Molding a museum

Facility honors potter with unusual twists and turns

By Angelle Bergeron

Turning the typical into the spectacular was the forte of potter George Ohr. It's only fitting that the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, the first museum to be dedicated to an American potter, should rival his work with a design by world-renowned Frank Gehry.

Before Philadelphia, Miss.-based Yates Construction broke ground on the new Ohr-O'Keefe Museum on Beach Boulevard in Biloxi, the project had been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Architectural Digest, said Joey Crain, a partner with Biloxi-based Guild Hardy Architects, the executive architect team.

Crain said that locals are hoping the new museum transforms Biloxi into a top-notch tourist destination, which is what Gehry's Guggenheim did for Bilboa, Spain, Crain said.

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"You'd be hard pressed to find another job in the Southeast that is as small in size and as technically challenging," he said of the $20 million, 55,532-sq.-ft. project. "Still, we are able to produce it locally, as per the Gehry Partners specs, and it looks like everything is going well with no glitches. I've had many more problems on much simpler jobs."

The new museum requires more software than hardware, said Jason Wold, project manager for Yates.

"Gehry projects are complex," Wold added. "Gehry is known for complicated angles. For instance, one building doesn't have a single 90-degree angle in the footprint," and the frame is formed with curving, intertwined steel.

To handle the negotiated-bid job, Yates purchased the three-dimensional Rhinoceros, Ghery Partners' preferred software.

"We had to go through a learning curve to pull the data off a model and get it in a condition to put in the field so people could work off of it," Wold said. GPS coordinates are required for proper placement of everything on the site.

"This project is more detail-driven," he added. "It's certainly more stress than your average project. With a typical building, you can determine the schedule based on square footage. Here, it's small but so complex that it blows that formula out of the water."

The setting for the museum is Tricentennial Park, a City of Biloxi property that is full of mature live oak trees. Gehry's design is reminiscent of typical Gulf Coast, simple residential construction, but it is twisted and curved to mimic Ohr's pottery and set among the trees.

The project includes construction of five steel and concrete structures with stainless steel, glass and brick exteriors, connecting walkways and a plaza area.

Yates' contract has been phased because one of the buildings, a Welcome Center, was removed from the original contract in an effort to obtain funding from the Mississippi Department of Transportation. The contractor is about 40 percent complete and on schedule for the remaining four buildings, which are slated to open on Ohr's birthday, July 12, 2006.

The separately bid building should be under construction this summer.

The full project's details include the marriage of independent systems, such as the brushed stainless steel cladding panels that are a Ghery signature.

"The structural steel has to be within 1-in. tolerance with the cladding panel systems and the glass," Wold said. "It's imperative that it all fits because there is such a small margin for error."

Zehner of Kansas City, Mo., had previous experience manufacturing the cladding panels for Ghery projects, so the company is familiar with the Rhino software, Wold said. The project also includes several atypical glass skylights that are concave and generated from a three-dimensional model by Perma-steelissa, an international company that has participated in several Ghery projects.

Ellis Steel of West Point, Miss., fabricated the structural beams and experienced a bit of a learning curve using the new software and models, Wold said.

"We are surveying the steel often, comparing to the model and GPS coordinates to make sure we are within the model guidelines," he added. "We are field measuring what we can, as it comes, before we go into fabrication. There are some things we have no way of field measuring, so we've got to make sure in the model it is exact."

Yates is self-performing all the concrete work on the project.

"I knew the concrete was going to be a challenge and I wanted to lower the risk of a sub having delays and changeorders," Wold said. "Usually, with a square building, you can shoot one corner, but this one goes from one corner to the next.

"A typical concrete contractor would expect to come in, form up and place in a week. It took us eight weeks, with a lot of stops and starts, to do one building."

Protecting the ancient oaks was important.

"We placed auger pilings with pedestals to raise the floor elevations above the 100-year flood plain and to raise the buildings up to keep compression off of the root systems," Wold said.

Because Yates is not allowed to operate or store materials within the drip line, it leased property 100 yds. away for laydown, Wold added.

Crain said that because the buildings in some instances come within inches of 500-year-old oak trees "we had to survey the branches and roots with GPS points. The structures are supported by 650 piles that go 60 ft. deep in the soil and they all had to miss the roots."

Bayou Tree Service of New Orleans worked with the piling crew to protect the trees.

"The crew had to work on top of 3 ft. of mulch, steel plates and plywood to keep the ground from compressing and to catch the spoils that come spraying out when they put in the auger piles, which would damage the pH balance of the trees," Crain added.

Construction of the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Wold said. "I'll tell you, we never get bored."

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For more information about the museum, go to: http://www.georgeohr.org/newmuseum.htm