Fabric Architecture Limited – ArchiClad in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom

October 21, 2010 Category: Airports, Urban Design

Fabric Architecture Limited – ArchiClad, was designed by Fabric Architecture Ltd, that located in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom has been successfully installed at Dublin Terminal 2 for the Dublin Airport Authority, Ireland, covering 15,000m2 of double-faceted ceiling area. Each Archiclad panel is created using a rectilinear frame: the entire roof at Dublin T2 rolled from front to back and from side to side, requiring the ceiling system to follow these curved forms and exposed supporting structure. There was a potential risk that the flat-panel ceiling would undulate irregularly over such a large area against the continuous curve of the supporting structure and roof.

There is relatively few fabric ceiling systems on the market. Alternative systems which cover large areas are based on traditional external fabric cladding arrangements and are therefore over engineered and considerably more expensive and onerous to install. As a cost comparison, our offer for Dublin T2 was €1M less than the alternative system.

Whilst ArchiClad has been a resounding success at Dublin T2, with us receiving ringing endorsements from the project architects and main contractors, the system is now being considered for new future projects including another airport scheme requiring 40,000 m2 fabric ceiling panel coverage.

Project Architects for Dublin T2 issued us with a generous and entirely unsolicited endorsement because the delivered ArchiClad system responded directly to their exacting design requirements which their client was initially unconvinced about, but now has their full backing. The architects are now working on other large airport projects and have indicated that there may be opportunities to use the system again due to the success at Dublin.

The Main Contractor at Dublin was equally enthusiastic about the system because of the considerable budget savings it provided against their original specification. Other knock-on benefits were acknowledged due to the quick and flexible installation of the system, which was a strong contributor in keeping the entire project to schedule.

Fabric Architecture Limited - ArchiClad Design by Fabric Architecture Ltd