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By Sara Hart
From the onset, Gensler pursued the facade
design as the expression of the iconic Burberry check, while
understanding that the image had to represent a modern, revitalized
purveyor of luxury goods. “It’s hard to take one
context and reinvent it in another medium—the warp and
weave of fabric to glass and steel,” explains Boge. Countless
iterations yielded a sophisticated, asymmetrical, and layered
grid, which was eventually rendered in Magny Jaune stone,
glass, and bronze-colored metal mesh. Needless to say, there
was a lot riding on—and written on—this facade,
so craftsmanship in its execution became a significant priority.
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The facades consist of
a unitized structural, silicone-glazed curtain-wall
system, assembled off-site in modules (below left).
Stainless steel and granite clad the envelope of
this building. Vertical marine-grade stainless-steel
fins (left and below) project through the structurally
bonded glazing to create strong vertical elements
on the facade. |
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Gensler enlisted Dewhurst Macfarlane,
a structural engineering firm headquartered in London with
an office in New York, to act as the curtain-wall consultant.
Its facade-design group is known for innovative solutions
for glass envelopes. Their primary role was to ensure that
the facade was fully engineered before bidding the job, in
order to stress the high level of craftsmanship to the bidders.
The German curtain-wall fabricator Seele GmbH won the bid
with a proposal for a modified unitized system. “Other
bidders’ proposals were for more of a standard system
approach, with room perhaps for some customization,”
says Carlos Espinosa, project architect. Had they gone the
standard route, “We would have had a very different facade,”
he explains.
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The facades consist of
a unitized structural, silicone-glazed curtain-wall
system, assembled off-site in modules (below left).
Stainless steel and granite clad the envelope of
this building. Vertical marine-grade stainless-steel
fins (left and below) project through the structurally
bonded glazing to create strong vertical elements
on the facade. |
|
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Before the bids even went out, though,
Gensler explored the limitations of the materials by making
several mock-ups in a local ornamental metal shop. The team
had chosen a mesh metal for the larger grid, and they wanted
to see how it would bend. “If not for the thermal and
structural requirements of the facade, it could have been
fabricated in an ornamental metal shop, because elements were
that thin and precisely detailed,” explains Belinda Watts.
Mock-ups and experimentation continued at Seele’s plant
in Gersthofen, Germany, where Seele, Dewhurst Macfarlane,
and Gensler worked out the detailing together. Eventually
the steel mesh became aluminum to reduce the weight, and bracing
was added to make it rigid.
Unitized systems have another advantage.
The Burberry site had almost no space for staging. When all
the materials arrived, they had to be immediately installed
or erected. The curtain-wall components arrived in batches
that corresponded to the erection sequence of top to bottom.
Tolerances were tighter than normally seen in U.S. construction,
not greater than 3¼4 inch overall for alignments to
base building and adjacent structures, but then shrunk to
a few millimeters for the mullion system. The result of such
finesse (matching the quality of the interiors) is a delicate
scrim that evokes the iconic Burberry check without mimicking
it.
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