Highway Handsome - AAA Northeast’s Branch Office in East Providence
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
One of the most intriguing and noteworthy pieces of new architecture around Providence is not downtown, nor in a suburban office park.
It is not by a famous out-of-town architect, nor is it at Brown or RISD.
This handsome new gem is unexpectedly found in East Providence, along the Wampanoag Trail, set back from the road, in a marshy spot close to where Mink Brook forms the border with Seekonk, Massachusetts.
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This handsome work of commercial architecture is a satellite office of the American Automobile Association-Northeast. Despite its out-in-the-open location, the building avoids making a flashy statement. Rather, it advertises itself by attention to solid and environmentally responsible design.
At a time when so much new commercial architecture in Providence disappoints, this 2,500-square-foot office is a real winner.
The genesis of this elegant and striking design is a good story.
The designers are StudioMEJA, based in the old gasometer at the Atlantic Delaine Mills in Olneyville. The eight-year-old firm is known for rehab work, such as Providence G, the adaptive reuse of the former National Grid building on Dorrance Street.
The architects also worked on a renovation at Gordon School with Case Construction. As the AAA's contractor, Case recommended StudioMEJA to make over the former Acme Boiler Repair shop in East Providence into a facility housing fleet dispatch, a warehouse, and vehicle maintenance.
StudioMEJA "proposed to compliment its industrial nature with clean forms, composed of translucent fiberglass, cement board cladding, and corrugated metal siding," according to principal Eric Army. "We were pleased (and a little surprised) at how well this was received." So, when a parcel of adjacent land came available, the agency decided to erect a branch office in a separate building nearby.
Having already convinced AAA to go with contemporary design for the workday part of the site, the architects were emboldened to suggest something even more radical for the new office. StudioMEJA presented three schemes, all of which were contemporary, and the AAA went with the boldest of the trio. Former automobile club CEO Mark Shaw, Army recalls, "was excited about going bold with the design–he should really get the credit."
The architects pitched the idea that the branch would be freestanding; it would also be a low-mass building, not unlike a 1950s-era drive-in restaurant. StudioMEJA wanted to make a visual impact when seen from Wampanoag Trail at 50 miles per hour, and yet have the office be welcoming to visitors.
Customers arrive at the building via a mini journey.
They have to leave Route 114, get briefly onto Mink Street, then immediately exit on River Road, then turn again into the AAA complex.
Playing on this kaleidoscope approach, the designers created a lively composition where each side of the building reads differently as one circles up to the parking spaces.
A ten-foot cantilevered overhang shelters a wall of glass facing Route 114, while the Mink Street front is mostly wall, clearly the back.
The main, south-facing facade with its wall of windows and entrance for customers looks like a tall right triangle laid on its long side.
The sloping roofline runs from the taller end down to a point at the corner entrance.
Thus, the triangle brilliantly forms a dynamically shaped facade with the simplest of means.
The almost black siding–a composite rain screen made of fiber cement by Germany's SVK–adds a sense of solidity to the AAA edifice.
This cladding hides the roof behind it, so there is no visible coping or flashing, making for crisp edges.
As viewed from the highway, the ten-foot cantilever protecting the south and west fronts appears to be a plain horizontal line.
But on closer inspection, the underside of cantilever is rendered in an eye-catching red color, contrasting with the black walls.
This giant eyebrow is also a key passive solar element, shading out the sun in the summer and admitting it in the winter.
Abundant natural light comes through an entire wall of glass beneath the sheltering overhang.
It hardly matters that the interior is a typical office space with a customer counter and several desks, for not much could compete with the natural Rhode Island landscapes that form the south and west walls.
What might have been an unpromising bit of scrubland with a non-descript industrial structure perched on it is instead an appealing small campus with sense of travel and style.
Replacing the image of the Automobile Association as tow trucks, motor vehicle paperwork, and TripTiks, East Providence has a sophisticated work of architecture.
Architectural historian William Morgan has written about cars and automotive design for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and Automobile Magazine.
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