First British building to use Hardwall construction opened
Project wins two accolades at The Concrete Society Awards.
Trent Concrete manufactured and erected the precast frame and insulated sandwich panels for a warehouse at the recently opened European headquarters of JC Decaux, a leading supplier of street furniture and advertising space.
The building, designed by architects Foster & Partners, has three distinct parts - an existing 1930s building, the new storage warehouse and a covered street that acts as a showroom and links the old and the new - and is on the Great West Road in Brentford.
The project was recognised with a Concrete Society Certificate of Excellence, and rent's work here was also recognised with The Concrete Society & British Precast Concrete Federation Award for Excellence in Precast Concrete.
This is believed to be the first completed British building to be constructed using "Hardwall cladding". Hardwall cladding is an insulated sandwich panel system, incorporating a patented insulation method called Thermomass*. Used extensively in the US for the last two decades, the benefits of this unique construction method are now being brought to the UK market by Trent Concrete.
The project involves a precast reinforced concrete frame and 1530 m2 of precast insulated concrete sandwich panels in reconstructed Portland Stone. Thermomass* uses a unique fibre composite connector rod to tie the two leaves of the precast wall together. As well as being very strong, these rods have very low thermal conductivity enabling heating and ventilation costs to be reduced, since 99.7% of insulation value is maintained.
The building's single-storey precast frame is cast in brilliant white concrete with seen surfaces treated with a light acid etch and rubbed finish. The building is designed to be braced in the longitudinal direction using the precast sandwich insulated panels as the structure. The panels were dowelled at the horizontal joints to transfer the shear forces, and robust mechanical connections were installed to bolt the panels to the columns. The roof structure and cladding were used to act as diaphragm to transfer wind forces into the braced frame. In the transverse direction the structure is designed as a sway frame taking advantage of the stiff frame components.
The system also provides high levels of fire and impact resistance; the absence of sheeting rails and sag rods means the inner face is very clean; and the high-quality, architectural finish requires no further treatment and little ongoing maintenance. The small number of large 9x3 metre panels also made the warehouse quick to build - the entire frame and cladding to the two long elevations were erected in just 12 days.
"The result is an aesthetically pleasing, structurally superior, thermally efficient and fire resistant wall of the highest quality," enthuses Mike Downing, Trent Concrete's MD.
"This represents an important development for the precast industry, enabling us to compete with composite metal panel manufacturers in the retail and industrial buildings market."
* Thermomass is a patented building system for constructing insulated concrete sandwich walls, and is distributed in the UK by CSM.
Editor's Notes
Client: JC Decaux UK Limited
Architect: Foster & Partners
Construction Manager: Heery International Limited
Structural Engineer: Anthony Hunt Associates
Notes
Trent Concrete is a specialist precast concrete contractor, producing high quality bespoke architectural cladding and structures.
Providing a complete solution from detailed design development through skills-based manufacture to on-site erection using its own teams, Trent Concrete partners with leading developers and specifiers to ensure that their projects gain maximum benefit from prefabrication.
Trent Concrete's precast solutions make a major contribution to improved quality, certainty, sustainability, safety and efficiency in the UK construction industry today.
The company has worked on some of the most prestigious projects of recent years, including The Scottish Office and the Toyota GB Plc and Thames Water headquarters buildings, and the quality of its work is consistently recognised in the form of industry awards.
Trent Concrete was founded in 1917 and is based in Nottingham, where it employs more than 200 people.
Editorial contact: Mike Downing
Tel: 0115 987 9747
Email: mike@trentconcrete.ltd.uk
Trent Concrete Limited - e-mail: quality@trentconcrete.co.uk