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The drama of building's exterior massing is heightened by a facade clad in hundreds of multilength cast-glass channels. The Shaw Center is said to be the largest building in the United States to be completely clad in U-shaped cast glass and the first to use the channel glass as the rain screen for a wall system.

The Shaw Center, which opened in early March, 2005, is the result of a collaboration between Schwartz/Silver Architects as design architects, New Orleans-based Eskew + Dumez + Ripple as executive architects, and Baton Rouge-based Jerry M. Campbell and Associates as associate architects.

"The building's facade is conceived to evoke many local associations: a paper lantern, glass beading, the meandering Mississippi," says Warren R. Schwartz, FAIA, principal of Schwartz/Silver.

"It may at first seem counterintuitive to glaze an entire building that has relatively few windows," adds Christopher B. Ingersoll, a principal at Schwartz/Silver and project director for the Shaw Center. "But the end result is a building that protects the valuable collections within while forming a memorable image on the city's skyline."

Design Evolution

When Boston-based Schwartz/Silver was hired in 1998 to design a new art museum for Louisiana State University 12 miles (19 kilometers) east of downtown Baton Rouge, the architects proposed a low-rise building with wide overhanging roofs and deeply shaded loggias. This design approach was grounded in the regional traditions of Louisiana, which boasts some of the nation's most iconic southern plantation houses.

But even as that design was being approved, a new chancellor at the university, in meeting with city and state officials and major nonprofit entities like the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, recognized an exciting potential: combine the museum with the LSU School of Art, with the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge's adaptive reuse of the Auto Hotel, and with a performing arts center already in the planning.

Halting its original plans, LSU presented a challenge to Schwartz/Silver in 2000: create a new design for the LSU Museum of Art, this time atop the Auto Hotel, and develop a master plan for a multiuse "Arts Block" in the heart of downtown Baton Rouge.

Rain Glass

Early in redesign, Schwartz/Silver considered a number of cladding systems, among them prepatinated copper and glass channel. While the initial budget would not accommodate the glass channel system, there was some enthusiasm to pursue that option, so mockups were constructed on the site to demonstrate to the steering committee that channel glass would give depth and visual complexity to the building's surface while serving practical ends.

Specifically, the proposed facade was composed of two layers — an outermost layer of channel glass and an inner layer of corrugated aluminum — serving as the weather barrier, with an air gap between layers to create a rain screen configuration. During the development of the cladding system, technical tests demonstrated that even in the heavy rains common in the region, the channels reduced the water to a mist in the cavity, thus functioning as a true rain screen.   >>>

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Night shot of cantilevered portion of the building. Photo: Timothy Hursley, The Arkansas Office Glass channel detail. Photo: James McCown Building section. Image: Schwartz/Silver Architects Level one floor plan. Image: Schwartz/Silver Architects Level five floor plan. Image: Schwartz/Silver Architects Rooftop terrace overlooking the Mississippi River. Photo: Timothy Hursley, The Arkansas Office Main lobby of the Shaw Center for the Arts. Photo: Timothy Hursley, The Arkansas Office   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.