New Foundry Enclosure - Auraria Higher Education Center

The Metal Sculpture and Foundry Section of the Auraria Higher Education Center-Arts Building is located on the south side and outside of the main Arts Building. This foundry area was originally designed as an open to the air affair, with no roof and fenced in on the sides with a free standing brick wall. The goal of this project was to enclose the foundry area so that students working on projects during the winter months were not exposed to the elements during inclement weather.

LONCO was responsible for the structural analysis and design of the new roof system over the foundry, mixing and ceramics area. The architects design required that the utilization of the existing brick fencing for use as the new walls to the enclosure. The program as called for the reuse of the cover over the existing kiln as part of the final roofing solution. Other structural challenges included fitting the new and very tall “Donaldson” filtration system into the reprogrammed area.

The new roof, as proposed by the architect, was constructed of a lightweight standing seam metal deck. Because of the flexible nature of the roof decking the roof framing system had to be designed to take both the vertical loads, due to snow and the dead weight of the structure, as well as the horizontal loads from wind and seismic forces. This was accomplished by the use of rigid steel frames in both the longitudinal and transverse directions of the building.

The structure was designed to minimize transmitting loads from the new roof structure to the existing Arts Building and the existing brick fencing that enclosed the original foundry area. In order to accomplish this new columns and foundations needed to be added within the original foundry enclosure.

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