Hundreds of rough-sawn 1-by-2’s were stacked up to create the forms for the exterior of the Bellevue Art Museum. The result was concrete walls with a rough-sawn lumber look.

The new Bellevue Art Museum topped all other concrete projects in the state to take home top honors in the 2001 Washington Aggregates and Concrete Association’s 2001 Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards. It also won the Cast-in-Place Structures category.

The five-story concrete and steel-framed building utilizes concrete bearing and foundation walls and a two-way concrete flat plate for the two levels of below-grade parking and ground-floor level. The three-story gallery utilizes distinctive concrete walls to support an interior steel frame.

The museum’s design called for a building that tracks the course of the sun on one side, has three sloping roof lines on top, contains a series of internal stairs and completely fills the property, from lot line to lot line. The building features soaring interior spaces, unusual angles and a simplistic meshing of materials done in a highly detailed fashion. In a concept of “tripleness,” the museum includes three suspended galleries, three light levels, three main levels and three circulation directions.

A highly-detailed horizontal, rough-sawn board form and slip-form system was used on the exterior faces of the perimeter walls to provide an articulated finish that required no additional finish materials or costs compared to a traditional building cladding system. Over 27 miles of rough-sawn 1-by-2’s — stacked up to 900 boards high for the tallest walls — provided the finished “art barn” appearance envisioned by the architect.

The slip-form system, which used a low-slump, early-set concrete mix, allowed for the desired monolithic wall while avoiding form tie holes or visible horizontal control joints.