This is a multifunction facility which serves as the main cat shelter and adoption space for FurKids which is the largest no kill animal shelter in the south eastern US. This building not only serves as the main adoption outlet but also includes a cat café, multifunction event/open adoption space and includes interactive educational components as well.
There were a number of challenges one of them being the required separation between various functions which had to result in a multi building form. To do this we essentially created 3 pitched roofs which were then connected by two flat roof portions as well as a unifying porch condition which stays at the same heigh around the entire building. The second challenge was the integration of the exterior cat porches so as to not make then look like an exterior cat cage. We did this by
designing them as a façade portion of the building therefore making them integral to the design from the beginning. This way the roof of the main building ties in and becomes the same roof over the cat porches. We followed the same design language on the cat café porch to help keep a unified look to the structure. The grand adoption room was the last challenge as the client wanted tall ceilings with exposed trusses with a lot of glass. To keep the project in budget we utilized a modified engineered truss which we clad on the front and back with 1X GA cypress. We used that same cypress all over the project for both the black wood siding and the natural wood on the exterior and on the interior.
This site is heavily wooded which we wanted to touch as little as possible. We started by choosing the most open portion of the site and arranging the building so the exterior connection pathways could meander through the nearby trees. The client wanted a building that would be as maintenance free as possible so we utilized thermo kiln dried cypress wood which is incredibly rot resistant. This in conjunction to the standing seam metal roof the building will be hardy enough to withstand its forest home.
In an effort to work with the pristine nature of the wooded site we wanted this building to use as many local materials as possible and employ a water management system that would give back to the surrounding flora. The majority of the exterior cladding is either black stained, or natural, thermo kiln dried Ga cypress. This special drying process removes all of the oxygen from the wood therefore making it extremely resistant to rot and bug infestation.
This will allow the cladding to be both locally sourced and very maintenance free. For the water management we decided to make all of the pitched roofs gutter-less and therefore will directly shed onto the ground. In order to make this work we extended the soffit/fascia out 2ft so the water would not hit the siding of the building and then we added a perforated pipe 2ft under ground right below the line of the fascia above. This perforated pipe takes all of the pitched roof water and distributes it out to the surrounding site below the planted areas. The area above the perforated pipe is then backfilled with slate chip to allow the water from the roof to freely make its way down to the pipe.
