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From folded paper triangles to large car park façade, Maple help bring architects’ visions to reality
Maple teamed up with award-winning architects to develop architectural façades for the 10-storey Stanley Street Car Park in Salford.
Architects AHR wanted to cloak the multi-storey in 3D hexagons, made up of individual ‘kite-shaped’ aluminium panels. Trouble was, they had only ever tried the design with paper!
“There is some beautiful geometry behind the aesthetics of the car park,” said Maple’s Head of Pre-construction, Adam Jones. “Our challenge was to take the architects’ concepts and turn them into a working design for a car park façade.”
Maple’s technical design team worked closely with the architects to agree on design, manufacture, fixings and installation. Samples were created, reviewed and refined in our factory’s prototype area to avoid the costs and delays of making changes on site.
However, the façade had more than one purpose. Not only did it have to provide a jaw-dropping addition to the Salford skyline, it also had keep out the elements from the car park (while providing natural ventilation) and protect nearby apartments from light and noise pollution.
“Our design was a big ask,” admitted Dan Barnes, Regional Director of AHR, “but over a series of workshops and meetings with Maple, we turned what could have been a very complicated job into a simple bespoke system. I’m looking forward to working on other projects with them in the future.”
In the end, Maple gave AHR the opportunity to truly demonstrate their creative flair. But it was also a successful project in construction terms, and was installed ahead of schedule.
"Maple smashed the eight-week installation programme for each elevation ― completing it in half the time," said Morgan Sindall’s Construction Director, Jeff Boothroyd. “When the project was completed, it looked exactly like the architect’s computer image. It was a stunning interpretation of the design. Uncanny.”
