Susan Schuster Pet Resource Center

Gimme Shelter

Blue Design takes a cue from Noah

By Janine Anderson

Blue Design Group knows how to make an entrance.

Just months after the firm opened its doors, it landed its first big project.

“For us, it was pretty cool,” said Steve Jamroz, one of the firm’s founders.

And, in taking on the design of the Susan Schuster Pet Resource Center, Blue Design also tackled some of its first big-project challenges. The first came in the form of a mandate from the Fox Valley Humane Association — the project owner — to design an animal shelter that doesn’t look like a pound.

“One of the design team members had a dream — a vision — of building Noah’s Ark,” Jamroz said. “When you think of a shelter for animals, you could think of Noah’s Ark. You could think of that as a matching symbol, an icon people could relate to.”

Children are the shelter’s main audience, Jamroz said, and the ark concept was something children could understand and recognize easily. Once the concept was in place, the project team started the design work, and that’s when the big challenges appeared.

“Many times in architecture, you hear form follows function or function follows form,” Jamroz said. “In this case, there was a dominant form. If you want to make it look like Noah’s Ark, there’s a form you have to follow.

“There was function on the inside driven not by the form but by the functions of the animal shelter.”

The interior functions of the animal shelter hinge on two basic requirements. First, all animal areas have to be washed down and pressure-sprayed regularly, so the project owner required easy-to-clean surfaces.

Second, the designers needed to find a way to keep animal noise down. The ark-shaped building has a double-corridor system that separates the public and private areas of the building.


	Project Name: Susan Schuster Pet Resource Center Location: Greenville Submitting Company: Blue Design Group LLC, Hortonville General Contractor: Consolidated Construction Corp., Appleton Architect: Blue Design Group LLC Engineers: OMNNI Associates Inc., Appleton, site/civil engineer; Larson Engineering Inc., Appleton, structural engineer; Fredericksen Engineering Inc., Mequon, HVAC engineer; Lubenow Gobster Dominiak Engineering & Associates Inc., Milwaukee, plumbing engineer; Suburban Electrical Engineers/Contractors Inc., Appleton, electrical engineer Owner: Fox Valley Humane Association, Greenville Project Cost: $2.6 million Project Size: 20,000 square feet Start Date: May 2005 Completion Date: October 2005

The dogs are on one side of the main public corridor; quieter animals are on the other side. Another corridor, parallel to the main one, allows staff to access animals without interrupting the public. The system also provides a noise buffer for staff working in offices behind the second corridor.

The building’s exterior presented another challenge, Jamroz said. The structure was to be all masonry, but the project team wanted the wood look of an ark.

To create that, the team used huge clay bricks that were about 8 inches by 16 inches. Three different colored bricks were used in a repeating and alternating pattern around the curving exterior façade.

Inside, the team used bricks of varying colors, shapes and textures. Jamroz said that while the bricks were new for contractors to work with, they did an outstanding job.

He said the entire design and construction team worked well, allowing the project to be completed on time, on budget and in a way that made the owners happy.

“It works very well, the shape works very well in terms of attracting children, and it also gives the shelter a built-in marketing opportunity,” Jamroz said. “They can take that ark and use it to market and fund raise.

“From our standpoint, it was a fun and very rewarding project.”