12" long). This modest amount of reliefprovides both functional and aestheticadvantages. It leaves an air space greaterthan 1", enabling moisture to flow freelywithin the cavity behind the veneer, evenwhere recessed. The visual result is subtleenough for the letters to virtually disappearunder certain lighting conditions. Happily,the visibility of the letters varies with thetime of day, time of year and weather. Theletter forms were achieved by recessing fullbrick in the appropriate pattern within the9' wide x 10' high brick panels. Waste wasminimized because the overall panel wasmodular, meaning that the infill consistedsolely of full and half brick.

Partition Walls Under Chapter 16of the International Building Code (IBC),police stations are classified as EssentialPublic Facilities, along with fire and rescuefacilities. As such, they are in OccupancyCategory IV (the highest category) in thedetermination of structural requirements,including earthquake‐resistance. Whereaspolice stations used to be classified in theIBC as Business Uses, they are now consider edMixed Uses, with all of the complexities thataccompany this designation. The architecthas the option to design the entire buildingto satisfy the requirements of the mostrestrictive use or to separate uses with fire‐rated assemblies. For The West, a combina ‐tion of these approaches was used.

Mixed‐use buildings usually conjure imagesof urban structures having retail uses on theground floor with offices and/or apartmentsabove. Unbeknownst to many is the factthat police buildings contain an even moreelaborate mix of uses. Offices are supple ment ‐ed by detention areas (cellblocks), garages(sally portes) and places of assembly(conference and/or meeting rooms).Building codes require that these differentuses be separated from one another withfire‐resistance rated construction.

At the West District, rated walls areconstructed of reinforced concrete block.Where additional strength is required (forseismic‐resistance or security), cores arereinforced with vertical bars grouted solid.Where block is visible in public areas,ground‐face (burnished) units are used.Block partitions are doweled into floor slabsat their bases and sandwiched between

pairs of steel clip angles at their tops. Blockis also used for partitions where acousticisolation and privacy is required betweenadjacent spaces.

Beauty, a WelcomeAddition To make the buildingentrance as visible as possible both from thestreets in front, as well as from theboulevard that passes nearby, the mainlobby is placed on the corner and housed ina two‐story rotunda. Its outer half consistsof an aluminum and glass curtain wall, whilethe inner half consists of decorative ground‐face block at the first floor and curved glassblock walls at the second floor. The faceteddomed roof is framed with custom three‐dimensional steel trusses with integrallighting. The oculus is topped with ahemispherical skylight.

To convey the sense of discipline and orderso vital to the operation of a police depart ‐ment, the lengths and heights all of glassblock and ground‐face block walls in thelobby are set to match the dimensions ofthe respective units. For example, the radiusof the rotunda is established so that the arclength between columns is just over 64",allowing eight 8"x8" glass blocks (and theirjoints) per course. This modular constructionapproach eliminates cutting of masonryunits, which in turn maximizes productivityand minimizes waste, all with economicbenefits. And, like the other masonrymaterials employed, glass block is fullyrecyclable, was regionally produced ofabundant natural materials and added novolatile organic compounds (VOC) to theindoor environment.

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A plan for recessing and protruding brick was created tospell out THE WEST, nickname of the police station.

The difference is subtle, so visibility ofletters varies with the time of day,

time of year and weather.

Photos by Eli Goldstein,© 2015 The Goldstein Partnersnip. All rights reserved.

On the lobby floor, in the building beingreplaced, was the Police Department’sshield, rendered in several colors of terrazzo.Originally, the intention was that the con ‐tractor cut it out of that building and reinstall inthe new building. However, it was even ‐tually concluded that recreating it would bemore economical then relocating it.

Sense of Place In an effort torelate the building as much as possible tothe main thoroughfare at some distancefrom the building’s entrance, the radialterrazzo motif from the rotunda is extendedinto the entrance plaza across the street andinto the pocket park located there. Likeripples radiating from a disturbance in apond, curved bands of brick pavers radiatefrom the rotunda. Alternating with thebands of brick pavers are panelsof concrete or panels of claypavers in a contrasting color.

In the lobby, curved interiorwalls are built with scoredground‐face block. Short wallslining wheelchair ramps andcomplementary planters out ‐side are topped with cast stone.

To provide a solid visual grounding, the baseof each facade consists of a cast stonewatertable. Although the site appears flat, itrises about 1' as one travels in each directionfrom the corner. These modest undulationsare de‐emphasized by the 18" high watertable;much of it shows even at the highest pointsof the site.

The original intention was to use the samemortar color with both colors of Romanbrick in the facade. However, the deliveredbrick had color ranges wider than anticipated,making contrasting panels less distinct. Weultimately chose to use two mortar colors, alighter color for the lighter shade of brick anda darker one for the darker shade. Thisreinforced visual distinctions betweenadjacent panels.

In all of the buildings we design, we try tobring daylight as far into the building aspossible. This not only enhances theworking environment, but also yields energysavings. Occupancy sensors are used inmany portions of this building so that thelights are on only when required.Daylighting further reduces the demand forartificial lighting. Glazed interior walls, such

as the curved glass block wallat the lobby, enable daylight toreach interior spaces which itwould not otherwise, furtherextending its benefits. Theglass block units transmit 90%of the available natural light.

Law enforcement facilities playmany roles as symbols of publicsafety and community service.

We and our client felt that openness andtransparency were the right messages forthe building to send to the surroundingneighborhood. That led to our use of largeexpanses of glass, especially at the entranceand within the lobby. The building is mannedround‐the‐clock (168 hours per week). Thisnot only assures residents that someone is

always there to help, but also means thatthe City’s investments in energy conservativematerials and systems (yielding 5 EnergyOptimization Credits under LEED 2009) willpay off much sooner than those in aconventional office building (conditionedless than 60 hours a week).

Eli Goldstein, AIA,is ManagingPartner of TheGoldsteinPartnership, a 60+ year oldArchitecture

and Planning firm. He has designedmany prominent masonry structures,including the Maplewood (NJ) Police& Court Building, the first LEED‐certified municipal building in theState of New Jersey, recognized asthe Top Green Building in NJ byIMI/New Jersey in its 2011 GoldenTrowel Awards program. Goldsteinholds a Bachelor of Science andMaster of Architecture from theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology. 973.761.4550egoldstein@goldstein-architects.com

The 3" solidbullet-resistantglass blocktransmit 90% of the availablenatural light.

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Locating windows at regular intervals achieves a fresh panelized look while still taking advantage of the durability of masonry.

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