I recently shared a meal with Neil Meredith, a former colleague of mine who now works for Gehry Technologies, an offshoot of Frank Gehry’s architecture practice in Los Angeles. Neil was in the Twin Cities on business to meet with a variety of companies that specialize in innovative fabrication technologies and material assemblies. Gehry Technologies is a consulting firm that provides integrated design solutions and project delivery assistance to architects, engineers, and contractors working on complex projects—buildings, for example, with dramatically curved facades or interior walls. Over dinner, Neil explained that the Twin Cities metropolitan area is a hotbed of material manufacturers and fabricators that help to make these complex buildings possible.

The more Neil spoke, the more I realized there was something unique about the development of these firms. First and foremost, they have all been willing to take risks and engage with designers working on unconventional projects. This in turn has forced them to rethink their own approaches to design and project delivery. Second, many have made significant breakthroughs by transforming rather ordinary materials and building systems in extraordinary ways.

These companies, it turns out, are quietly revolutionizing the role of materials research, fabrication, project delivery, and construction sequencing for architects and builders alike. And while many of these firms have deep roots in Minnesota’s manufacturing base, they represent an altogether different breed of fabrication shop than those of the first generation of manufacturing.

Eager to gain a competitive edge among their peers in an increasingly dynamic global building industry, such Twin Cities-based companies as M.G. McGrath, Spantek, Radius Track Corporation, Enclos, Permasteelisa Group, and Liberty Diversified International have developed new and innovative applications of their original product lines, or have created new product lines and processes altogether.

All have retooled their operations to integrate digital technologies and parametric design into their production cycles. (Parametric modeling streamlines design and fabrication by embedding quantitative and qualitative information in the digital model so that the information is automatically updated when changes are made to any of the digital components).

In many ways, this new generation of fabricators is getting out ahead of designers by anticipating their needs before they arise. In fact, many of these companies consult with architects earlier in the project timeline than ever before, or even have designers on staff, to help direct research and development.

Forging partnerships, finding solutions

These firms are not simply providing easier, faster and less expensive solutions for traditional design and construction challenges (although they do that, too). Rather, they are showing that investing in research pays off in not only new approaches to design and construction but an expansion in the scope of their practices. By taking this ambitious tack, they have been able to transform the core of their operations while anticipating, if not outpacing, the aspirations of the designers and architects with whom they work.

“Manufacturers and fabricators have so much expertise to offer designers throughout the design process,” says John Cook, a project architect with HGA, who has worked with Spantek and M.G. McGrath on several projects. “I find it absolutely fascinating to visit a shop when mockups are in production and to see all of the processes in play to find solutions to the challenges of fabrication and construction. The knowledge flows in both directions, and we take the lessons learned from one project into the next.”

As a result of their research and investment in new technologies and applications, all of the companies interviewed for this article have seen an increase in their projects and product lines over the past two decades. All foresee even more. Furthermore, their willingness to innovate and take risks has led to collaborations with some of the world’s most celebrated architects, including Frank Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron, Daniel Libeskind, Sejima and Nishizawa, and Moshe Safdie.

Mike McGrath, president of M.G. McGrath, Inc., says that working with Herzog & de Meuron and HGA on the Walker Art Center’s anodized expanded aluminum panels, and with Studio Daniel Libeskind on the Denver Art Museum’s custom titanium shingles, forced his family’s sheet-metal shop to rethink its entire operation.

“The needs and the interests we were seeing were in the areas of complex geometries and mass customization, so we made new hardware and software purchases and retooled the technology in our shop to talk between machines,” he explains. “This entailed significant allocations of time and resources, and required us to hire a lot of new people to run the machines, write the software scripts, and forge new partnerships with firms like Gehry Technologies.”

Rethinking Euclidian geometries

Some innovations in design and project delivery, such as the ones implemented by M.G. McGrath, come at great expense. Others come by pushing rather ordinary materials and processes to new and extraordinary ends.

