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GRAFTON, Mass. – A last-minute fix of the new Grafton High School auditorium's expanded metal mesh panels was approved by the School Building Committee Wednesday night.
Do you approve of the fix to the Grafton High School exterior?
-
I didn't see a problem before
80% -
I prefer the re-shuffled pattern without the battens
10% -
I like the addition of battens
11%
Meeting in the building's parking lot, the committee examined the newly reshuffled panels, which have drawn criticism for bringing an unfinished touch to the $73 million building.
The old stacked arrangement appeared blocky, with clearly defined seams. The new pattern of running grids had a better flow, committee members agreed, and the addition of battens between them hide the seams.
"The battens have to be up at this point," member Don Chouinard said. "I'm disappointed it's not centered. It's another thing that looks like a mistake."
The pattern, explained project architect Philip Poinelli of Symes, Maini & McKee Associates, was determined by the size of the panels.
The fix, at a cost of an estimated $91,000, is not expected to be ready in time for the building dedication and first day of school on Aug. 27.
Comments (12)
I only have one thing to say: THE CHANGES LOOK TERRIBLE.
I posted on this 'issue' a while ago trying to see both sides. One one hand, it was done, and although the exterior was criticized for its monolithic appearance, once the large Grafton High School letting was put up, it all seemed to fall into place. Is it everyone's cup of aesthetic tea? Probably not, but personal subjective opinions aside, it looked fine.
So the school building committee takes issue with this, citing it isn't what they expected, looking for some sort of modification to make it more to their liking. Fair enough, this is an expensive project, money is being spent, and if you are spending X amount of dollars, then you should get what you planned to pay for. But the outcry and opinion of people in the town, the majority of people, was that this was a non-issue, and spending additional money was a cost not worth it, the money better spent on other more essential things. Now it is possible things were under budget, there was a surplus of money available to make the changes without going over the initial budget, and while some could argue that if we are saving money it should go back to lowering the overall bottom dollar, others could say the money is there within the budget, so lets use it to make sure we are getting what we want, what we planned to get.
But the change to the facade isn't what we initially planned. It is a modification to the original design. The issue seems to be that someone or the committee who approved the initial design (someone had to sign off on that work prior to any work being done) thought they liked something based on a rendering, and when you actually see it and it doesn't look exactly like that rendering - whether it a texture not able to be shown on a rendering, whether the ability to exactly match colors on a drawing to actual materials, who knows - what now has been approved is essentially a band aid. I have seen the pictures online, I am one of the people who voted with the majority in the poll. I didn't see a problem before, and would have preferred not spending the $91,000 to come up with some patchwork fix. I drove by the building today, and it looks absolutely terrible. People said you could see seems on the facade...if you look hard enough, but again with the GHS lettering, the seems are not the focal point of the side of the building, so no, you do not see the seems. But if a shuffle of panels better confuses the eye to not see seems, that would have been okay. However I can't get my head around who said that batens would look better. All they do is draw one's attention to those seems, and to my eye, the facade, which previously was a background grey for lettering, has come to the forefront competing for one's visual attention against the lettering. To my eye, the facade with the spacing and batens will now look like enormous cinder blocks. It would be one thing if this was taking a cue from other architectural feature already on the building, but it isn't. This is the only spot where this is being done. Further, the shuffle of panels appears to have created an issue, where new custom panels, to fill in the spots at the angled corners.
I would love a full explanation behind the school building committee's justification on this. I would love to hear the explanation why this is a necessary modification. I am willing to accept a reasonable, justified explanation, but where this is a minority (in my opinion) subjective opinion on the looks, that ultimately will prevent the school from being finished when it opens, with a significant associated cost to it, I am doubtful there is an explanation out there that can justify this. There are already enough people in town not happy with spending the money on this new school. With kids of my own, I am not one of them. But not spending $91K was a small bone the committee could have thrown back to the town as some good will, and frankly, they blew that opportunity, sticking to some vain plan to 'fix' something that ultimately was not broken.
Hold on here. Let's take advantage of this grid design for educational purposes. We could make it a large sudoku puzzle. Students would have to solve it each week.
Geez...another problem solved.
Ok...back to my day at the beach.
$91k for that?
I appreciate that the secondary school building committee is retroactively trying to fix a mistake. Remarkably though... the biggest mistake, is that they advocated to build a new 900 seat high school for only the addition of three new students (K-12) in the past two years. And the building they approved is architecturally uglier then the 4 modular classrooms that we recently added to the middle school for $500K.
I think the facade debacle is really superfluous.
In truth, if we wanted to add all day kindergarten, our community could have got there for a lot less than $72 million. $72 million is an extra $500 annually on everyone's house taxes for the next 20 years.
Stop wasting money on those panels! Spend it inside where it really counts! This is a High School not an Art Museum. I just finished a different type of panel project on another school in the commonwealth, The plans call for 1/2" joints between panels. The joints vary from 1/4" to 3/4" due to the building not being dimensionally perfect. Standing back the building looks really nice, but if you walk up close and start scrutinizing every joint you will see the difference. I had a building committee member tell me " When parents are playing in the playground with their kindergarten children they will look at the panels and complain" REALLY? I would think those parents have their focus elsewhere.
The Architect should be on the hook here. The original design and the approved solution are both unsightly. Unfortunately it looks like the building committee's choices were limited.
Are those lines that I see in the picture in the lower right quadrant of the facade the new "battens" that are being added? Those things don't hide the seams in my opinion, they highlight the seams, the draw attention to the seams. I hope that isn't the plan to make the facade look better.
As soon as they added the name to the facade, it started to look a lot better. The viewers attention is drawn to the letters, that becomes the focus, the rest of the facade is background. I wish the committee would reconsider, leave the facade as it is, and save the taxpayers $91K.
I think a great solution for that facade (I personally think it's fine but that's just my opinion) would be to place some type of concept art or structure of the school mascot there. It would bring character to the space and act as a beacon for school spirit. I'm sure it would cost much less too and at the very least serve a purpose as oppose to a blank wall being remodeled only to appear as a new blank wall.
Looks worse. How many school supplies will $91,000 pay for that parents are expected to provide or even teachers in some cases. How many teachers salaries would $91,000 pay for? How many pot holes could have been filled? How many dinners for the disadvantaged would it provide?
You people on the school building committee disgust me for your irresponsible oversight and your willingness to waste tax money when there are other needs which most would consider more pressing. Oh well, it's only monopoly money right?
C Swett - the vitriol in your comments is unnecessary and inappropriate.
This is a committe made up of volunteers from our community - our neighbors. They have no material interest in this project, they only want do what's best for the town. You may not agree with the decisions they make (I do not agree with this decision to spend $91K), but that does not justify attacking them the way that you and "Neighbor2" have done here.
How about thanking them for a job well done, because when it's all said and done I am sure we are going to end up with a very nice school.
Really? What's inappropriate about expressing my opinion? I will not apologize for calling a spade a spade. If we're paying $91K to fix our HS for aesthetic reasons I have a right to express my displeasure whether you like it or not.
Defend the additional $91K if you can. Address the part of my post that asks where the priorities lie. Sorry it offends you that I find waste insulting. I applaud their volunteering but that doesn't give them carte blanche to spend away. When spending the money that others work so hard for there needs to be a little more respect for the way those funds are allocated.
I agree with other posters that this should be pushed back on the architects. If that doesn't work, we live with it. Life's not fair and not everything always turns out roses. Of course it's easy to make decisions with other people's money.
I agree with you - their arrogance and wasteful spending of taxpayer's money is disgraceful. Their own pockets may be deep and allow for frivolous spending; mine does not.