Newsletter-03-CRICURSA-ENG

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Inspiring Glass Solutions

TOWER ALLIANZ ISOZAKI SLEEK TOWER IN MILAN DESIGNED BY Arata Isozaki & Andrea Maffei Architects

© Arata Isozaki photo: Press photo (cropped) from city-life.it

© Cover photo: Focchi; Photographer Piermario Ruggeri

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Idea, edition and translation: Joan Tarrús

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Design: Grotesk Design

NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

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CRICURSA SPONSOR I CATALONIA IN VENICE 2016 I · Ghosts caught in Glasses · Ongoing Projects · Cricursa hitting new heights · · New state-of-the-art facilities · News glass dimensions No Limits ·

NEWSLETTER MAY. 2016

Cricursa hitting new heights It is more common to come across curved and oversized glass at podiums of towers or at what we could call horizontal architecture, constructions that because of their function do not require of tall configurations: auditoriums, libraries, universities, museums, commercial malls or convention centers to mention some. Here is where Cricursa has been more active in the last decades.Improvements in the industry, from energy efficient coatings to the quality of curved glass, is making it easier for architects to think of curved glass geometries in high-rise.

Tower Allianz Isozaki Architect Arata Isozaki / Andrea Maffei Product CRISLAN ® California PILLOWING THE PIRELLONE I have great admiration for the architect Arata Isozaki and for the city of Milan which I can picture in a series of mental images.

Arata Isozaki: The rationalist architect who built the city of Hiroshima’s memory. The architect metabolises with enough courage to anticipate and face by means of architecture subjects apparently as dystopic in itself as to fill in Tokyo’s bay. Barcelona’s skyline is different thanks to him. We cannot forget that roof built from underneath or like Palafolls (secret city) which hides a surprise. I remember some pictures from Arata Isozaki entering at the Venice’s church of “Santissimo Redentore”.

Overtime, he understood and loved the Palladio. Classical references

point out his work as being a little bit more radical and mature making it difficult to take the final decision.

Milan: I cannot remember who founded it. Milan is history. Life history, captured in very interesting buildings that every few decades leave a city benchmark. Milan is an active and lively city. The past defines it without suffocating it.

The Isozaki Allianz tower designed by Arata Isozaki and Andrea Maffei gathers all this in just one single construction.

The tower is a good example as how high technology is applied to tall buildings and how to transform them. The main building structure leaves most of the floor space opened. Spectacular views, thanks to open-space offices, help creating a better working atmosphere.

The tower is a good example of how we can trust in technology the same way the classical architects did from the Pantheon to the huge structural openings in constructions like the Vatican or the Redeemer itself. San Pietro in Montorio could not have been built without slender carpentries.

The tower is sensitive to local history. Overwhelmed, the wall is treated with the same attention than the main façade, as a small homage to the Pirellone, that extraordinary skyscraper of Gio Ponti so exceptionally well built that it seems three times taller than it is. The two long façades show up as pillowed curved glass sections where Cricursa has

CRICURSA Ongoing Projects Tall Buildings Cricursa is currently present in high-rise projects worldwide.

Thanks to the use of the newest high performance coatings recently launched on the market along with the latest generation of bespoken ovens engineered and fabricated in-house, Cricursa is delivering state-of-the-art curved glass, helping tall constructions to become more sustainable while giving designers creative geometric freedom.

Project Don Hotel Punta del Este (Uruguay)

Project One Angel Court London (UK)

Project Nordstrom Manhattan Manhanttan, NY (USA)

A clear intention of Guevara Ottonello Arquitectos was for energy efficient curved glass in residential architecture.

Designed by Fletcher Priest Architects, the tower achieves its white finish by using black over white ceramic frit dotted pattern.

Designed by James Carpenter, we can take for granted a sensational result playing with light grey micro-dots screen-printed on the exterior face of undulated glass glazed by Permasteelisa USA.

