Rainscreen Cladding

The Proteus Rainscreen cladding panels were installed from the ground floor soffit up to the 8^th floor using a bracket and mullion system. They were installed to a back-hung secret fix system on honeycomb panels fixed back to SFS and concrete. The installation of the Proteus rainscreen cladding panels required millimetre tolerances and, considering that there were over 240 panels, achieving this level of detail was only possible because of the expertise of the Longworth team.

The columns at the corner of the building spanned between each floor slab in concrete and required encapsulating in the Proteus rainscreen cladding. This required a bespoke fixing system to support the bracket and rails for the columns. To make things more difficult, floors 5-8 required the columns to be built out further on to the balconies. Longworth designed a bespoke SFS arrangement to increase the substrate surface area of the of the column to allow the rainscreen system to fit to it. The Falzinc around the penthouse apartments required skilled operatives to form and install.

Rainscreen Cladding Workmanship

The Proteus was installed in line with their installation guide and by trained operatives.

The Proteus rainscreen façade had a long lead in time of a minimum of 8 weeks. Longworth’s operatives were installing the rainscreen façade to SFS that was installed by others so they were relying on the quality of others to ensure that their own work could be installed to a high quality and standard.

Longworth’s design team had to ensure that their scheduling was incredibly accurate so that the correct panel sizes were manufactured and delivered to site without any complications or delays to the programme and for a smooth installation.

Longworth set up an on-site fabrication workshop for the Falzinc in order to reduce the amount of deliveries made to site and have a large impact on the carbon emissions for the project. Each panel was fabricated by experienced and skilled operatives ensuring that there were no unnecessary delays to the project. The Falzinc was installed to the FTMRC guidance for good practice.

Rainscreen Cladding Challenges

The site was in Hackney, East London. A thriving and incredibly busy area of our capital. The inherent challenges that accompany such a site were present. There was a tight site boundary to allow for business as usually for the heavy pedestrian traffic.

The 360° column casings required a bespoke hanging system for the Proteus rainscreen. This provided Longworth’s design team with a difficult challenge from an early stage of how to securely fix the rainscreen to the concrete without being overly complicated and without exceeding the budget.