Glass
manufacturer Pilkington United Kingdom Limited, part of the NSG Group, has
helped to create a three-story structural glass cube as part of a makeover and
extension at Aldi’s UK headquarters.
Aldi’s
£70m investment in the site has added new architectural features to the
building’s exterior and created 14,000 sqm of new space. Pilkington, working
with Stoas Architects and Bennett Architectural, has delivered the ‘glass cube’
and an external glazed canopy to form the entrance of the building.
The
installation creates a welcoming environment for the building’s visitors. It
features highly transparent glass with a solar control coating, which reduces
the amount of the sun’s energy that is able to enter the building. This helps
to avoid excessive heat build-up in the space and helps to reduce the need for
air conditioning during warm weather.
Phil
Savage, Head of Sales, UK Processing, at Pilkington United Kingdom Ltd, said:
“By collaborating with architects and installers we’ve been able to deliver a
visually stunning architectural centrepiece for one of Europe’s largest
retailers.
“The
Pilkington Planar structural glazing system used to create the glass cube has
been refined and improved over many years to arrive at the highly evolved
design we have today. Used in this project, it offers uninterrupted views for
visitors from inside Aldi’s HQ outwards.”
Corporate
Property Director, Mike Clarke, at Aldi, said: “The architecture of any
building plays a key part in making it a great place to work or visit. The
installation supported by Pilkington has helped to deliver modern design
features to our HQ, to create a workspace that our colleagues are really proud
of.”
To create
the appearance of unsupported, almost entirely transparent glass surfaces for
the walls and roof, the designer specified the Pilkington Planar structural
glazing system, featuring frameless double-glazed units bolted to a supporting
steel frame.
Chris
Bravington, director at Stoas Architects, said: “Normally, a six-metre wide
glass roof would need a central supporting steel beam, but the engineering team
at Pilkington worked with us to design a solution that used long laminated
glass beams spanning the space in six places to deliver the right amount of
support.
“As a
result, standing on the floating walkway on the upper level of the cube and
looking up, the view of the sky is completely uninterrupted by steel beams, and
you see only the transparent glass beams. The effect is a sense of being
outdoors while inside, and it’s a feature that really sets the building apart.”
Laminated
glass is used extensively in the project in both the roof fins and the roof
glazing. The roof fins consist of two sheets of 12mm-thick glass with a 1.52mm
SentryGlas interlayer while the cube roof glazing features laminated glass as
part of the double-glazed units.
The glass
used in the project was heat soaked to assure the client of the quality of the
glass, and to minimise the risk of breakages once installed. Heat soaking is a
process designed to expose faults in glass prior to installation.
While the
roof fins are single span of glass, the height of the cube meant two sections
were needed, and these are joined together by stainless steel spice plates. The
fins themselves are then bolted into the main structure of the building using
fin boxes, all of which are part of the extensive range of engineered
components that make up the Pilkington Planar system.
Research
from the Centre for economics and business research (Cebr) showed that the
value of Aldi’s relationships with UK suppliers will increase by £2.2bn to
£6.7bn in 2022. Additionally, in 2016 Aldi supported 146,000 direct and
indirect jobs in the UK and this figure is set to rise to 205,000 by
2022.
