Aberporth Primary School’s striking Mondrian-inspired façade showcases the power of collaboration.
AluK, Fentrade, and LEB Construction worked together to deliver a durable, high-impact design built to withstand the Welsh coast.
Almost 400m2 of Piet Mondrian inspired aluminium curtain walling has been installed at Aberporth Primary School on the west Wales coast in an almost textbook example of the benefits that can be delivered for the client if the whole supply chain collaborates at both design and installation stage.
Systems supplier AluK, fabricator Fentrade and contractor LEB Construction worked closely from the outset of the project to bring architect Mathew Tench’s daring design intent to life, overcoming a series of technical challenges along the way.
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The biggest challenge was the scale of the project, with four separate facades in AluK’s SL52 capped curtain walling system to be completed in a timescale dictated by the start of the school term. LEB Construction approached Fentrade to carry out the design, fabrication and installation because they had worked successfully with them on previous smaller projects. But the installation was beyond Fentrade’s remit as a fabrication specialist, so AluK stepped in and offered to provide dedicated façade installation training to a team from LEB.
This took place at AluK’s Chepstow Training Academy, and AluK’s technical team made regular follow visits to site. LEB’s Managing Director Luke Baker said the help was invaluable: “Getting training direct from the systems house meant our team had all the skills and knowledge they needed for what was a pretty demanding project. We also had Fentrade at the end of the phone throughout to answer any questions.”
Additional challenges came from the architect’s design, which was high impact and child friendly, but technically quite complex. Working with AluK’s design team, Fentrade recommended a switch from the original casement windows within the curtain walling to tilt and turn windows in AluK’s 58BW HI system to accommodate the larger sizes required and the replacement of double doors with wider single doors in AluK’s GT55 system to achieve higher levels security and still provide the necessary fire escape access.
However, the real focus was the series of primary coloured aluminium faced panels in irregular rectangular shapes, which needed to fit alongside the windows and doors within the same curtain walling sections. Unlike conventional stick curtain walling with regular ladder type sections, these panels were required to run across the mullions to achieve the Mondrian style look.
Together, AluK and Fentrade’s technical teams established that the noses of the mullion caps in the SL52 system could be machined off sufficiently to allow the panels to cross over, without negatively impacting on the performance of the curtain walling screens.
For Fentrade, that meant a huge amount of precision machining had to be done at its Newport factory and, because the machine software couldn’t generate the cutting list required, more than 100 separate manual calculations had to be carried out in house.
Chris Reeks, Fentrade’s Managing Director, commented: “Each cap was calculated by hand across the four facades to ensure a correct fit on site – and then machined, batched and clearly labelled to make installation straightforward. It represented many months of work, and we were incredibly proud to deliver on time and on budget.”
Mathew Tench was impressed by how the supply chain came together: “AluK, Fentrade and LEB really embraced my concept and there were real benefits from how they worked together with virtually no disruption to the running of the school. Now that it is finished, the response from the head teacher and the pupils at the school has been fantastic, with renewed pride in the building and a warmer and brighter interior.”
The 138 pupil Aberporth Primary School is sited just 100m from the beach at Cardigan Bay, and a key benefit for the school is the durability and guaranteed low maintenance of the AluK systems. The original steel single glazed screens at the school had suffered badly from the coastal exposure but the marine grade finish on the aluminium means the new AluK curtain walling will be able to withstand the worst that the Welsh weather can throw at it.
