TOWN GREEN

Band Shell & Pavilions

Maple Grove, Minnesota

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PROJECT INFORMATION

Completed: June 2010Site: reclaimed aggregate mine pitProgram: outdoor performance space for music, dance, theater and fi lm; community mee ng space; restrooms; concessionsSize: 4,400 GSF on 8 acresConstruc on cost: $5.3M, $3.3M buildings, $2M landscapeMaterials: cast-in-place concrete, sand-blasted glass, wood composite paneling

TOWN GREEN BAND SHELL & PAVILIONS

Town Green is an open-air community band shell for music, dance and theater under a drama c concrete canopy. Three addi onal pavilions serve as gateway to the event area while providing concessions, restrooms and mee ng space.

DESIGN OBJECTIVEMaple Grove ci zens desired to invest in the civic iden ty of their growing community. City leaders further charged the design team to create a new iconic symbol for the City of Maple Grove. The program consisted of a band shell technically capable of suppor ng a variety of live performance types — music, dance and theater — in outdoor, am-phitheater-style sea ng bowl. Separate pavilions for restroom facili es, food concessions and a mee ng room are all surrounded by a green park-like environment at the terminus of Main Street.

A RECLAIMED SITEThe band shell structure is located at the water’s edge on the sloped east shore of West Arbor Lake. The suppor ng pavilions and a town green landscape that serve as backdrop and gateway to the precinct. The Maple Grove site was un l recently an open pit sand and gravel quarry.

CONCEPT: POETRY OF FORM AND MATERIALSCues for a project vocabulary were found in the glacial history of the site and the development of Maple Grove as an outpost along the pioneering Oxcart Trail: layers of sand and gravel became the base buildings whereas an abstracted groves of trees became the curvaceous canopies above. Yet,the architecture of the band shell canopy mee ng the sky can suggest mul ple associa ons: the abstracted grove of trees, the lightsome and curved shape of maple seed-pods, and clouds. The 107-foot wide concrete band shell canopy is supported on six narrow concrete columns and gently arcs toward the sky in an acous cally-formed shape. The canopies of the adjacent pavilions reprise this curved concrete language — curved shadows are cast onto the building walls. The walls of the buildings relate to the geo-logical history of the site using earthen-colored concrete poured against textured form-liners and exposing aggregate indigenous to the area.

MATERIAL: CAST-IN-PLACE CONCRETECast-in-place concrete — colored and textured in various ways — was selected as the durable yet expressive material that best portrayed the project concepts. The formal and structural ability of concrete to take the shape given to it al-lowed can levered pavilion roofs and the long-span of the band shell canopy structure. A design constraint of 10-foot maximum can lever for the roof slabs coupled with post-tension cabling layouts tailored to the specifi c wall and col-umn placements for each pavilion allowed for these dynamic shapes. Roof slabs maximized a sense of weightlessness by tapering slab design thicknesses of as much as 18-inches [at the band shell slab] to a mere 8-inches at all edges.

S I T E P L A N1 West Arbor Lake 2 Band Shell Pavilion 3 Amphitheatre4 Concession Pavilion 567 Arbor Structure8 County Library 9 Main Street

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F L O O R P L A N S 16’8’4’01 (55 pc ensemble capacity) 2 Stage Right (technical support) 3 4 West Arbor Lake 5 6 7 8 Toilets 9 Mechanical 10 Electrical 11 Storage 12 Concessions

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R E S T I N G P A V I L I O NM E E T I N G P A V I L I O N C O N C E S S I O N P A V I L I O N

B A N D S H E L L P A V I L I O N

PATTERN

Laminated glass is sandblast etched on both outside faces with an off set pat-tern. Similarly, wood veneer panels are perforated to conceal air intake and exhaust louvers for the building HVAC systems.

DETAILING STUDIES: joints between cast concrete, wood panels and glass.