Garmon and Company is proud to submit The Pearl – Wake Forest School of Medicine, a 393,000-square-foot medical academic facility, in the category for Toughest Site Conditions. Partnering with FUSE Alliance members Daltile and Mapei, our team was responsible for up to 50,000 square feet of ceramic tile installed across multiple areas throughout this complex healthcare and academic environment.
From logistics to site coordination, this project presented extreme and continuously evolving challenges. Located on the edge of uptown Charlotte, the jobsite required navigating limited access for material deliveries, restricted staging areas, and difficult parking conditions. Interior work zones were often confined, congested, and shared by multiple trades simultaneously, alternating floor closures, overall creating an environment where sequencing and access were constantly shifting. These conditions required our team to adapt installation plans in real time while maintaining quality and production goals.
Due to overlapping trade activities and tight spatial constraints, our team faced multiple remobilizations and deployed additional crews to address ongoing rework caused by damage, schedule shifts, and impacts from other trades after installation. This resulted in added labor and material demands that had to be absorbed and managed without disrupting the overall project schedule. Our project management and field supervision teams maintained constant oversight to re-sequence work, protect completed areas, and rapidly respond to changing site conditions.
Substrate conditions also varied significantly throughout the facility, requiring extensive preparation, corrective work, and technical solutions to ensure proper bonding, flatness, and transitions between dissimilar materials installed by other trades. Our installers demonstrated exceptional craftsmanship and problem-solving, developing solutions for countless unique field conditions to achieve seamless transitions and long-term performance. Through disciplined supervision, technical expertise, and adaptability, our team successfully delivered a high-quality ceramic tile installation despite one of the most demanding site environments we have encountered. This success was further strengthened through collaboration with FUSE Alliance partners Daltile and Mapei, whose products and technical support were critical in overcoming the project’s extreme site conditions and ensuring a durable, high-performance installation.
Nancy Thiel, founder and principal of Thiel Architecture + Design, is a licensed architect and an interior designer. With 40+ years’ experience working with luminaries in the architecture world, including Michael Graves, Robert A.M. Stern, and Rockwell Group, where she served as a studio leader, Thiel’s extensive portfolio includes single-family homes and multi-story residences, hotels, restaurants, retail, fitness clubs, offices, theaters, schools and shopping centers. She is a member of the AIA, holds NCARB certification and is a LEED accredited professional. Prior to her career in architecture, Thiel was a dancer and choreographer.
Thiel Architecture + Design is an award-winning multi-disciplinary architecture, interior design, planning, and product design firm with offices in CT and NY. The firm’s work focuses on high-end residential design as well as hospitality, contract, and retail projects. Thiel Architecture + Design’s work has been featured in Interior Design, Architype, New York and Connecticut Cottages and Gardens, Connecticut Magazine, Archello, and Fast Company magazines. In 2022, the firm received a Connecticut AIA Excellence award for Interior Architecture. Thiel earned a BA from Penn State University and her Master of Architecture degree from Syracuse University.
