WEST POINT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

The center of the new West Point Junior High School (Salt Lake City) is a large glass box with a curved metal roof. This glass-enclosed space, which is 2-1/2 stories high, is the heart of the school comprised of a dining room and common area surrounded by a library, faculty room, and administration and counseling rooms.

“We needed an acoustical treatment for this central gathering space; and in designing it we wanted to carry over a curved motif used on the exterior wall and roof panels, by incorporating the same type of horizontally curved panel,” states Boyd McAllister, AIA, a partner at VCBO Architecture, Salt Lake City. “To meet functional and aesthetic goals, we selected an M.B.C.I. perforated ‘U’ panel with insulation behind it.

“When we first came up with the design, we weren’t sure how the perforated panels would be curved,” McAllister adds. “The exterior panels had a gentle enough curving radius so that they could be bent into place during installation, but the interior perforated wall panels had a much tighter radius,” he explains.

“It turned out that Curveline’s crimp-curving process was ideally suited to the job. By going with crimp-curving it was possible to curve the panels with the seams running horizontally instead of vertically, for a much nicer look.”

Curveline shaped the perforated wall paneling into two sections. The larger section (which used 1,917 sq. ft. of curved panels) was convex in curvature, and the smaller section (which used 915 sq. ft.) was concave.