NEW STATE-OF-THE-ART FACILITIES

During the toughest years of the crisis in EU, Cricursa kept investing at a rate of 1milion euro annually which has turned into 50% increase of the factory floor and a growth of 40% in manufacturing capabilities. The incorporation of strategic equipment allows Cricursa to offer extraordinarily large curved glass up to 10x3 meters.

1)

CRICURSA IN THE WORLD ONGOING PROJECTS

2)

PNC Bank Towery Podium Architect Pittsburg, USA Product CRISLAN® Low-E

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1) Thick polishing 2) 12 meters 5 axis CNC 3) automatic 12 meter loading/ cutting/edge deletion line.

PNC Bank – Pittsburg: “World’s greenest skyrise”. This was the powerful and singular vision of PNC. A corporate tower design with such an ambition, being the first high-rise erected in Pittsburgh in decades, was in good hands with Gensler: “We wanted to go one step further by developing a passive natural ventilation strategy that would bring fresh air into the building, giving workers a true feeling of being outdoors and connected to nature”.

Cricursa got involved since the very beginning assisting both, the design team and the façade contractor, Permasteelisa North America / Josef Gartner, with the proper curved IGUs configurations to meet the highest spectrophotometric values targeted.

This 33-story high rise has the highest level of certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

intervened delivering the vertical whitish wings that required oversized curved toughened screen printed glass. The slenderness of the final product is enhanced by this bumped design which helps to understand it as a classical design without the least willingness of imitation, brings up to date the original use of this resource: playing with the scale he manages to meet the right connection of the building and its surroundings. The undulations are a scale concept that, from the interior, contributes to increase the depth of field generated by the passing spaces.

I’m certain that if Andrea Palladio was a contemporary architect he would build this way. It’s probably connected to Isozaki himself: the tower becomes an excellent picture of the best that Milano represents nowadays in Europe.

Jaume Prat Architect / Project “Aftermath” curator

Project One Blackfriars London (UK)

Project 7 BRYANT PARK NY, USA

Project Brookfield Place Calgary (Canada)

Project 257 City Road London, UK

Project Saxony Hotel Miami, USA

The façade corners are softened at the mid and top of the tower in SimpsonHaugh and Partners’ concept using double-curved laminated glass with double coating that will be installed by Yuanda.

With the curtainwall already completed by Benson Industries, the signature of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners guarantees the elegance of this new landmark.

In the first of the two towers designed by FKAArchitecture and Dialog Architecture is Cricursa’s first collaboration with Oldcastle Building Envelope®.

With Dutch design by UNStudio and local construction management

by Ardmore, Canaletto is a 31-storey residential building which incorporates large curved IGU with high performing coatings.

Gorgeous conical exterior glass balustrades designed

by Foster + Partners at Miami Beach new ocean-side cultural quarter, installed by Persmasteelisa USA.

NEWSLETTER MAY. 2016

10 m

9m

Flagship Brussels Store / Belgium Diagram showing the manufacturing process of curved glass

8m

Architect Foster + Partners Product CRISUNID® The first of this client’s stores in using what we call XXL size curved annealed glass, it was without a shadow of doubt the result of intense team work at Cricursa to develop a production facility to create almost 9m tall curved, annealed and laminated panels of glass in one piece. The final glass composition (5 lites of 10mm low iron glass laminated using SentryGlas® interlayers) far exceeds anything of its kind previously made worldwide.

7m

With such a renowned client

3.200 mm

and architect, Cricursa fulfilled the challenges of this demanding specification delivering rectangular and shaped panes of curved glass of exceptional visual quality with no evidence of sag bending despite weighing over 3500Kg and measuring 8510 x 3191mm.

