New Garden Square, Birmingham
Project Overview
New Garden Square is a major development in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, creating a new urban community with up to 1,600 homes and £6m of public realm improvements.
Shackerley has been involved with two of the residential buildings for this prestigious project, supplying our SureClad® SureStone® façade system in two colourways. We prefabricated 7823 installation-ready façade panels in our ISO 9001 certified Lancashire factories, including a variety of bespoke details, such as ventilated panels, bracketed returns, and custom-designed bird boxes.
Design Requirements
The Shackerley team worked on the New Garden Square project for three years prior to orders for the façade system being placed, collaborating with the delivery partners at design development stage. This included revisions to the layout of the façade panels to achieve the most economical use of materials, which ensured the most competitive price possible for the façade and reduced the potential for waste.
As the façade for a tall residential building, the cladding material needed to meet building regulations requirements for fire safety and our compliant SureStone® is fire rated A2-s1,d0 to BS EN 13501-1.
The building design called for a seamless slab-to-slab aesthetic and, thanks to the bespoke machinery in our ISO 9001 certified factories, we were able to prefabricate extra large 3000x1200mm panels to create slab-to-slab façade spans. We were also able to meet the loading capabilities of the building structure, providing extra large SureClad® SureStone® panels that were just 20mm thick, weighing only 50kg/m2.
Sustainability was another important specification requirement and the SureClad® SureStone® system has excellent sustainability credentials. With zero Portland cement content, SureStone® is made from 95% natural, marble aggregate using quarry by-product. Its high flexural strength allows for thinner panel, reducing transportation costs and carbon footprint.
Aesthetics were also a design consideration and we were able to provide a consistent material in complementary colourways to provide a cohesive look and feel across the two buildings, while giving each a distinctive appearance. With exceptionally low porosity, the SureClad® façade will also maintain the development’s high-end aesthetic over time, with excellent resistance to weathering, pollutants, algae and graffiti for a low maintenance solution.
Materials Used
With a total façade area of 6636m2, the complex façades across the two buildings required 7823 SureClad® SureStone® façade panels, including a variety of bespoke details.
We fabricated 5,828 XL slab-to-slab installation-ready face panels, along with 1,995 mechanically-fixed mounted reveals. These bracketed returns were custom-made to order to the precise dimensions of the façade design, reducing installation time on site and enhancing the finish with the consistency of our ISO 9001 quality assurance.
The project also involved fabrication of custom-manufactured 210 vented panels in our ISO 9001 certified factories, using water jet equipment to create the vent apertures in the flat SureStone® panels.
We also manufactured 8 bird boxes for the project to attract different bird species (5 sparrow and 3 swift) mechanically fixing custom-made sections of SureStone® material to aluminium bird box frames. We secured the completed bird boxes to the relevant façade panel within our quality assured factory environment before delivering them to site as an installation-ready façade detail.
The façade was installed using our SureClad® Hang On fixing system, which features pre-fitted aluminium brackets, secured to the SureStone® panels with stainless steel undercut anchors at our ISO 9001 certified Lancashire factories. Fixed brackets are located at the bottom of each panel and adjustable brackets at the top, enabling the installer to engage all brackets simultaneously with the horizontal rails and adjust the bolts on the top brackets as required to achieve precise final alignment.
