NORDIC ROYAL BEACON SHINES BRIGHTLY

[IRELAND’S FIRST Tibetan Buddhist temple has taken a step towards completion with the installation of distinctive tiered roofs clad in Nordic Royal – an innovative golden copper alloy from Aurubis.

At the heart of the Dzogchen Beara Buddhist Meditation Centre on the Beara Peninsula overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in West Cork, the new building was designed in the style of a traditional Tibetan temple acting as an inspiring symbol of the Buddha’s teachings.

The temple is built over three floors, each defined by a Nordic Royal clad roof with a curved profile and deep overhanging eaves. Dragon heads and other sacred ornaments, hand-crafted from copper in northern India then gilded with gold leaf by members of the Dzogchen Beara community, adorn projecting corners and the top roof ridge.

Leon Rossiter, one of the directors who headed up the temple project, explained: “We trialled different styles of copper facing our harsh marine environment for 18 months. Only the Nordic Royal delivered just what we were looking for. We couldn’t have achieved the look of the temple’s roofs if we had used any other material.”

The stunning new copper roofs will be seen for miles along the coastline and from boats at sea.

Innovative copper alloy

The Nordic Royal roofs have been installed using traditional, hand-crafted techniques. All the craftspeople involved were locally based, including Wychbro Coppersmiths from Clonakilty, Stroker Fabrications from Enniskeane and the main contractor Beara Building Services from Eyeries.

The local area also has long historical links with copper. The nearby Allihies Copper Mine Museum presented Dzogchen Beara Temple with one of two surviving copper ingots mined deep beneath the area during the 1800s. This was inserted for posterity into the main sacred ornament on top of the temple at a special ceremony.

Nordic Royal is an alloy of copper with aluminium and zinc, giving it a rich golden throughcolour and making it very stable. It has a thin protective oxide layer containing all three alloy elements when produced. As a result, the surface retains its colour and simply loses some of its sheen over time, as the oxide layer thickens with exposure to the atmosphere to give a matt finish.

Extensive architectural range

The Nordic Copper range of architectural copper and alloy products is available from Aurubis, part of the world’s leading integrated copper group and largest copper recycler. It includes Nordic Standard mill finish and Nordic Brown pre-oxidised copper offering lighter or darker shades of brown determined by the thickness of the oxide layer.

The extensive Nordic Blue, Nordic Green and Nordic Turquoise ranges have been developed with properties and colours based on the same brochantite mineralogy found in natural patinas all over the world. As well as the solid patina colours, ‘living’ surfaces are available for each with other intensities of patina flecks revealing some of the dark oxidised background material. In addition to Nordic Royal, other copper alloys include Nordic Bronze and Nordic Brass which can be preweathered. q

• A growing series of on-line ‘copper stories’ showcase the diversity of surfaces, forms and applications available with Nordic Copper today for all architectural typologies. For more information visit www.nordiccopper.com or email NordicCopper@aurubis.com