RUDOLPH AND SLETTEN NEARS COMPLETION OF SILICON VALLEY’S FIRST REGIONAL CENTER FOR MUSIC AND ARTS EDUCATION
Community School of Music and Arts, Beloved 35-Year-Old Non-Profit in Mountain View, has First Permanent Home
FOSTER CITY, CA (August 28, 2003)---Rudolph and Sletten General Contractors announced today that it is nearing completion on construction of the new Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA) in Mountain View, California. The 25,000-square-foot center, devoted to teaching music and the visual arts to students of all ages and economic means, will be Silicon Valley’s first regional Center for Music and Arts Education.
Completion of the Center for Music and Arts Education, located at San Antonio Circle at the nexus of Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Los Altos, is scheduled for November 2003. The $8,000,000 structure is designed as a cast-in-place concrete building, with acoustical integrity a paramount design and construction concern. The Center for Music and Arts Education will serve thousands of students each year from San Mateo to Santa Clara. CSMA has been operating from interim sites since it lost its leased facility in 1998.
The new Center for Music and Arts Education will be the first permanent home for the 35-year-old arts organization, and will allow the school to substantially expand its programming and classroom offerings to serve more students. CSMA serves more than 25,000 people annually through various programs and is the largest non-profit provider of arts education in Silicon Valley. In addition to providing thousands of art and music lessons each year, CSMA’s faculty also teaches students in public and private schools in Silicon Valley.
When complete, the structure will house a 204-seat concert hall, recital studio, 17 music studios, art classrooms, ceramics lab, digital arts/electronic lab, exhibition gallery, administrative offices, and resource center. Intimate courtyards are contained throughout the building, which is located on 1.6 acres. The building is constructed in a U-shape configuration, with the triangular-shaped concert hall built on one side.
Rudolph and Sletten has been a longtime financial supporter of the Community School of Music and Arts. Other key supporters include the City of Mountain View, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
“Because exceptional facilities are essential for teaching and learning, the Community School of Music and Arts is delighted that Rudolph and Sletten is helping us build a Center for Music and Arts Education that will be distinguished as Silicon Valley’s premier learning environment for the arts,” said Board Chair-elect Michael D. Couch. “They have exhibited a commitment to the highest quality workmanship.”
Rudolph and Sletten is known for its ability to shepherd complex cultural and performing arts projects through the various phases of construction. In addition to the Community School of Music and Arts, Rudolph and Sletten is currently serving as construction manager for the renovation of the historic Fox Theatre in San Jose, new home to Opera San Jose. Other arts and cultural projects completed by Rudolph and Sletten include COPIA, the Center for Food, Wine, and the Arts in Napa; the Iris and B.Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University (Stanford Museum); as well as the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Construction Overview
Highlights of Rudolph and Sletten’s work for CSMA include:
- Performing the cast-in-place concrete work
- Integrating wave walls and other acoustical enhancements into the structure, so that it maintains the quality of a professional concert hall
- Installing the HVAC system, which consists of extremely large ducts to reduce the amount of vibration and noise
Cast-In-Place Concrete Walls
Rudolph and Sletten self-performed all of the concrete work, casting the concrete in place on site to provide seamless 8-inch and 12-inch dense walls that help ensure acoustical integrity and prevent sound leakage. Unlike most tilt-up construction that involves pouring a concrete wall on a slab and tilting it into place, cast-in-place concrete is much more complex. For acoustical reasons, the Center for Music and Arts Education could not be constructed with tilt-up section panels, because they present sound leakage problems. Dense, seamless concrete walls, on the other hand, ensure acoustical reliability.
Rudolph and Sletten used approximately 2,400 cubic yards of concrete on the project, amounting to about 265 truck loads of concrete. Cast-in-place concrete elements on site included the foundation, all the walls, and all the roof decks.
Rudolph and Sletten produced high-quality finish walls and columns that satisfy the architect’s finished concrete requirements. The sloped ceilings of the classrooms were poured with shot crete, engineered by firing concrete out of a hose under high pressure with compressed air, and shooting it onto wood forms.
“There are a lot of unique aspects to this project, like the cast-in-place walls, which created a lot of challenges that we had to overcome,” said Rudolph and Sletten Project Manager Mike Jackson. “We really had to take a lot of care to make sure the concrete was properly consolidated and that all the colors were consistent during the pour. This was very difficult to do in the field, especially due to the amount of concrete reinforcing in the walls and the height of our pours. We did a lot of mock-up work to make sure the walls looked just like they were supposed to. It resulted in a seamless precast concrete appearance that was cast in the field.”
Building for Acoustical Integrity
In the concert hall, Rudolph and Sletten attached metal wave walls to the cast-in-place concrete walls for both aesthetic and acoustic purposes. The ceiling is also designed as one big wave. The wave walls, which are covered with maple veneer paneling, act as sound baffles to eliminate as many corners as possible. CSMA and Mark Cavagnero Associates Architects worked with acoustical consultant Charles M. Salter Associates to design the acoustical walls and ceiling. Charles M. Salter Associates, who helped to design the acoustics for Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, encompassed many of the same acoustic features used within the Center for Music and Arts Education. In addition to the concert hall, all of the 17 music rooms are soundproofed.
Installing the HVAC System
The HVAC system consisted of extremely large ducts to reduce the amount of vibration and noise. Rudolph and Sletten had to get the large duct work to fit through the concrete walls, and worked with a structural engineer to configure and construct the openings. The majority of the plumbing is underground, and Rudolph and Sletten coordinated all the under slab plumbing.
About Rudolph and Sletten Inc.
Rudolph and Sletten (www.rsconstruction.com) is one of the leading general contracting firms on the West Coast. As a pace setter in the construction industry, Rudolph and Sletten has provided quality-oriented general contracting and construction management services for over four decades. Rudolph and Sletten’s expert professionals manage each job comprehensively, from site selection and preconstruction services through project completion. With its corporate headquarters in Foster City, the company also has regional offices in Roseville, Irvine, and San Diego, California.
Rudolph and Sletten’s building expertise includes virtually all types of projects with an emphasis on those markets where their technical expertise and quality excel: corporate campuses and office buildings, biotechnology and pharmaceutical research and manufacturing, health care, electronics, semiconductor, and high-tech research.
Other areas of expertise include cultural and educational institutions, parking structures, housing, public attraction and retail facilities. Rudolph and Sletten’s current clients include Hewlett-Packard, Genentech, Kaiser Permanente, Stanford University, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Chiron, eBay and the University of California.
About the Community School of Music and Arts
The Community School of Music and Arts (www.arts4all.org) was founded in 1968 by two volunteers who, responding to the lack of music and arts educational opportunities for children in the community, created an all-volunteer community school of the arts. Since the organization opened its doors 35 years ago, CSMA has served more than 325,000 pre-schoolers, children, teens, adults and seniors with high-quality music and arts education opportunities including: lessons, classes and camps; Arts-in-the-Schools Programs; and free family concerts, exhibits and community outreach events
CSMA is the largest not-for-profit arts educational organization in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. CSMA employs a distinguished international faculty of more than 80 musicians and artists and serves more than 25,000 people each year, including 10,000 children through its Arts-in-the Schools Programs (Arts in Action, Music in Action). CSMA often works with students from low-income families and last year awarded $150,000 in financial aid to its most in-need and high-performing students. The Center for Music and Arts Education will be CSMA’s first permanent home, allowing it to serve significantly more students. CSMA was recently awarded a $750,000 challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation to support its capital campaign.
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