Kawneer Collaborative engineers custom unitized curtain wall for BIG's Robert Day Sciences Center

Kawneer Collaborative has provided a tailored unitized curtain wall system for the Robert Day Sciences Center located at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. The 135,000-square-foot facility, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), showcases interlocking and cantilevered structures covered in Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC) and features expansive floor-to-ceiling windows. Each floor is rotated to enhance views of the campus and the San Gabriel mountains. The project’s unique stacked floors, offset geometry, and triangular glass units necessitated an advanced facade solution due to its seismic zone location. Kawneer Collaborative delivered facade engineering, BIM engineering, and shop drawings, creating a unitized curtain wall with a central deadload anchor and corner wind load anchors, enabling tilting during seismic activity. The center point anchor functions as a pendulum to realign the unit post-event, with crumple zones designed to absorb deformation. The system incorporates Kawneer's 1600 Wall System1 Curtain Wall, 500T Insulpour Thermal Entrances, and 2000T Terrace Doors, and the building has received LEED Gold certification. Engineering supervisor Shane Davis highlighted the challenges posed by seismic and lateral forces due to the weight of GFRC, while Rob Huffman, director of Kawneer Collaborative, remarked on the project's complexity, making replication unlikely. The center now serves as a hub for interdisciplinary research among students.