TVS Architects Design State-of-the-Art Puerto Rico Convention Center
ATLANTA, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The Puerto Rico Convention Center presented a unique opportunity for the Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback (TVS) design team and their partners, Jimenez + Rodriguez Barcelo (JRB). The opportunity: design a "smart" facility with state-of-the-art technology that will represent a forward-looking Puerto Rico to the international business travel and tourism industries. San Juan-based JRB was the Convention Center architect of record, and TVS was programming and design lead as well as designer of the interiors.
"Since the site was located on an abandoned military base, we had the opportunity to create our own context to design a facility that was the centerpiece of a new development district," said TVS Principal Michael Ezell. "We created a master plan design that organizes the entire district and, with the convention center, provided a visual motif to be used by the tourism trade to promote and differentiate the complex."
Set on 113 acres of San Juan's Isla Grande peninsula, the Convention Center is built on three levels, and incorporates a 150,000-sq.-ft. exhibit hall, a 40,000-sq.-ft. ballroom and 40,000 square feet of office space. The top level is home to the ballroom, which opens onto a terrace designed to capture the ocean vistas and breezes. At the ground-floor level, arriving guests are welcomed beneath a 350 foot multilevel waveform roof that shades the expansive outdoor lobby. Steel pipes curve to form the main arches of the building, each 60 inches in diameter with infill framing from 10 to 24 inches, in order to resist Category 5 hurricane force and Zone 3 seismic loads. The wind-resistant structure is clad in glass, silver metallic panels, hand- chiseled granite and brightly colored stucco.
About TVS Architects
TVS is a leading design firm with more than 35 years of proven experience in planning, architecture and interior design. With offices in Atlanta, Chicago and Dubai, the firm's unique collaboration expertise has produced inspired designs for a variety of clients. Well-known as the experts in the design of convention center and public assembly space, TVS also offers services to the office, retail, workplace interiors, hospitality and entertainment markets. TVS projects have garnered many design awards, and the firm received the prestigious AIA Architecture Firm Award for extraordinary design excellence, conferred to only one of the nation's 12,000 architecture firms each year, in 2002.

Site

Master plan photo from ad on site.

Pan view 2

Entrance view

Entrance view 2.

Entrance view 3.

Detail.

Interior.

TVS site:

http://www.tvsa.com/index.asp

that is definitely one big wavey entrance, i got excited when i looked at the first image but i must say it dissapated somewhat when i saw more pictures and realised the waves do not form the structure of the building and is rather just a large entrance canopy... maybe it was budget..

anyway should be good for the area...

I agree that the buildings' facade is not well integrated with the rest, most probably budget as you say. Interesting however that in a local newspaper poll about 95% of the people interviewed liked the design, very high marks from the general public.

The cost for the project was $175 million dollars which is low because just after the order for the steel was placed, steel prices increased dramatically in 2001. Steel for the roof canopy was brought from Korea through the Panama Canal. Only three factories in the world had the ability to fabricate such pieces.

that is definitely one big wavey entrance, i got excited when i looked at the first image but i must say it dissapated somewhat when i saw more pictures and realised the waves do not form the structure of the building and is rather just a large entrance canopy... maybe it was budget..

anyway should be good for the area...
ME too
I thought it was a big roof first.but a entrance canopy indeed.
WA GA LI MA XI DA. :wondering

the entrance is exciting but the whole structure...kinda good architecture....i guess... :bang head

this is a project therefore belongs in the travel section, thanks

I was part of the design team in 1999. It would be impossible for that roof to be part of the black box of the meeting rooms and convention hall. The cost would outstrip their bookings. No point in having a flawed business model. The project was fortunate to get built as it is designed. Initially we got a 30mil budget increase to get that design built. I'm glad to see it built. I left TVS after this project - too many hours with too much corporate culture. A good place if you like corporate design.

:cheers:

the entrance is exciting but the whole structure...kinda good architecture....i guess... :bang head

Whats 'kinda' about it? TVS markets their convention centers through pro-forma that has a quantified 'box' ie, the convention center/meeting rooms, back of house. The portions that front the public is where the architecture happens. Why would you spend $$$ on the back of house??:cheers:

I agree that the project is very kind of. If it is a box, maybe it should not have tried to become a steel wave.

The entrance roof is an impressive sculptural structure, mostly by it's size. In an island where it sometimes rains horizontally because of the wind/rain effect it provides only partial protection from rain. The massive steel structure is already showing signs of rust all over, I think it will require so much maintenance (not available here), that the roof will probably have to be taken down in a few years, the box to remain. And the box could have been better.

The layout tries to be so efficient that it does not work well for conventions. Most conventions have large open show areas combined with smaller varied meeting or conference rooms. Here they completely separated the meeting rooms in an outside hall that is located very far from the show areas. In other centers the smaller rooms face the show areas and they all integrate as they should.

The spatial quality of the roof that is in part over the "box" and in part a giant canopy is lost in the largeness of the space itself. The interiors also lack a quality space, they rely on decoration and artificial lighting. See attached Ballroom ceiling detail.

Love the roof structure, but not too convinced on the building.

Fran, I hear what you are saying but I don't think you paid much attention to my post. The 'black box', for the most part, will never be more than that...a 'box'. Its cheap. Why spend money on part of the building that no one pays attention too. When you go to a convention, you aren't looking up..you're looking at the booths in the convention center. Its primarily a cost issue. The building still cost$144 mil. USD.

I must agree with the others...

I definetly don't like the interior floor (carpet) and have doubts on that outside pols design (it seems to have light inside that perfurated steel?)