Big E’s Restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, uses 8,500 square feet of the SMARTci® building enclosure system over open metal studs, behind Nichiha fiber-cement panels, with polyiso insulation. It is a standalone restaurant. The project was designed by Suburban Inns and built and installed by Titan Interiors, LLC.

For a restaurant, where schedule and cost shape the exterior as much as performance does, the notable choice here was to install SMARTci on open framing, directly over the metal studs, without a separate exterior sheathing step. The system combines its continuous insulation with its air- and water-control in a single assembly, so the wall becomes weather-tight in fewer layers and then receives the Nichiha panels on that same plane. Grand Rapids’ cold winters still require continuous insulation, which the assembly provides, but open-framing SMARTci suits a restaurant because of speed: it delivers a finished, insulated, watertight exterior in fewer steps.