Water Tower View

Signs of Success

Residents take priority at Water Tower View

By Jennifer Pfaff

In a silent world, there are no shuffles, thumps or thuds to warn that someone is about to round the hallway corner.

Doorbells fail to ring when a visitor waits outside.

So when Wauwatosa-based AG Architecture Inc. took on the challenge of designing Water Tower View, a three-story, 43-unit apartment building for deaf and hard-of-hearing seniors, the driving force behind the project became maintaining clear sight lines vertically, horizontally and technologically.

“We wanted as much visual interaction as possible,” said project manager Tadhg McInerney, adding that the project owners were insistent on the matter. “We wanted to be able to look down from the second floor to the lobby. In a regular building that would be for show and drama. In this building, it was an inalienable right.”

Built in Greenfield within Horizon Development Group Inc.’s Woodland Ridge senior living campus, Water Tower View is the first building of its kind in Wisconsin and one of only a few nationwide. It was hard to find models to draw upon.

“We used the Americans with Disabilities Act as our steppingstone and from there took it to a new level,” McInerney said. “We basically had to invent the technology.”

But first, the staff at AG needed to fully understand the challenges that Water Tower View residents would face. The team turned to John Dickinson, a deaf architect with Winter & Co., Boulder, Colo.

“John was instrumental in giving us the information we needed to find the technology we would need,” McInerney said. “He’d remind us of things we don’t normally think of — even glare. As speaking people, we don’t worry about the sun shining in our eyes. But for people who are signing, that is a problem.”

The $3.7 million, 64,940-square-foot building is now full of communication solutions for those who sign.


	Project Name: Water Tower View Location: Greenfield Submitting Company: AG Architecture, Wauwatosa General Contractor: Horizon Development Group Inc., Verona Architect: AG Architecture Engineer: AG Architecture Owner: Greenfield Senior Housing LLC Project Cost: $3.73 million Project Size: 64,940 square feet Start Date: December 2004 Completion Date: December 2005

Visitors, upon entering the lobby, dial a number. The button they push turns on a strobe light in the apartment they want to reach, and residents can then activate a video phone that allows them to see who is in the lobby. Thanks to a video monitor in the lobby, the resident and visitor can communicate by sign language without the visitor ever entering the secure portion of the building.

“We were always asking ourselves, ‘How do we get these people to communicate with each other?’” McInerney said.

The elevator’s emergency button sets off flashing lights. When the problem is noticed and help is on the way, a marquee-style lighting system inside the elevator lets those trapped inside know about it.

Other solutions relied less on electronics and more on engineering, said Gene Guszkowski, AG’s president.

“It is a wood-frame building with a lot of bearing points to carry the load throughout the building, which creates columns,” he said. But in this environment, columns are obstructions to signing from a distance.

So AG’s team developed an alternate structural system incorporating long-span beams in lieu of columns. Those beams were recessed into the ceiling structure.

Material and method selection also helped address the problem of vibration. Those who are hard of hearing are more perceptive to vibrations caused by everyday activity, and it can be an irritation, Guszkowski said.

Putting a lightweight concrete material on the floors with channels underneath — before attaching the drywall — and insulating everything seemed to lessen the vibrations from units above.

To address vibrations generated in adjoining units, the party walls consist of 6-inch studs staggered and stuffed with sound-reducing insulation.

“This building is a groundbreaker putting into use technology that is just beginning to happen because of [Dickinson’s] creativity,” Guszkowski said.