Station Place, SEC
Architect: Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates
Location: Washington, DC
The headquarters of the Security and Exchange Commission in Washington, DC features a hyperbolic shaped tension cable net structure, the first of its kind ever built. It was the result of a rewarding collaboration with the office of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and specifically with Kevin Roche. After he won the commission we met and solved the concept of how to achieve complete transparency of the atrium at that first meeting. The implementation was intense because we were writing the rule book as we were carrying out the project. To assure that the glass node points would be accurately positioned on the hyperbolic surface we elected to construct a temporary frame around the full scale cable net wall, tension it to prescribed loads and attach the nodes at the cable crossing points. The detensioned net was then rolled up onto a 60ft long spool, shipped to site and unfurled suspended from a custom header truss that was fabricated into a curved profile as it was part of the hyperbolic surface. The net was re-tensioned and the glass attached to complete the installation without issue.
“I've had the privilege and great pleasure of working with Franz Safford for over three decades now. Franz is a skilled and creative problem solver as well as a true innovator, all amply evidenced by the many remarkable facades completed worldwide with his VS1 system. His greatest strength is sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with an architect and sketching through a facade solution to a demanding project requirement. But his commitment to a design doesn't stop there, he invariably drives any project he's involved with through to a successful completion. Franz is simply the best building partner I've ever worked with.”
