A landmark power plant in Owatonna, Minn., damaged in a 2010 flood has new life as the headquarters of Owatonna Public Utilities following a renovation by architects Leo A Daly.
When the Straight River flooded in 2010, 12 feet of water stood in the basement of the Owatonna power plant, a brick Italianate building with a distinctive neon sign, arched windows, and three silver smoke stacks. The flood damaged its generators, but OPU sought Leo A Daly's help in re-purposing the building into its new headquarters.
The interior volume of the turbine hall — 50 vertical feet of open space that had previously accommodated the plant’s massive boilers — guided Leo A Daly’s approach to space planning for the administrative and customer service spaces that would occupy the building.
Using the interior steel structure as scaffolding, Leo A Daly laid out atrium spaces and floating offices that cantilever over the ground floor. The effect is a series of connected spaces all lit by daylight through the building's large windows.
The building integrates artifacts from its pre-flood days. Boiler doors, valve covers, and valve wheels are re-presented in a gallery space. Bar grating is reused in the new building as railings. Energy efficient windows were installed while keeping the original window framing and some of the original glass in place. Colors, textures and materials from the original floor and equipment are incorporated.
To prevent future flood damage, flood doors were installed in a conditioned space below the flood line, which will allow river water to come and go without disrupting operations above. To pull this off, the architects had to raise the first occupiable floor by one foot.
Leo A Daly sees the Owatonna renovation as part of a growing trend. More cities are interested in repurposing their heritage facilities, rather than simply razing them and building new.
Related Stories
| Mar 10, 2011
Steel Joists Clean Up a Car Wash’s Carbon Footprint
Open-web bowstring trusses and steel joists give a Utah car wash architectural interest, reduce its construction costs, and help green a building type with a reputation for being wasteful.
| Mar 10, 2011
How AEC Professionals Are Using Social Media
You like LinkedIn. You’re not too sure about blogs. For many AEC professionals, it’s still wait-and-see when it comes to social media.
| Mar 9, 2011
Hoping to win over a community, Facebook scraps its fortress architecture
Facebook is moving from its tony Palo Alto, Calif., locale to blue-collar Belle Haven, and the social network want to woo residents with community-oriented design.
| Mar 9, 2011
Winners of the 2011 eVolo Skyscraper Competition
Winners of the eVolo 2011 Skyscraper Competition include a high-rise recycling center in New Delhi, India, a dome-like horizontal skyscraper in France that harvests solar energy and collects rainwater, and the Hoover Dam reimagined as an inhabitable skyscraper.
| Mar 9, 2011
Igor Krnajski, SVP with Denihan Hospitality Group, on hotel construction and understanding the industry
Igor Krnajski, SVP for Design and Construction with Denihan Hospitality Group, New York, N.Y., on the state of hotel construction, understanding the hotel operators’ mindset, and where the work is.
| Mar 3, 2011
HDR acquires healthcare design-build firm Cooper Medical
HDR, a global architecture, engineering and consulting firm, acquired Cooper Medical, a firm providing integrated design and construction services for healthcare facilities throughout the U.S. The new alliance, HDR Cooper Medical, will provide a full service design and construction delivery model to healthcare clients.
| Mar 2, 2011
Design professionals grow leery of green promises
Legal claims over sustainability promises vs. performance of certified green buildings are beginning to mount—and so are warnings to A/E/P and environmental consulting firms, according to a ZweigWhite report.
| Mar 2, 2011
Cities of the sky
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Silk Road of the future—from Dubai to Chongqing to Honduras—is taking shape in urban developments based on airport hubs. Welcome to the world of the 'aerotropolis.'
| Mar 2, 2011
How skyscrapers can save the city
Besides making cities more affordable and architecturally interesting, tall buildings are greener than sprawl, and they foster social capital and creativity. Yet some urban planners and preservationists seem to have a misplaced fear of heights that yields damaging restrictions on how tall a building can be. From New York to Paris to Mumbai, there’s a powerful case for building up, not out.
| Mar 1, 2011
Smart cities: getting greener and making money doing it
The Global Green Cities of the 21st Century conference in San Francisco is filled with mayors, architects, academics, consultants, and financial types all struggling to understand the process of building smarter, greener cities on a scale that's practically unimaginable—and make money doing it.
