Hyatt Regency Tysons Corner, Boston Valley featured by PCI Mid-Atlantic
SOURCE: PCI.org
DATE: November 14, 2022
Boston Valley is proud to be a long-standing member of the PCI Mid-Atlantic chapter (Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute). Recently, PCI published a case study detailing one of our past projects, the Hyatt Regency hotel at Tysons Corner.
Project Overview
A short half-hour drive from our nation’s capital is the Hyatt Regency at Tysons Corner Center, part of a major mixed-use expansion by architect CallisonRTKL. The master development plan includes the 18-story, 300-key hotel in addition to an office tower, residential complex, and outdoor public plaza, all centered around the renowned Tysons Corner Center shopping mall.
While the Hyatt Regency is conveniently located near downtown Washington D.C., it is also in close proximity to the area’s technology and medical corridors, making it a popular hospitality option for both leisure and business. The hotel was designed to offer all visitors an upscale experience, so it was important that this premium quality be reflected in the look of the building’s façade.
Terra cotta panels in a mixture of through-body colors create visual interest on the northern façade.
Precast Solution
The façade of the Hyatt Regency at Tysons Corner is a combination of glass and precast terra cotta cladding, which consists of a terra cotta veneer embedded as a finishing material into precast concrete units. Boston Valley Terra Cotta provided installer Gate Precast with the clay used to fabricate approximately 22,800 SF of dovetail veneer panels in five profile variations.
Guest rooms line the east and west faces of the Hyatt Regency; their exteriors are clad with modular terra cotta panels in gray, stacked vertically to create double-height window expressions. On the north face, panels in a mix of three through-body colors (Slate, Charcoal, and Gravel) cover the façade to create visual interest. Unlike glazed terra cotta, through-body color is achieved through a combination of clays, minerals, and stains, which are then mixed with water and fired to a high temperature. This forms permanent bonds that will make sure the building experiences no color fade from UV exposure.
A precast concrete solution was proposed early in the design process as a way of addressing a tight construction site with minimal lay-down and storage space and the owner’s hard opening date, while still meeting important energy performance and sustainability goals. Different facing materials were studied before terra cotta was selected for aesthetic reasons.
Guest room windows of the Hyatt Regency are also lined with terra cotta and precast concrete panels.
From the beginning of the project, Boston Valley worked closely with Gate Precast to rationalize the custom profile dies for the hotel, specifically making sure the large shiplap joints could meet manufacturing limitations. The two fabricators also collaborated with CallisonRTKL and PCI to develop and apply new standards for terra cotta precast, which was still a new and innovative construction technique at the time. Once the panels had been cast, Boston Valley ran testing on the assembly to confirm these new specifications.
The Hyatt Regency project balances the multiple benefits of an architectural precast system – economy, accelerated schedule and thermal efficiency – with the aesthetics of handset terra cotta. Terra cotta offers an endless number of profile and color options, making it easy for the architect to achieve their design intent. This innovative use of terra cotta tiles expands precast’s versatility, giving architects a new way to use a longstanding material.
Boston Valley was also featured in PCI’s “Member Spotlight” for the month of November. A Q&A with our Sales Manager, Nicholas Parisi, sheds some light on the process of working with precast terra cotta for architectural applications. Read the full article here.
