Architect employs coated aluminum composite panels to create a work of art surrounding a luxury home

September 2018 - It takes imagination and artistic flair, coupled with in-depth technical knowledge, to think outside the box and create a one-of-a-kind home design.

The Tivoli House, completed last year in Los Angeles and part of architect Cameron McNall’s collection of original projects, is such an example. As a founder and principal of the design firm Electroland LLC, McNall is known for incorporating fine art into his design concepts.

McNall co-founded Electroland LLC in 2001 with partner Damon Seeley. An artist, sculptor, fabricator and builder, McNall challenges himself to discover creative applications for building materials. The firm’s work has been featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Triennial in New York. McNall’s many awards across disciplines include the Rome Prize in Architecture, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, and the Siggraph Theater for digital animation.

The Tivoli House features a hanging façade that creates an expansive ornamental screen decorated by a silhouette of a field of flowers. The face of the house adds dimension and interest to its rectangular structure and front view.

The dense, floral pattern, intricately fabricated into the full expanse of the hanging exterior, reveals glimpses of the two-story home’s stuccoed and glazed inner wall. To add further impact and a multi-layer dimension to the design, the façade was extended and hung 9 inches beyond the home’s inner structure.

Crucial to the home’s outward appearance, McNall wanted to attach the exterior shell in a way that would enable it to suspend independently from the structure rather than simply serve as a covering on the building itself.

Installers on site at the Tivoli Home work with Alpolic material that was finished in Sherwin Williams’ Valflon architectural exterior coating in black.

Metal composite

In an effort to find material that was strong enough to hang, could withstand the sun and wasn’t too heavy or subject to deformation, McNall chose Alpolic, an aluminum composite, to realize his design. Alpolic sheets are manufactured under precise and rigorous conditions in Japan, Germany and the United States. The company’s distribution and support capabilities extend throughout North and South America. Metal composite material products manufactured at the company’s Chesapeake, Virginia, facility ensure an American-made product from start to finish.

The exterior of the Tivoli House represents the first time Alpolic’s metal composite wall panel product was used in such an atypical application, yet its lighter weight and higher stability, compared with aluminum sheet, made it a sound choice.

In addition, the metal wall panels can be fabricated into limitless shapes using a CNC cutting machine. Electroland’s people did the cutting in house.

The home incorporated 3,100 square feet of Alpolic PE aluminum composite metal wall panels, finished in Sherwin-Williams Coil Coating’s Valflon architectural exterior coating in black. The coating was selected for its ability to provide superior color consistency, adhesion, flexibility and formability properties for the metal wall panels.

Light pours into the Tivoli Home, even while the exterior is protected from sun damage with lightweight aluminum composite panels.

No maintenance

Valflon coatings are durable FEVE fluoropolymer-based resins, which help create a vibrant appearance without sacrificing  performance. Easy to maintain, they resist airborne chemicals and provide advanced protection against weathering, chalking and fading. The Valflon coating finish on the metal wall panels also removed the need for custom painting, and enabled the creation of the floral forms in a cost-effective manner.   

The façade’s unique hanging system required approval from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. Alpolic performed the necessary testing and documentation to secure the Los Angeles Research Report (LARR) approval. Once the LARR number was obtained, ample redundancies in the riveting system and installed trusses added stability to withstand high winds.

Sherwin-Williams Coil Coating’s and Alpolic’s ability to collaborate seamlessly  enabled McNall and Electroland to create a residential design that achieve original aesthetics backed by solid form and function.

Easy to maintain, Valflon coatings resist airborne chemicals and provide advanced protection against weathering, chalking and fading.

Architectural vision

The 110-foot facade surrounds two sides of the building to create privacy, frame views and generate provocative light effects, according to Electroland’s description of the project. Each tall-ceilinged room displays a unique quality of light, shape and distinct personality.

This house was built to Los Angeles’s Green Building standards. In addition to the structure itself, McNall curated or designed all furniture, artwork and objects inside the home to create a complete work of art.

In a statement, McNall said he designed Tivoli House “for my family as a total design living experience that represents my relationship to art, architecture and design. Although I was just a child when I lived in California in the ‘60s, I was very influenced by the energy and graphics of that period, everything from Warhol to the Mexico 1968 Olympics to Fillmore West concert flyers.”

Later, as a teenager living in Europe, McNall also “became enamored with the discipline of German/Swiss design and the humor of Italian design. Most particularly, I adopted the Italian philosophy of design “dal cucchiaio alla città” (from the spoon to the city), where the architect applies a unified design philosophy and creativity to everything from small objects to environments. The result is ‘total design’—you see it, live it and feel it,” he stated.

“When people walk by the house or visit inside, I am pleased that it elicits a smile.” MM