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Reference 12: Festival House Blackpool (UK)
Client:
Richardson Roofing
Executed in:
planTEC® system shingles
Realisation:
Parkinson BuildingContractors
Details:
The English seaside resort of Blackpool is not a likely first choice for a sightseeing tour of modern architecture. For over 100 years, the old classic Blackpool Tower has been the prominent landmark of a town well-known as a synonym for holiday fun, and the resort’s latest sculptural structure is definitely not meant to compete with this symbolism.
The new Festival House is, however, an outstanding architectural achievement in its own right. Located on the recently modernized seafront promenade and designed by London-based architects dRMM, the more than attractive project literally leaves a shimmering impression.
A one-storey building with an elegant seamed flat roof projecting on all sides that unveils its restaurant interior through a large glass front to the south merges into a "mini tower" with two additional storeys on the opposite side. The formal play with different angles in different directions creates areas of façade with various trapezoid shapes and a distinctive oriel-like top floor, whose glass front cuts the line of sight with a good view of the Blackpool Tower. London-based architects dRMM, who have not enjoyed a name for this kind of sculptural work up to now, achieved a surprising result with this successful design vocabulary, while simultaneously retaining the high merit they have shown in many other projects with their intuitive use of innovative materials. In this case, the all-round metal sleeve of the "tower structure" gives the shape its materiality and immediately attracts attention. Even in a snapshot, the pattern of rhombus-shaped shingles exhibits a multi-facetted play with structure and colour. Depending on the light quality, each single shingle has a characteristic basic colour with an individual colour gradient – from emerald green to gold-yellow, from reddish brown to bluish violet. The incidence of light creates the corresponding varied reflections in the different angles of the façade surfaces and the different phases of the changing light conditions create an amazing sequence of many different visual impressions, so that it is actually quite difficult to characterise the façade in terms of specific colours. In extreme circumstances, it appears to be veiled in brass, but then seems cast in gold. The secret of this "chameleon skin" is the coloured stainless steel with a cleverly designed structure, which, thanks to extremely precise pre-fabrication and project planning, unfolds fully its unrivalled aesthetic effect. At least as appealing are the obvious material benefits, such as high resistance and long life, especially when in autumn the stormy disposition of the Irish Sea whips the seawater over the promenade and even the Blackpool Tower is coated with a salty crust to a height of more than 90 metres.
The unique aesthetic effect of the poly-spectral colours on the metal façade of Festival House is based on the interaction of several factors. The rhombus-shaped planTEC® system shingles from north German company MN Metallverarbeitung Neustadt offer characteristic reflection properties due to their special surface structure. In addition to the many different perforations and embossings that the company has implemented in previous projects - using every conceivable construction metal and alloy for innovative design solutions in architecture which it markets under the brand name planTEC® - in this case an individual positive/negative embossing solution was developed, creating many different refractions and reflections of light and, consequently, countless colour nuances. The base material here is stainless steel sheet reworked using the ColourTex® process of British manufacturer Rimex, which due to its characteristic colour gradients has additional light variations on the Mirror Gold 6WL surface. Additionally, a special characteristic of traditional shingle cladding is that not all rhombus elements are at exactly the same angle to incident light, and thus they reflect the light in slightly different ways.
The stainless steel sheet colour is produced by enriching the oxide layer, which also optimises the material's corrosion resistance. Very important considering the exposed location of Festival House is that the metal is resistant to weathering and UV and is absolutely colour fast to 200°C. Ageing effects as well as cracks or flaking can be ruled out, as can material changes caused by light or weather. The material is also very easy to work with: processes such as laser cutting, edging, bending or deep drawing are all possible with the coloured surfaces, since the oxide layer is bonded to the base material and thus has a very high degree of elasticity.
However, the positive/negative embossing of the metal does cause problems in relation to traditional processing techniques, since the thickness that has to be taken into consideration from a technical point of view is 2 to 3 mm and not between 0.5 and 0.8 mm as is usual with stainless steel sheet. In combination with the high design demands of the project and the highly individualized system requirements, an exceptionally high level of expertise in pre-fabrication and project planning was required – probably unique for what is actually a traditional roof and façade system. As a Specialist for Technical Elegance MN was the perfect partner for the project and was able to deliver the entire metal cladding ready for assembly; MN also acted as the interface for all the trades involved in the construction work. The company's extensive experience with creative metalwork according to individual customer requirements, coupled with the unrivalled possibilities of a modern sheet metal machining centre enabled the tasks to be bundled in a highly concentrated manner: pre-assembly of the complete metal skin, development of special tools for the individual systems, internal processing of the laser cuts, implementation of the complete construction system, including ventilation elements, coping, internal gutters. The specific challenges were not limited to the most spectacular aspects of the building's cladding; the cleverly designed seamed roof of the restaurant is based on a traditional standing seam cladding with multiple angles that demanded special solutions for the cuts because of the longitudinal and transverse expansion of the material. This made the chameleon skin a hybrid project in more ways than one: traditional stainless steel plate with high-tech finish, traditional assembly technique with today's industrial expertise.
Material:
Mirror Gold 6WL