A quarter million pounds of copper twinkling in the sunlight have made the new Health Sciences Education Building at Phoenix Biomedical Campus a major landmark in the Phoenix valley. The $99 million healthcare construction project, being built by DPR • Sundt, a Joint Venture, features multiple exterior finishes including approximately 250,000 pounds of copper – all of it recycled – that was turned into copper metal panels.
And it didn’t cost a mint, thanks to careful planning by the project team. They purchased the copper early in the schedule (before most other materials), when prices dipped to $3.30 per pound – saving the owner approximately $340,000.
Here are a few more fun facts about the copper used on the education and research facility’s exterior:
• All copper was milled from raw, 15,000-pound ingots into 16-ounce, 20-ounce and 32-ounce gauged coils, weighing approximately 6,000 pounds apiece.
• All copper is ¾ hard in tensile strength – typical of architectural copper sheet.
• Total number of individual copper panels: 5,972
• Total number of vertical fins: 116
• Sunshades: 1,225 lineal feet
• Total number of copper parts, including flashings, accessories, etc. – over 10,000
• Number of repetitive “crinkled” panels: 26
• Total number of “crinkled” panel types: 344
• Number of separate machines required to process the copper coil into finished product: 8
• All copper panel systems fabricated from start to finish in Chandler, Ariz.
The 268,000-square-foot Health Sciences Education Building (HSEB), part of the 28-acre Phoenix Biomedical Campus, will be used by the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, the UA College of Pharmacy, and the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, as well as by Northern Arizona University’s College of Health and Human Services programs.