PA TURNPIKE MAINTENANCE FACILITY

When JSA Architecture Planning Engineering Interior Design (Pittsburgh) set out to design a maintenance facility for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Harrisburg, Pa.), they wanted a modern design that would convey the idea of motion and transportation. They settled on ample use of curved design elements to create a feeling of movement.

The design team wanted to bring the curved metal motif into the interior of the building for aesthetic and functional purposes. To accomplish this, they used nearly 30,000 sq. ft. of 20 GA steel “N” deck panels custom-curved by Curveline, Inc.

“By using a curved metal deck and leaving the underside exposed, we were able to express the true structure of the building without covering anything up. The crimp-curved deck and supporting bow-string trusses create a language of architecture on the interior that is both beautiful and honest. If we had used a more conventional dropped ceiling, we would have lost that impact,” the architect reports.

Curveline’s proprietary crimp-curving process adds rigidity to metal decking panels, creating a virtually self-supporting deck that is extremely strong and economical. The Curveline process can achieve 15-20 percentlonger spans, for reduced framing costs.

The 17,876 sq. ft. maintenance building features an 82-ft. clear span bow-string truss that rises to 34-ft. 4-1/2” and has a clearance height of 18-ft. The 11,264 sq. ft. vehicle storage building has the same clear span and clearance height, with the truss rising to 28-ft. 11-1/2”.

The ability to achieve such large spans has enabled the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to facilitate the movement of trucks and provide efficient flow-through to areas such as the truck wash bay in the rear of the maintenance building.