advanced building skins 14 | 15 June 2012 - lamp.tugraz.at - Graz ...

Advanced Building Skins
Figure 3: façade view Figure 4: ground floor with oval geometry
Let us have a look to the item individuality which is the dominating attitude of the used cladding
material. What is the meaning of this item for plastic materials? Individuality of a material is defined
by reaching a high performance and variety in all points of construction and design with always using
the same base material only changed in some few components. In order to reach a high flexibility of
the attitudes of the material on a unmodified substance base you must have a suitable production
process. Principally it is only possible for a synthesized material, which is controlling his attitudes
with the special additives. It will be perfect if the additives are parts of the whole material and
homogenous distributed in the profile as only covering of additives on the surface because this would
be very vulnerable against mechanical damaging. The production process, cast and extrusion, of
plastic materials perform this account very well. Mainly for design the production of many colours in
combination with different qualities of surfaces is very interesting. Further each colour can be
produced with different kinds of transmission. The game between transparent, translucent and opaque
surfaces creates a lot of endless possibilities for our design ideas like no other material. Technical
attitudes can be adjusted individually by mixing special additives with optical (UV, IR) or mechanical
attitudes.
For the Oskar-von-Miller–Tower this mixing of special optical attitudes into the project specific
formulation of the material was the translation of the design idea of a special translucency into the
right grade of transmission. In the combination with the chosen kind of production as an extruded
material the main characteristic attitudes of the skin could get true: very long elements, up to 6m long,
made of a material with an individual and optimal translucency for the different lighting situation by
day and night.
The second main item responsible for the design was the formability of the material. Regarding the
geometric form of the tower each of the 251 elements had to have an individual radius. Therefore the
material of the façade must be formable in a quick and economical way. The manufacturer used a
negative form out of a high-pressured foam for the thermoforming process which could be milled into
the next geometry after thermoforming an element which was the best and economic way to produce
the individual geometries.
- 3 -
Project data:
facade area: 1200 m²
facade height: 52 m
facade material: PLEXIGLAS XT, d= 25mm
element dimension: max. L = 6m, max. H = 1,52m
architect: Deubzer, König Rimmel, Munich
civil engineer: Barthel + Maus, Munich
building owner: Technical University Munich
building site: Helmut-Brandl-Straße, Garching (GER)