General Description

The Arts Complex at Sam Houston State University is a new building for the physical arts, housing various galleries, craft rooms and workshops. Encore was selected as the best-value contract for the foundation and sitework package through the university’s selection criteria.

Features

 The key architectural features are the three exposed board, form-finish walls. Encore poured three mock-ups using a variety of materials to produce different finishes for the architect to choose. All walls were poured without any rework. The project had a very tight schedule, which required the two-story walls (including the board-formed walls) to be reinforced, formed and poured in less than four weeks. This required a 20-foot-tall, 30-foot-wide section of wall to be completed each day. Project requirements also stipulated that once a wall section was poured, no fresh wall section could be placed adjacent to it for seven days. Encore met these requirements by planning and detailing each wall and pilaster segment in advance and adjusting our schedule to overcome rain delays.