Furthermore, the logistics engineers had to develop bespoke solutions for not only the transportation of such leviathan panels but also to ease the manoeuvring and handling during

10.000 mm

10.000 mm

3.200 mm

6m

5m

4m

CURVED GLASS · XXL SIZE

3m 1 0 . 0 0 0 x 3 . 2 0 0 mm

2m

1m

0m CRISLAN® LOW-E

Turnmill, 63 Clerkenwell Road (London, UK)

Originally a stables and storage for horse-drawn Hansom cabs, the new office and retail development on Turnmill EC1 designed by Piercy & Company has been awarded Best International & Worldwide project 2015 by the Brick Development Association.

Opposite Farringdon station, this project stands out due to the contrast between the Danish handmade brick façade and the modern cylindrically curved double-glazed units created using Cricursa’s

CRISLAN® low-E making use of the most modern bendable high performing soft coatings (Ug 1.0W/(m².K); G value 28%).

Cricursa produced the whole project delivering glass for the main entrances, curved toughened laminated glass balustrades and internal screens as well as bespoken bent screen-printed IGUs for the penthouses.

installation.

From the structural glass point of view, Eckersley O’Callaghan guaranteed to the client there would be no issues related to thermal stress despite the overhang and the use of annealed glass in such a thick glass composition.

NEWSLETTER MAY. 2016

CRICURSA SPONSOR I CATALONIA IN VENICE 2016 I

Ghosts caught in Glasses I met Cricursa years before being conscious that a factory like this could exist. Even years before I knew glass could be curved. Nothing extraordinary: this is what happens to all the citizens of Catalonia.

Cricursa is part of our urban landscape and part of our culture from decades ago: simple products such as the spherical convex mirrors which allow us to move throughout narrow streets of old neighbourhoods are witnesses of it. Cricursa is a global benchmark present in most of our preferred buildings. Moreover, Cricursa is not only having ideas but being able to implement them.

Glass gives us the chance to create a labyrinth of floating images thanks to its reflections and weightlessness.

We wanted to break the pairing audience-screen to get the space back. We wanted to talk about architecture from architecture itself.

This was the starting position taken to confront what has become the Catalan performance in the Venice Biennale: the Aftermath architecture beyond the architect’s project which I coordinated hand in hand with Jelena Prokopljevic and Isaki Lacuesta. We wanted to show architecture from the point of view of action itself and also from the image. We wanted our visitors to become active members of the exhibition.

With their involvement, they have become a full member of the team.

Their main contribution has been to be filled with excitement and making the most of the work we have done together.

Glass is our main vehicle to express it all: glass captures the images like ghosts and illusions and lets them float in the middle of the space while allowing rays of light from the projector go through it and on the wall, giving value to all the pavilion space. Glass has the quality and beauty thanks to the material itself that allows it to change its appearance depending on where the visitor is located.

PROJECT “AFTERMATH” WITH SUPPORT OF SPONSOR CRICURSA Presentation of Aftermath Catalonia in Venice at the headquarters of Ramon Llull Institute.

Architecture beyond architects was held on Monday, May 9.

Attending the presentation, Minister of Culture, Santi Vila, the Director of IRL, Manuel Forcano and the project three curators Jaume Prat, Jelena Prokopljevic i Isaki Lacuesta.

CRICURSA, one of the main sponsors, attended the presentation"

Cricursa was our first option. There was no plan B. We wanted to collaborate with Cricursa because they had made an impression on us several times and also because we love challenges: firstly, seeing how glass turns out to be a cinema screen. Secondly, adding extra challenges like breaking glasses and curving them. Thirdly, we wanted to learn from them.

Because of all that, we want to thank them and we hope that the result will fulfil their expectations.

JAUME PRAT Architect Project “Aftermath” curator Catalonia in venice 2016

THE SETTING UP Project “Aftermath” This picture shows the first curved toughened and acid etched glass panels at the site in Venice during the installation. Seven public works by Catalan architects of different ages will be projected on the matt glass surfaces. The works have been selected as examples of architecture that improves the user’s relationship with the human, social and natural setting.