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FRANCIS CRICK INSTITUTE, LONDON
It’s the outside that counts The building’s complex exterior required the same meticulous attention to detail as the rest of the project. Malcic explains the key features: “The east atrium facade is an eight storey high building element with a primary steel structure of tubular grid sections at six metre centres and at each floor level, with wind loads taken back to the cross atrium bridges which act as a beam in plan.
All structural penetrations through the facade are thermally broken using high-load isolator plates. The weather skin is five metre high double-glazing, fixed back to vertical glass fins at 0.75 metre centres spanning floor to floor.
The fins are predominantly on the outside of the glazed wall, but where the atrium facade abuts the main body of the building, the system reverses, with the fins being on the interior. “This leads to an unusual detail,” continues Malcic. “The glass fin becomes part of the thermal envelope, which is achieved by adding a further layer of glass to make it a double- glazed unit.”
The low-iron glass fins (4.6 metres high and 0.45 metres deep) comprise three structural layers bonded together with resilient Dupont Sentry Plus interlayers, with the visible edges polished. “To introduce flashes of colour in a random pattern across the facade,” Malcic explains, “an additional dichroic interlayer is incorporated to the outside of many of the fins, protected by a thin glass sheet.” The glass fins are bonded into stainless steel shoes, fixed back to the atria facade’s tubular steelwork.
The double-glazed units are argon-filled and have a low-E coating to minimise heat loss. “They are also manufactured with a continuous stainless steel strip bonded to their inner face,” adds Malcic, “providing the fixing back to a minimal anodised carrier frame, which is structurally bonded to the glass fin. The vertical glass-to-glass joint is then face-sealed with silicone.” To conceal the floor-to-floor deflection
joint, the horizontal joints have an expressed nosing detail. At low level, the facade includes glass revolving door drums, pass doors and glazed make up air vents. A large laminated glass canopy is supported off the primary structure via plate beams and tubular suspension members through the glazed facade.
© Paul Grundy
The laboratory blocks and solid areas of the facade at the lower levels are wrapped
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK ADF MAY 2018
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