Williamsburg, Va., is well known for its living history museum, Colonial Williamsburg, where actors in character carry out daily activities as though they were still residing in the early 1700s. But the city also is home to one of the nation’s oldest universities, William & Mary, which is facing some very modern student-housing problems. A new mixed-use complex is helping ease the shortage and features a contemporary design with nods to colonial-era massing. Corrugated metal wall panels are among the cladding materials architects used to create the development’s eye-catching façade.
William & Mary isn’t alone in facing a student-housing challenge, as schools across the country are seeing the nation’s housing shortage affecting their own operations. College housing managers often have assumed students will head off-campus for housing after their first year or two in a dorm. But, those local communities now often lack availability, which, in turn, is putting more pressure on local communities’ rental markets. This has led to a boom in apartment construction aimed specifically at student tenants.
Williamsburg’s new Current Midtown development is such a project. It features amenities like a resort-style pool and fitness center, along with individual leases that free students from being responsible for ensuring their roommates also pay their rent on time. Its design also fits the mold of today’s private student housing – hip, urban and aspirational.
The façade plan created by designers with Washington, D.C.-based Bonstra/Haresign features bays that create the impression of individual buildings, with references to the rowhouses common to the city’s historic neighborhoods. These impressions are strengthened by the use of varying cladding materials to break up the massing, including corrugated metal wall panels in two contrasting finishes.
Overall, the designers, along with the installation pros from Richmond, Va.-based Northeast Construction, specified 130,000 sq. ft. of PAC-CLAD’s 7/8 Corrugated panels from Petersen. The panels were ordered in the company’s Bone White and Musket Gray finishes and fabricated from .032 aluminum. These exposed-fastener panels can be used in a wide range of building envelope applications, including roofs, walls and linear installations, including equipment screens.
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