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Farnborough Air Traffic Control Tower, UK

The Air Traffic Control Tower at Farnborough Airport is the first of a series of landmark buildings to be erected at the airport as part of it’s conversion from a military to a commercial business airport jetting people to and from Europe.

Designed to be functional, visually unique, yet affordable, the control room sits at the top of the funnel tower, whilst flight staff and services occupy the base building beneath. MERO were tasked with the design, manufacture and erection of the 34m high funnel tower cladding complete with glazed stairwell, lift shaft and observation balcony. MERO also provided the unique cloak feature that blends the roof of the base building into the tower.

For the unusual yet effective finish, an aluminium rainscreen system was used in an interlocking, mill finish, diamond shingle formation. By varying the overall shingle size, and the overlap between, the shingles are able to form the complex geometry evident at the head of the funnel and the cloak beneath. Horizontal steel rings of varying radii positioned around the concrete tower core provided the primary structure, with a galvalume substructure and waterproofing membrane spanning between rings and supporting the shingle over cladding.

The cloak cladding was supported on a frame of tubes curved in multiple axes to produce the toroidal form.

The glazed lift shaft to the front of the tower, and the glazed stairwell to the rear of the tower, utilized point fixed laminated glass with a screen-printed frit pattern to give the banding feature. The rooflight in the base building at the foot of the stairwell featured glazing panels mounted directly on the primary steelwork with flush silicon joints and small patch fittings to prevent uplift of the panels

[Download this project as a PDF document] 

503m² 0.7mm thick mill finish aluminium “falzonal” shingle rainscreen cladding on 1.2mm thick galvalume sheet substructure with 1.5mm thick water vapour barrier.
157m² 12mm toughened and heat soak tested float glass with internal white (RAL9010) frit (lift shaft and stair tower).
12m² Insulating Glass Units comprising 12.8mm outer laminated float with California series XIR pvb interlayer + 12mm air gap + 8.8mm inner laminated low E float (rooflight).9m² 10mm toughened heat soak tested float (viewing balcony).
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