Congratulations to Direct Path Corporation for winning the Novawall Project of the Month for April 2024.
The winning submission is Rand Construction’s Corporate Offices in Alexandria, VA.
Founded by Linda Rabbitt in 1989, Rand has grown into a premier general contractor headquartered in the Washington DC Metro region.
Their award-winning work, Rand, has delivered innovative commercial spaces nationwide.
Approached by the team at Rand Construction, Direct Path (DPC) was asked to help renovate their corporate headquarters in Alexandria, VA. Rand asked for recommendations for a unique treatment in five conference rooms that would showcase five cities where Rand’s offices are. DPC collaborated with the Novaform design team to develop custom 3-D maps of Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Denver, and Washington, DC.
Design Process
To start the design process, the Rand team provided highlighted Google map images of each city, selecting the roads and waterways they wanted to feature. The Novaform design team developed the maps in AutoCAD and digital mockups to help the client make aesthetic decisions, such as colors and how many roads and highways to include. Novaform worked with the designers to achieve the look they wanted while navigating the ins and outs of the cutting and assembly process, settling on five unique but cohesive map designs.
Production
Each map is composed of multiple stacked sections of 6mm, 9mm, and 12mm PET. This layered effect helped differentiate the roads and bodies of water from the rest of the cityscape. The PET in the visible areas of the maps were created in Northern Sea (background), Midnight Ocean (water), and Coastal Fog (roads), each in 12mm. The maps were to be a feature wall in five separate conference rooms with heights of 97 inches and varying widths between 80 inches and 108 inches. Given that Novaform standard sheets of PET are 48 inches x 108 inches, this required constructing the maps from multiple sections that would come together to create a near-seamless full-elevation installation. To help hide the seams, the Novaform design team created irregular panels that terminated at intersections and other natural break points or underneath bodies of water. This allowed for a final product that, when installed, was considerably free of stark breaks in material and felt like one cohesive piece of art. While this approach added considerable time to the design and production, this type of effort and installation-minded thinking sets Novaform apart from the competition.
Installation
The installation was performed over two days by a team of Direct Path installers led by Jeffry Jimenez. Before transferring the panels to Direct Path, the Novaform team came together to help assemble and dry-fit each complete map to ensure all parts lined up and fit the exact elevation dimensions; removable access points were in the design to allow the installers to screw through the panel into the wall and hide the screw with a covering section of PET adhered to a backer panel with double-sided tape. This process allowed for a quick and easy installation with no glue or adhesive on the wall.
The completed project accurately details multi-dimensional panels that depict the unique roads and waterways of 5 metropolitan US cities!
Let’s give a big congratulations and a round of applause to the entire Direct Path Corporation team!
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