Best Sports/Entertainment Project

One of Nashville's latest hits, the $415-million Music City Center project, provides state-of-the-art convention center facilities with a style clearly reflecting its homegrown, country music roots. Nashville’s remarkably unique new downtown Music City Center boasts a grand entryway fabricated using arched barrel steel joists.

One of Bell/Clark's and TVS Design’s challenges involved selecting the best expansion joint solution that would accommodate the building’s exterior features that resembles the rolling curves of an acoustic guitar. Forming the curves of the "guitar" is a 14-acre, vegetation-covered rolling roof that is the largest of its kind in the Southeast that had to remain watertight to protect the occupied space below. MM Systems Corporation was selected to provide the wide array of complex expansion joint designs for this state of the art facility.

The new facility doubles as a convention center and entertainment space. It spans three city blocks and features a 350,000 square foot exhibition hall. MM System expansion joints with special sound attenuation properties were selected for the 57,000 square foot grand ballroom which is designed with acoustics that enable it to serve as a music venue.

Alpha Insulation & Waterproofing, the expansion joint installation contractor, contributed to the project's quality-control efforts by collaborating with the Bell/Clark, TVS Design and MM Systems to identify and resolve the field challenges associated with the rolling curves of the building’s design. Special features such as “seismic no bump” and “hidden sight line” floor joints were installed as well as specialty rubber seals installed with a unique vacuum process to keep the facility watertight.

The entire project shows off the design possibilities of steel construction, while putting a spotlight on the engineering of “special profile” steel joists for dramatic aesthetic impact and cost savings.

Contractor: Bell/Clark, a Joint Venture, in Association with Harmony

Owner: The Convention Center Authority of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County

Designers: Collaboration of TVS Design, Tuck-Hinton Architects and Moody-Nolan

Structural Engineer: Ross Bryan Associates, Nashville

MEP Engineer: I.C. Thomasson Associates, Nashville

Civil Engineer: Barge, Waggoner, Summer & Cannon, Nashville

Expansion Joint Manufacturer: MM Systems Corporation, Atlanta

Expansion Joint Installation Contractor: Alpha Insulation & Waterproofing, Atlanta