Light: 75 kg/m2 < p ≤ 125 kg/m2

The building that MAP Architects designed in Borneo dock, Amsterdam, resolves the envelopes in a very appropriate way at all scales.

This case would be quite an ordinary rain screen façade with a lightweight steel frame main wall and a cladding, if it were not for the reflective membrane. This layer achieves air-tightness all around the building and moisture protection of the main wall, allowing the exterior board not to be a cement board, as is the standardised Knauf system.

Pay attention to how this elegant wooden curtain wall resolves the front of the slab, ensuring the appropriate fire sectorisation and minimizing the need of transoms. A simple wooden rib closes from the inside the gap between the pavement and the glass.

We love those examples that shake the taxonomical tool that organizes this website. In this occasion, the case does not question the order at the taxonomy but thins the rotundity of the lines between areas.

B720 architects propose a stick wooden curtain wall where mullions and transoms reach the building site already assembled in a big format component. We cannot say it is a unitized system, it is just a frame composed by complex profiles.
 

Interesting and well resolved wooden stick curtain wall, mostly for the students of architecture consulting this website. In this curtain wall façade “everything happens”: we have a shading device anchored to the mullions; an exterior catwalk; a corner opening without mullion; a big offset from the concrete slab to the curtain wall starting; a watertight continuity situation with a brick parapet. Understand it all, you will learn a lot!!

A highly prefabricated system reproducing the image of a traditional brick work. (Like in case Light prefabricated “brick” work).

The challenge is erecting a new building in an old neighbourhood being respectful with the image and material character of the surrounding buildings.

The brick work wall builds a massive plinth that sits the building in the place.

From this plinth emerge a series of isolated volumes defined by a clearly different material character.

The construction with large-format prefabricated panels contrasts with the craftsmanship that accompanies the execution of the brick work wall.

Technique, system and image. Example of great coherence.

Related cases:

An unusual solution in Mediterranean latitudes, to be considered at a time of a wood boom.

Like cross laminated timber panels, this system enables the construction of wooden wall structures. Some of these walls constitute the main facade layer.

An important difference between CLT panels and this system is in the format of the assembled elements. Cross laminated timber beams are smaller than panels and therefore lighter; they can easily be moved and hoisted without a crane.

Often throughout history, new construction systems or techniques have tried to reproduce the image of traditional architecture. In this case, neither the technique nor the final image are dislikeable but their combination could be. The brick image is related with mass, thickness, weight; just the opposite the technique being used provides.

The same happened in the 18th and 19th centuries with the mathematical tile*! This old technique permitted erecting light-weight enclosures looking like brick walls. 

We are pleased to add this case-study to facad3s website for various reasons, the most relevant is the interest of the overall construction solution, and the appropriateness of having good quality cooperative social housing proposals.

We congratulate this young team of architects for their efforts and successful contribution to convincing and then implementing such innovative proposals in the Spanish context.