This luxury commercial building is located in the city centre of Rio de Janeiro, near the new port area, and is classified with LEED Gold environmental certification.
The complex geometry of the glass pieces and sloping facades make this project stand out from the rest of buildings of the surrounding area.
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Sir Norman Foster, Pritzker architecture prize winner, designed this re-interpretation of the wine cellar typology covered with corten steel cut down into scale shapes, with three main entrances and a singular facade facing the most visible side of the building. The main facade is made up of an area of stainless steel and glass slats and two curtain wall panels into which portions of truncated cone are inserted, generating elliptic intersections between these and the main façade plane.
The truncated cones are supported by a steel structure, anchored to the concrete base, and a secondary structure cladded with a plastic polymer and stainless steel composite panel plus two intermediate anti-humidity films as well as thermal insulation compose the final detailing. The facade system is a Schüco FW50+ stick curtain wall. Due to a potential issue of differential thermal dilation between the truncated cones and the facades, STRUNOR designed a sliding anchors system that ensured a perfect behaviour of the facade.
Links:
http://www.fosterandpartners.com
Colinas Green Tower is a reference of sustainability and modernisation in commercial construction in the Valle de Paraíba region. It holds Gold LEED environmental pre-certification and features a high standard structural and energetic facades system.
Links:
http://www.colinasshopping.com.br/
The Daniel K.Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), with a 4 meter diameter primary mirror, will be the largest solar telescope in the world, and will have a capacity without precedent for research in astronomy, plasma physics and the interaction between the Sun and the Earth.
The envelope cladding is a bespoke unitised system designed specifically for this project by STRUNOR, as were the rest of the elements on the façade.
The process included a full assembly test in Bilbao, where the whole structure and envelope were installed, and afterwards, each one of the units of the envelope were packed back into boxes specifically designed to transport them to their definitive location in the Haleakala Observatory, in Maui Island, Hawaii.
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Images courtesy of Idom.
The avant garde design of the Automotive Intelligence Centre reflects the spirit of the projects being carried out in it by leading world class automobile component companies.
Curtain walls and windows are executed with a Schüco commercial system. Spandrel panels are solved with setback ACM trays, employing a hidden fastening system.
The stick curtain wall system only present vertical cover caps, and mullions and transoms vary in depth, depending on the particular requirements of each facade.
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Photograph: Aitor Ortiz
The Vidal de Canellas building is located within the Universal Exhibition Zaragoza 2008 site. It is part of the complex nowadays called City of Justice of Zaragoza.
The project reutilises the structure of some existing former pavilions of the Exhibition, and from those a completely new complex has been created.
The 4 floors high building is wrapped by a Schüco FW50+ stick curtain wall system, with the unusual characteristic that part of the facade is made up of 7500 mm long mullions in one piece. The 175 mm deep mullions have been reinforced in order to get the necessary inertia to achieve the large spans. Polygonal curtain wall form the curvature of the plan, following the design originally composed of three curves with different radius to cover a circumference arc of 180 degrees.
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This building houses the headquarters of the company Naturgas, a listed building in the heart of Bilbao. Whereas the facades of the existing rationalist building have been maintained, the interior has been completely removed and redesigned, creating an open plan, well lit contemporaty interior, according to the phylosophy of the company.
STRUNOR´s intervention took place in several areas of the building. The main listed facade is resolved with JANSEN Janisol Art, a series of steel carpentry new in the spanish market, with minimal steel structural sections and thus giving an appearance of maximum transparency on each unit.
The coutyard facing the neighbouring buildings feature Technal FXI series aluminium windows with insert Renson vent units, and U-Glass facades.
The atrium is formed by a bespoke spiders structural glass curtain wall type, designed by STRUNOR, which closes off all sides of the court. The design follows a geometry dictated by steep generating lines, resulting in a continuous polygonal wall, made up of trapezoidal laminated and Decoreflex printed glass units, continuous over the7 floors height.
Lastly, the skylight covering the inner patio, consisted on a flat skylight, made of structural glass curtain wall spiders again, but this time framing double glazing units.
Link: http://imbarquitectos.es
The new School of Education at the Leioa Campus for the Basque Country University, designed by Cesar Azcárate (idom ACXT), comprises two buildings, each of them with two underground and four above ground floors. Program includes classrooms, workshops libraries, halls, offices, cafe, reception, sitting areas and a large green area.
The main building presents a double skin envelope, being the inner skin made up of Tehcnal’s N’epure windows featuring acoustic double glazing. The outer skin varies depending on the orientation, being it a glass skin on North and South facing facades and aluminium louvres on East and West.
Large span expanded metal sheet louvres in a bright orange finish shape the seconday building’s outer skin.
This is a singular building due to the volumes morphology, but moreover it is an excellent exmple of urban regeneration transforming a derelict plot of land adjacent to the Campus into a perfectly integrated innovative building.
Links:
http://www.bilbaoarchitecture.com
Photograph: Aitor Ortiz
