Archi-kon Ltd.

Product: Planum facade, 2611 m², RAL 9010

The industrial area on Gyömrői út in Budapest has a mixed building stock. Arriving from the city, visitors were greeted at the central site of the Richter Gedeon pharmaceutical factory by a characterless, partly dilapidated warehouse building from the 1970s. The company's technical experts proposed an energy-efficient renovation to the management, and the company's owner pushed for an architectural solution that would represent the company.

The facade design competition was won by Archi-kon kft. with a design that, in addition to an innovative architectural solution fitting the company's image, also aimed at landscaping in the industrial environment.

The existing 30 m high, closed cube high-bay warehouse building on the central site of the Richter Gedeon pharmaceutical factory is clearly visible from the main road. The aim of the facade reconstruction was twofold: to replace the structurally obsolete cladding with a solution that is durable in terms of thermal technology and structure. At the same time, this solution had to better represent the company's image.

When designing and constructing the new facade, the basic aim was to create a constructive solution appropriate to the function and a distinctive surface made of very simple elements. The structure of the thermally ideal, ventilated facade cladding was interpreted as a continuous surface, the aim of which is to evoke a sense of movement and dynamism in the viewer, without the use of moving parts. The architects wanted to achieve this with the fewest possible means. This led them to the idea of using traditional steel sheets as facade cladding instead of the usual grid system, which, by shifting individual rows to different degrees, create a sense of flow, creating a highly varied and associative image.

The resulting facade appearance was reinforced by steel louvres inserted into the vertical joints, staggered and projecting from the plane of the facade. Thus, on the one hand, the building, due to its visually excellent position, presents a constantly changing image from a dynamic point of view (from the driver's perspective), and on the other hand, its surface is in constant, subtle motion due to the passing clouds, the sun and the resulting changing light and shadow effects.

The finished cladding consists of the DOMICO Planum metal facade system and the corresponding substructure. General profile size: covering width 800 mm; length: 2000 mm. Colour: off-white. The louvres projecting from the facade plane are made of 2 mm thick, 15 x 80 cm brushed stainless steel.