Bloomberg wins SFE’s Façade 2019 Project of the Year

We are celebrating success after picking up the prestigious Society of Façade Engineering (SFE), Façade 2019, Project of the Year Award 2019 for our project, Bloomberg.

The international awards recognise projects which demonstrate excellence in technical design and/or research that has made a significant contribution to the discipline of façade engineering.

The winners were announced and project achievements were celebrated at the Glass Supper event held on the 10^th December at the Guild Hall, Basinghall, London which was attended by some of the world’s leading architects, consultants and manufacturers.

The award for ‘Project of the Year – Newbuild’ was collected by Chris Hall and Tom Howse who both helped to deliver this facade on the Bloomberg project for Sir Robert McAlpine. This was a joint venture entry between us and the Façade Contractor, Josef Gartner.

Designed by Foster + Partners, we helped realise Bloomberg’s vision for their new HQ by delivering new European headquarters that would inspire others and be a place staff would be excited to work in.

The project showcased technical excellence in a number of ways:

The blast resistant façades were engineered by utilising the Permasteelisa Group in-house developed Testudo software, which allowed analysis to be conducted considering the dynamic interaction between the major façade components, optimising the structural integrity of the framing, the control of glass hazards and minimising loads transferred back to the structure.

The large bronze clad fins were designed at varying angles for sun and glare protection and to provide and optimise natural ventilation. The buildings are naturally ventilated without creating drafts or cooling the building down, via centrally controlled, motor driven ventilation flaps integrated into the façade and the atrium roof.

The bronze cladding has a sculptural form which required the highest quality manufacturing and finishing techniques. These included a “friction stir” welding process developed from similar techniques used in aircraft manufacture.

The stone clad beams and columns were hand finished to achieve the precise geometry at the intersection of curved elements. The spans of up to 18m required a finite element composite design for the composite beams to achieve the required deflection criteria.

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