STEDELIJK MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
The panels had to be carefully mounted to the steel construction.
completely air-tight. A vacuum is created and tubes leading from vats of vinylester resin are attached. Once the valves in the tubes are opened, the vacuum pulls the resin out of the vat and into each and every nook and cranny inside the mold. Once the resin has hardened, the impregnated fabrics and foam are transformed into a tough, durable sandwich construction with one perfectly flat surface.
BUILDING THE FAÇADE
Early one wintry morning, while the rest of Holland was still sleeping, the start of a long convoy of trucks left the workshops of Holland Composites to make the one-hour journey to the Dutch capital. Their load - 185 composite panels made with expertise and precision. The Stedelijk Museum is right in the heart of Amsterdam, so to avoid bringing the city to a halt, Amsterdam traffic regulations only allowed a small window of opportunity for such a big delivery – everything had to be unloaded by 6.30am. Needless to say, this couldn’t be completed in a single day. The transport operation lasted for six weeks.
The panels were unloaded into a pretty unique building site. For one thing, it was clean, uncluttered, and sealed off from both traffic fumes and whatever the Dutch winter weather could throw at it. The site was even heated, and had air extractors to ensure that it was virtually dust-free. Why? Once the panels were in place, they needed to be bound, sanded together and finally coated with a slick layer of glossy white paint. And that super-smooth surface would be impossible to achieve with dust and rain settling between the panels or on the wet paint. But first, the architect’s vision of a super-flat façade depended on how the panels were actually mounted. Each one had to be fixed to the steel skeleton with extreme precision. If just one was only a single millimeter too far forward – or too far back – it would distort the shape of the entire 100m-long, 25m-wide façade. And with 185 panels to mount, there were nearly 1,800 mounting points that needed to be positioned with sub-
millimeter accuracy. To lift the panels into place the team commissioned a unique attachment for a forklift, which could carefully lift each panel using vacuum clamps – just as if it was a pane of glass. After the panels had been mounted, they needed to be bonded into one single surface. Holland Composites had designed the panels so that, when the panels were placed directly next to each other, there was a two- inch gap between the outer skins – Twaron-reinforced resin composite laminates – of each panel. Holland Composites then glued a strip of the aramid-reinforced laminate into this gap, directly onto the exposed PIR foam beneath, and bonded it to the laminate skins on either side. This bonding laminate formed a strengthening bridge between the panels, ensuring the entire façade behaved as a single unit. The façade was almost complete. All it needed was a coat of paint. And the white glossy finish that the architects dreamed up was identical to the gleaming hull of a luxury yacht – so it was time to call in the master yacht painters. It’s almost impossible to stop and start the painting process without leaving a visible stripe. So the entire 100m-by-25m façade had to be painted in one go. Luckily, the new extension is about the same size as a giant yacht, so the painters knew exactly how to go about it. They employed a four-phase painting method, which enabled the painters to start and finish the painting process per phase in one go. At one end of the façade, they installed paint sprayers at three levels – one above the other – raising them off the ground on moveable aerial platforms. These ‘platforms on wheels’ then drove carefully along, in perfect synch with each other, with their onboard sprayers coating the façade as they went along.
The new façade is the largest synthetic structure anywhere in the world and its smooth, seamless, shining white surface forms a striking contrast to the existing neo- renaissance building, with its densely decorated red and gold bricks.
ArchitectNews.co.uk | Architects Choice | 33
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