The Face of your Shopping Mall: Facades & Cladding

The exterior of a shopping mall is always important. It’s the first thing the visitor sees before setting foot in the mall and is usually visible from kilometres away. The facade is the face and personality of your shopping mall or centre. And, of course, the facade provides a number of essential properties.

The character of any facade will complete your design vision and generate energy. Rhythm and flow will be expressed by panel shapes, cladding and design profiles. Materials such as steel, aluminium, Cor-Ten, and glass – all of which stand the test of time - will always be available. The extensive variety of materials, together with the various colours they are available in, add visual quality and interest, all with the power of expression.

Facade systems comprise the structural elements that provide lateral and vertical resistance to wind and other actions, and the building envelope elements that provide the weather resistance and thermal, acoustic and fire resisting properties. The type of facade system that is used depends on the type and scale of the building and on local planning requirements that may affect the building’s appearance in relation to its neighbours. For example, brickwork is often specified as the external facade material, but the modern way of constructing the inner leaf consists of light steel wall elements (called infill walling) that have effectively replaced more traditional blockwork.

POCO store - Profile: Klip-Tite 700 and IBR in ZINCALUME(R) Roofing and Clean COLORBOND(R) cladding (Aster Yellow)

Global Roofing Solutions

Other types of facade materials may be attached to light steel walling, such as insulated render, large boards and metallic panels. A wide variety of facade treatments and shapes may be created using light steel wall, including large ribbon windows, curved and inclined walls, with projections such as solar shading or balconies often included. Facade materials may be mixed to enhance the aesthetics of the building. It is also possible to prefabricate light steel wall panels with their cladding pre-attached.

In multi-storey buildings, unitised curtain walling systems have been developed that are attached to the floors or edge beams of the primary steel structure. Steel and glass is also widely used in facade and roofing systems, and the local attachments are in the form of stainless steel brackets.

Other interfaces that affect the design of the facade include the attachment of brickwork to steel edge beams, the design of projecting balconies, solar shading and attachments of parapets.

Profiled sheeting with all its different flutes, and having been around since 1954, is most certainly the most effective source of cladding. There will always be an affordable space for this in the industry.

Stalcor Facades

Factors impacting facade choice

The building facade has a significant impact on the environmental and economic performance of buildings and projects.

The specification of their elements at the early design phase depends on numerous technical, environmental and economic factors and involves several stakeholders. The procurement and delivery of the facade work package from the early design phase, through detailed design and manufacture, to installation is a process with several inherent risk factors due to the involved cost, technical and engineering complexities and its position on the critical path in all projects.

The complexity of specification at the early design phases is exacerbated by factors such as the inadequate technical knowledge of stakeholders involved in the decision making process, the noninvolvement of building facade consultants, the late involvement of specialist facade subcontractors and, in a few cases, by some commercial exclusivity agreements that restrict specification decisions.

Aesthetic appearance is very important but what is the most economical and affordable will be the final product and outcome on any design.

Stalcor Facades points out that versatility, longevity (i.e. colour retention and fade), and propensity to corrosion are all factors that architects will take into account when selecting materials for a building’s facade.

Alubond aluminium composite cladding, available from Stalcor, is such an aesthetically versatile material that just about anything can be done when using it, such as curving, bending, colour matching, specialised design perforations, backlighting and more.

Global Roofing Solution’s (GRS) pierced fixed range consists of several popular purpose design profiles, including the tranquil Victorian style Corrugated 10.5 and inverted box rib shapes, IBR 686 & 890, Nu-Rib 762 and BR7. These well-established designs offer optimum strength, mass and load-span characteristics compared to alternative profiles and still remain the most cost effective solution.

Fitting these profiles on a building with the broad flute out allows one to achieve fixing on the Light Steel Frame (LSF) or girt section without any movement. Renowned Brownbuilt™, established in 1964, with its narrow thin flutes is still used as a facade option. This classic and well-known concealed fix sheeting system is available upon request and also for site-rolling in neighbouring countries (subject to minimum order quantities).

Some of the biggest advantages of these profiles are the options of colour availability and the choice of an affordable profile meeting your requirements. The coatings exhibit excellent formability and elasticity to facilitate roll profiling and bending operations without damage to the paint coating appearance required.

As Stalcor warns, another aspect that is often overlooked is what products are suitable in the event of a fire and this must be taken into account when specifying. Stalcor’s Alubond aluminium composite cladding has two types of internationally certified fire rated panels, namely Euroclass B (or FR-B1) and FR-A2. The low percentage of mineral core in an FR-B2, just 15%, means that this can hardly be classified as a fire rated panel when on a facade. With Alubond FR-A2, however, along with the right substrate system, a 3 hour fire rating can be achieved.

How have trends for in shopping mall facades and cladding changed over the years?

Besides increasing the performance of theexisting building and reducing effective time on site, cladding an outdated building can ‘transport’ it from the previous century and bring it up to date with current trends. Many new buildings exhibit these systems because they make sense and are the way environmentally conscious developers are moving. Naturally, the initial outlay is offset with the savings achieved in consumption and maintenance bills in the longer term.

Increasingly, landlords, asset managers and tenants are embarking on a holistic property portfolio greening strategy in order to reap the full financial benefits relating to all aspects which impact on the environment. These include categories such as water management, recycling of materials, materials used when refurbishing a building, and active awareness management, among others. More and more these role players are looking to their property managers to provide them with a one-stop solution involving not only energy management, but also action plans in regard to other categories which have an impact on the environment.

New materials mean that we have transitioned from plain painted surfaces that need constant maintenance to aluminium composite panels that allow for an always vibrant, new look. ACP encourages creativity and often makes it possible. Facades no longer need to be monotonous, as 3D looks can be created, and shapes and patterns can be perforated. Glazing and curtain walling has also been a big player in design, allowing for natural light into buildings.