URI’s College of Engineering – Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering
Kingston, Rhode Island
This six-story, 190,000-square-foot building added classroom, lab and workshop spaces for URI engineering students. J.L. Marshall installed approximately 33,000 square feet of polished concrete on the project. The lab spaces had hardened, densified, exposed concrete floors for a modern industrial look, while the corridors required a polished, glass-like finish.
Some concrete highlights of the project included the spiral staircase that was a centerpiece of the building’s geometric design. J.L. Marshall was tasked with the difficult 30-foot column encasements and connecting beams, requiring the rebar to be directly welded to the beam. On the first level, J.L. Marshall enhanced the design of electrical boxes, penetrations and columns, going above and beyond to prevent any potential cracking.
The architectural concrete of the corridor called for difficult FF/FL numbers and rigorous reflexivity and gloss testing. The slab’s level 2 salt and pepper finish required the concrete’s aggregates to be at a uniform distance from the surface of the concrete during concrete placement and finishing to ensure consistent aggregate exposure. The corridors required multiple finishing passes with diamond tooling and difficult finishing around exposed edges and columns to achieve the floor’s glassy finish.
Every detail of the slab was meticulously considered. After the glass walls were installed, J.L. Marshall ensured a seamless transition between the slabs and surrounding areas by applying a color-matched grout. The result was a perfect match in color and polish – any trace of construction penetrations was completely undetectable.
The building’s design posed challenges that demanded a high level of precision. In the café, the polished concrete floors needed to be perfectly flush with the geometric pattern of the surrounding textured flooring. J.L. Marshall created intricate slab depressions with exact tolerances of 1/16 of an inch. The finished result was exceptional – the slabs’ glossy polished finish reflected both the light from the gold panels above and the natural light streaming through the surrounding glass windows.