Apartment Building, North London

We were asked to assist in the delivery of a 100 apartment residential building in North London, which had been designed by another practice. We were to undertake the design resolution and simplification of the cladding proposal to rationalise the facade.

The rain screen facade for the consented scheme included multiple materials arranged to create a larger composition, with inset and expressed areas of cladding. It also included proposals for glazed balustrading which was no longer suitable given current fire regulations.

We kept the general materiality of the consented proposal, particularly on the lower building, which necessitated the coordination of installation requirements from the terracotta supplier, the ceramic stone supplier, the aluminium fabricator, the balcony fabricator, the drainage installer, the rain screen support supplier, the insulation supplier and the fire batt supplier.

This was all fully modelled in Revit, including all of the support system with its ‘helping hand’ fixings, with all fixing and support details taken from the various manufacturers to maintain their design integrity and the facade system warranty. The change to steel balconies and steel balustrading was a significant alteration, but the rhythm and tone of the balconies added to calm the complex consented aesthetic of the facade.

On the tower, we redesigned the cladding whilst keeping the fenestration setting out as per the previous proposal. The main design change was to simplify the aesthetic and remove the shape-making and patterning on the facade. Instead, we focussed on reinforcing the verticality of the building and its modular rectilinear plan, which had a series of offsets.

We created continuous vertical faces in the terracotta which ran the full height of the building, splitting them on each return on the facade. We also changed the aluminium from a light finish to a dark finish to calm the visual complexity of the metalwork such that the primary appearance was of a series of strong terracotta vertical faces.

We were asked to assist in the delivery of a 100 apartment residential building in North London, which had been designed by another practice. We were to undertake the design resolution and simplification of the cladding proposal to rationalise the facade.

The rain screen facade for the consented scheme included multiple materials arranged to create a larger composition, with inset and expressed areas of cladding. It also included proposals for glazed balustrading which was no longer suitable given current fire regulations.

We kept the general materiality of the consented proposal, particularly on the lower building, which necessitated the coordination of installation requirements from the terracotta supplier, the ceramic stone supplier, the aluminium fabricator, the balcony fabricator, the drainage installer, the rain screen support supplier, the insulation supplier and the fire batt supplier.

This was all fully modelled in Revit, including all of the support system with its ‘helping hand’ fixings, with all fixing and support details taken from the various manufacturers to maintain their design integrity and the facade system warranty. The change to steel balconies and steel balustrading was a significant alteration, but the rhythm and tone of the balconies added to calm the complex consented aesthetic of the facade.

On the tower, we redesigned the cladding whilst keeping the fenestration setting out as per the previous proposal. The main design change was to simplify the aesthetic and remove the shape-making and patterning on the facade. Instead, we focussed on reinforcing the verticality of the building and its modular rectilinear plan, which had a series of offsets.

We created continuous vertical faces in the terracotta which ran the full height of the building, splitting them on each return on the facade. We also changed the aluminium from a light finish to a dark finish to calm the visual complexity of the metalwork such that the primary appearance was of a series of strong terracotta vertical faces.