Architect Chuck Mears, founder and chief design officer of Radius Track Corporation, took the latter route in 1996 while operating a construction company specializing in commercial interiors. The firm had been commissioned to develop a curve-filled expansion of an Atlanta restaurant in time for the Summer Olympics that year. Mears knew that “cutting and strapping straight steel stud and track members to make them into curvilinear forms” would jeopardize the project’s tight schedule.

Mears was convinced there was a better way to create complex geometries with standard framing materials. He developed his own machine to control the amount of curvature applied to the framing to streamline the process of bending studs and track. After a bit of experimenting, tinkering and testing, Mears produced, with great precision, all of the custom parts needed to frame the entire space in only three days.

His new bending machine worked and it was easy to use at the job site. In addition to generating precisely curved stud and track, it reduced construction debris compared to the traditional snip-and-strap method.

Before the project started, Mears applied for a patent on his machine design. Within Radius Track was advertising new products and services to roll, crimp and bend steel track and stud into simple arcs or compound custom shapes. The firm went on to design and supply framing materials for such complex projects as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and New World Symphony in Miami, both designed by Frank Gehry.

More recently, Radius Track produced components of the facade framework for the new Edmonton International Airport Control Tower, in cooperation with Gehry Technologies, and designed the framework for portions of the Minnesota Twins stadium at Target Field. In many ways, Radius Track offers architects and designers the tools to rethink and rework the Euclidian geometries and dimensional constraints that define many of our most common building materials.

Reworking common industrial materials

Spantek and Liberty Diversified International (LDI) offer similar case studies in the rich opportunities that come from rethinking and reworking common industrial materials and processes. Spantek, which supplied the expanded aluminum for the Walker Art Center addition, worked closely with that project’s designers to create the material properties that would give the panels a proper balance of structural fitness and visual effects. This was one of the first applications of a Spantek product as a finished architectural material, and it led to numerous other architectural commissions.

Fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit of its chairman and CEO, Mike Fiterman (grandson of the company’s founder, Jack Fiterman), LDI took a chance on an innovative use of corrugated high-density polyethylene (HDPE), the same material used to make the U.S. Postal Service’s ubiquitous white plastic mail bins.

Collaborating with product designers and inventors Jonas Hauptman, Walter Zesk, and Paul James, the company reworked the highly durable and lightweight material through the CNC (computer numerical control) box cutters already in use in its facilities to create a system of customizable building blocks for unique wall and ceiling applications, as well as freestanding interior enclosures.

The eye-catching product line, produced by LDI subsidiary Seeyond, is an inspired blend of high and low technology: Seeyond chief designers Justin Berken and Khanh Nguyen use sophisticated parametric modeling programs to customize, fabricate and install the systems, which are based on the rather ordinary processes of box cutting and folding.

“Openness to operating in new and innovative ways”

How did so many material specialists come to develop in and around the Twin Cities?

Minnesotans certainly demonstrate a high level of appreciation and expectation for quality design, craft and attention to detail in the built environment. And our highly educated design, engineering, and manufacturing workforce no doubt plays a critical role in the success of these companies.

But perhaps the most intriguing explanation is one proposed by Gehry Technologies’ Neil Meredith: Our diverse economy, and the fact that design and manufacturing in Minnesota are not focused on a single industry, may reinforce a more open and free-flowing exchange of knowledge and ideas.

Consider Detroit and Los Angeles, for example, two cities known for their manufacturing and fabrication. In each case, manufacturing is closely tied to one or two primary industries: the automobile in Detroit, entertainment and aerospace in Los Angeles.

In contrast, Minnesota boasts such a rich mix of manufacturers and design talent that the research and development shared among them has created a collective intelligence in this particular place. Meredith describes the companies with which he has worked as displaying a general “openness to operating in new and innovative ways. They are willing to tinker and experiment, to try and figure something out while still keeping the focus on quality.”

Whatever the root causes are, it is quite clear to world-class firms such as Gehry Technologies that the Twin Cities are home to some of the most innovative manufacturers and fabricators of building products and technologies. What used to be a best-kept design and construction secret is a secret no more.

John Comazzi is an Associate Professor of Architecture in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, and current Director of the undergraduate B.S. Degree Program. He originally wrote this article for Architecture Minnesota. It's reprinted here with permission.