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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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.

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.