legend - McNichols

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As seen in the May 2010 issue of
THE
LIVELEGEND
Architectural
metals give the
Harley-Davidson
Museum a rugged,
factory-inspired look
BY LAUREN DUENSING
Modern Metals ® May 2010
I
n 1903, William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson
introduced the American public to the first
production Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Built for
racing, the bike had a 31⁄8-inch bore and a 31⁄2-inch
stroke. In those days, the Harley-Davidson Motor Co.
operated out of a 10-foot-by-15-foot wooden shed.
Today, Harley-Davidson’s heavyweight bikes have hundreds of thousands of devotees.
In 2003, more than 250,000 people came to Milwaukee for the final stop of the Open
Road Tour and Harley-Davidson’s 100th-anniversary celebration.
Many generations of riders and enthusiasts can experience those 100-plus years of
history at the Harley-Davidson Museum, which is fittingly located on the Menomonee
River in the company’s hometown of Milwaukee. Exhibits detail the history of the brand,
from the oldest Harley-Davidson motorcycle to facts about how current bikes are designed and built.
“The museum showcases an unforgettable collection of motorcycles and historical
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The Harley-Davidson
Museum uses McNichols’
close-mesh bar grating in
innovative ways.
items from our company’s vast archives,”
says Stacey Watson, museum director. “It
tells the story of the people, products, history and culture of Harley-Davidson. The
stories are told through both chronological and thematic exhibits, which are
linked together by a chronological procession of landmark motorcycles from the
company’s 105-year history.”
Choosing a material
When planning the museum, HarleyDavidson needed a material that exemplified its rugged image.
“Milwaukee is a city of manufacturing,” Watson says. “Harley-Davidson designs and manufactures motorcycles, so
we looked to the forms, shapes and materials of factories when planning the
museum.
“The exterior skeleton is made of galvanized steel,” she continues. “You can see
metal featured in big ways and small ways.
It portrays the strength and honesty of the
Harley-Davidson brand and industrial heritage of the area.”
To create this factory look, the museum’s design architect, Pentagram of
New York, used architectural metals from
Tampa, Fla.-based McNichols Co.’s
Designer Metals line, focusing on closemesh bar grating, perforated metal and
carbon wire steel mesh products.
In addition, Pentagram worked with
HGA Architects and Engineers, the museum’s architect of record, and Grunau
Metals, Oak Creek, Wis., a metal fabricator.
Grunau Metals specializes in metal fabrication and serves a diverse client base,
which includes a wide range of companies
in industries such as health care, education, industrial and commercial.
“Most of the metals in the interior were
fabricated from standard shapes of rolled,
punched and fabricated steel,” says James
Biber, FAIA, of Pentagram, who led the
design team.
Expanding bar grating’s uses
“We have seen our architectural metals
used in some unusual ways, but this museum took them to another level of creativity,” says Herb Goetschius, vice
chairman of McNichols Co.
Pentagram is familiar with McNichols’
architectural metals, having used the company’s products in its home office, as well
as in other client projects over the years.
“I have been aware of McNichols for
more than 20 years. It’s the standard in that
whole category of metals for variety and
reliability,” says Biber.
Grunau Metals has also worked with
McNichols, particularly with the company’s grating materials and perforated
metal steel or stainless, says Brad Landry,
operations manager at Grunau Metals.
And Ray Sachs, HGA’s project manager for the museum, was familiar with
McNichols’ off-the-shelf products, which
provide a custom look at a lower cost.
“McNichols has a shopping list of patterns they produce that are far less expensive than custom fabrication,” he says.
The Harley-Davidson Museum took
existing McNichols products and repurposed them in innovative ways.
For instance, McNichols’ GCM-100
close-mesh bar grating is typically used for
May 2010 Modern Metals®
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match the walking surface, a design that
required the two elements to link like
door hinges.
“It was like lacing your fingers together,”
says Landry. “The bar grating came in
3-foot-wide panels, so we had to piece the
bridge together panel by panel.”
The vertical bar grating also required a
custom-welded handrail cap to cover the
raw edge of the upended panel.
Perforated metal accents
industrial flooring. Although it’s unusual
for this type of flooring to be used in a museum, it can handle high traffic in pedestrian areas while maintaining the look and
feel of a factory.
The close-mesh bar grating was used as
flooring for the interior pedestrian bridges
and stairways and fabricated in an upright
position for handrails. The product meets
ADA requirements as a walking surface.
Bar grating was also used to cover HVAC
vents on the floor and as a hill climb exhibit, where it was installed at a significant
pitch and supports several motorcycles that
appear to be motoring uphill.
The close-mesh bar grating along the
exhibit walking paths is found on the
treads and landing of the staircase, as well
as on a suspended pedestrian bridge that
links the motorcycle gallery to the
engine exhibit room.
Many of the fabrications were built in
Grunau Metals’ Milwaukee steel fabrication workshop and assembled and
welded on-site. Unique to the bridge is
the use of bar grating as a handrail to
In addition to the innovative uses of bar
grating, perforated metal is also featured
in novel ways. McNichols’ perforated
metal panels with a 1-inch border and
formed edges were used as a decorative
wall covering.
The museum’s cafe, Cafe Racer,
features walls of perforated metal panels
that are gray powder-coated and wrapped
around the elevator shaft that is painted in
Harley-Davidson orange. The perforated
metal doubles as a backdrop for large
photo murals featuring famous HarleyDavidson racers.
Light fixtures in some areas are covered
with long cylinders of perforated metal to
resemble motorcycle exhaust pipes, where
light glows through tiny holes without the
need for diffusers.
On the grounds of the museum, carbon
wire steel mesh is used as infill panels on
the guardrail along the river’s edge for
safety and aesthetic purposes. The wire
mesh is powder-coated in black, another
nod to factory chic.
Some metal components, such as counters, railings and other trim elements, were
exposed to a chemical blackening process
instead of a traditional paint to fully express
the natural roughness associated with a
factory setting.
To achieve this blackened appearance,
some of the McNichols GCM-100 was
hot-dipped galvanized to create an industrial look. It was also zinc-plate coated,
which created a dulled-out silver sheen.
“The Harley-Davidson Museum has
received so much worldwide acclaim, it
will no doubt stimulate the architectural
community to view specialty metals in
new and different ways,” says Goetschius.
“The unique metal features in this museum will open the door for architects to
consider specialty metal products for their
aesthetics, as well as their other qualities,
such as sustainability, recycled content
and green value.” ■
Grunau Metals, Oak Creek, Wis.,
800/365-1920, www.grunau.com.
McNichols Co., Tampa, Fla., 813/282-3828,
fax: 813/287-1066, www.mcnichols.com.
Reprinted from Modern Metals® May 2010 Copyright Trend Publishing Inc.
Modern Metals ® May 2010