Heavy: > 125 kg/m2

Elegant and well-resolved contemporary conventional façade solution where the main sheet, the exposed brick masonry wall, passes in front of the slab fronts.

Very astutely, the architects decide to support this wall over the window openings, thus avoiding having parts of the wall supported on two different levels, the slab and the lintel.

The solution is simple, clean and coherent.

Related cases:

We applaud the appropriate choice of the different materials used in the construction of this residential building - without extreme positions.

On the one hand, the architects combine a dry-construction, lightweight structure with a heavier, wet-construction façade. On the other hand, they do not attempt to “exhibit” sustainability by allowing structural wood to be seen.

Each part has its place and its justification.
 

I must confess I was really impressed when I saw those huge tile-cladded one-piece-high concrete panels. My doubt was whether they managed to resolve those panels that included windows in the same way? The joints between them seem to express that.

A really interesting refurbishment proposal for a 1959 office building by a well-known Catalan architect, Francesc Mitjans.

The challenge was renovating the façade, improving its water-tightness and thermal performance, while remaining respectful to a significant building from recent Catalan architectural history.

Sauerbruch Hutton, as always, please us with their magnificent architecture, accurate construction, and a sensitive and warm colour palette that fits the surroundings perfectly. 

Look at the interesting brickwork they have developed in this project. Its geometry, enhanced by the different colours, decomposes the brickwork wall into a pixelated surface, an abstract texture where each pixel projects shadow over the wall itself.
 

Resorting to precast concrete panels for the façade enclosure is nothing new. In fact, the use of said material in large-format boards of minimum-thickness is not new either, the ΩZ pre-stressed board system has been allowing it for some time. 

The thinness of the plate makes it difficult to perform an adequate sealing of the joint and therefore the tendency is to leave them open, and define a drained cavity on the back to grant water tightness. A rain screen.

Seeking for the new massivity we were talking about in the study "Closed joints claddings"

For more information about the case take a look to that video

Have a look to this façade solution, to the characteristics of the different layers overlapped, and then have a look to the Torre Agbar façade solution.

They look quite similar: a wall, in one case made of small elements while in the other made of concrete poured on site, a ribbed metal sheet, glass slats. In both cases the thermal insulation is in the inside.

Interesting sub-frame solving the window opening in all the façade depth. It includes the banister and a gap specially designed to hide the sun protection ¡inside the cavity of the rain screen façade!