2009 Washington Aggregates and Concrete Association award winners -- Seattle DJC.COM


 

 

Grand Award Winner
Architectural Decorative Concrete


Photo by Alexander R. Wishkoski Photography
Kent’s Town Square Plaza was designed to resemble the pattern of raindrops.



Kent Town Square Plaza

Location: Second Avenue North, between West Smith and Harrison streets, Kent

Owner/developer: City of Kent

Project team: JV Constructors, general contractor; Belarde Co., concrete contractor; The Portico Group, designer; Miles Sand & Gravel Co., ready-mix supplier




Town Square Plaza is a 45,000-square-foot urban and public gathering area that opens up to and is activated by the surrounding streets and adjacent public and commercial land uses. It is designed to accommodate a number of civic events, including the weekly Saturday market, summer Cornucopia Days and a holiday carousel.

The plaza has three raindrop-inspired fountains, including a central fountain outfitted with a large granite water ball sculpture. Its paving pattern of intersecting concentric rings represents the ephemeral pattern of raindrops, played out through the use of concrete paving tinted in a range of blues, beiges and reds representing the Green River Valley floor.

The plaza was created by placing 22 colors of ready-mix concrete in circles and bands, as well as colored pervious concrete bands. Eight of the colors were placed using the Lithocrete process, which seeds 100 percent recycled, colored glass aggregates into the concrete. The glass is exposed for a durable and decorative finish.

A number of cast-in-place concrete seat walls and caps were integrated into the decorative concrete paving area to serve as amphitheater seating.

Ready-mix concrete was used on the project because of its durability, aesthetics, job-site cleanliness, waste management and sustainability. Concrete was batched off-site to help keep the job site clean and free of non-essential equipment and materials. Excess concrete was returned to the batch plant to be recycled.

The concrete mix contained fly ash, which is a by-product of coal-fired power plants that is typically dumped into landfills. The fly ash served as a partial substitute for Portland cement, improving the strength, segregation and pumping ease of the concrete.



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