The Marine Corps Support Facility in New Orleans is the national headquarters for the Marine Forces Reserve. The secure installation includes a four-story main building, a two-story band annex, a detached warehouse and a multi-purpose parade ground for music and military exercises. More than 190 wall panels were poured, including panels as tall as 72 feet high and weighing as much as 130,000 pounds. Inside, the building features a gymnasium, indoor laser firing range, auditorium, cafeteria, and courtroom as well as family meeting rooms, conference rooms and band practice rooms. The owner selected Tilt-Up construction for this impressive building for speed, durability and weather resistance. Tilt-Up also provides the security necessary for the facility, without compromising aesthetic appeal. Textured paint, intricate rustication patterns and cast-in thin brick accent this massive structure. Cornice details were cast integrally with the wall panels, providing significant cost savings to the owner. By using Tilt-Up construction, the owner saved $2 million and accelerated the schedule by three months.

Dube Tradeport-King Shaka International Airport Entrance

• 7,320-square-foot special project in Durban, Kwazulu Natal, South Africa
• Products for this project supplied by: Meadow Burke.

This project was characterized by the extremely short duration of six weeks and a limited installation window between 8:30 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. for two nights only, as the panels were erected on the roads in and out of King Shaka's Durban Airport. There was no feasible in-situ concrete solution to this project. Twenty panels in total were required. Therefore, two phases were created to cast and install ten panels during each phase. The casting surface and show face of the panels were created using concrete Tilt-Up formwork. The panels were flat lifted by two cranes, placed onto specialized Tilt-Up concrete cradles cast at the same radii as the underside of the curved panel, onto trailers. The panels are curved in two planes, have a moment connection into the base foundation and are cantilevered 11.5m. The Tilt-Up technique was cost-effective, offered savings in program duration and a quality unachievable with conventional building techniques.

Florida Atlantic University Innovation Village

• 537,854-square-foot housing project in Boca Raton, Fla.
• Submitted by: Woodland Construction of Jupiter, Fla.
• Other TCA member involvement: Johnson Structural Group, PGAL and Tincher's Welding
• Products for this project supplied by: Meadow Burke and SpecChem

Florida Atlantic University embarked on a $121 million project on the Boca Raton campus to create excitement at the campus. Phase I of the project included an alumni center and student recreation/fitness center. Phase II creates a student residential complex with two apartment buildings to house 1,216 beds for students. The Tilt-Up option provided the owner with a crisp and clean product that afforded the design team architectural flexibility, as well as speed. The architect and engineer were able to modernize the design by introducing varying panel thicknesses which helped create dimensional depth and style to the building's elevations. The panels with the large window openings, which are the exterior walls of the apartment's living rooms, are 16 inches thick, and the panels adjacent are 8 inches thick, with the variance providing the stepped effect on the exterior. The additional thickness of the living room panels allowed for one piece full height panels. The 8-inch panels went up in two sections, with the horizontal joint occurring just above the fifth floor. The project's foundations started in late March 2010, and all panels for both buildings were erected complete by the first week of October 2010.

Muskogee Armed Forces Reserve Center

• 93,711-square-foot institutional project in Muskogee, Okla.
• Submitted by: Haskell of Jacksonville, Fla.
• Products for this project supplied by: Meadow Burke, Nox-Crete Products and Textured Coatings of America

The new Armed Forces Reserve Center in Muskogee, Okla. houses the Army National Guard and the United States Army Reserves. Tilt-Up is utilized as the exterior envelope for the Reserve Center with a progression of detail and articulation from the public front to the more utilitarian building rear. Tilt-Up serves as the backup to the stone at the main entry front, which features a "Core Armory" with stone veneer. In addition, Tilt-Up also acts as the "trimwork" within the stonework: the watertable, horizontal banding, window heads, parapet "cap", entry arch, circular elements, backdrop for the Thunderbird logo, and central "shield" at the parapet above the main entrance. Both the primary and secondary roof drainage was fully integrated into the Tilt-Up panel design, which avoided a negative aesthetic impact. A receiver box leads to dual downspouts for the primary roof drainage within thickened "pointed" panels. The panels are thicker than the typical wall to provide depth along the facades and house the paired downspouts. Tilt-Up was used effectively not only on the building exterior, but on the interior as well. The lowest portion of the interior walls for the Drill Hall are painted, exposed Tilt-Up, which is very abuse-resistant.