Customer - David Wilson Homes
Installation Contractor - UK Façades / Midgard
Product - ALI-S Ceramic

The brief
Delivering a sophisticated façade for an aspirational new build apartment building, overlooking the world-renowned Newbury Racecourse. Learning lessons from an earlier phase of construction, David Wilson Homes was determined to find an external system for this exclusive development that would retain its clean brilliance with a self-cleaning system and offer visual appeal for many years to come.

What Aliva did
Working closely with the installer UK Façade’s, they proposed a bespoke system of bright white ceramic tiles with self-cleaning properties, to mitigate the long-term effects of air pollution in this prominent, central location within the town. Specifying and sourcing this leading technology required collaboration between teams in the UK, Spain, Japan and Italy – managed by Aliva UK. Accommodating the building’s complex shape into their designs involved three months of detailed planning; configuring more than 100 unique tile sizes and shapes around bespoke external features, including balcony fins and balcony fascia – all without compromising the advantages offered by the ALI-S system in terms of installation and maintenance. To ensure the contractor was equipped to complete the installation without further challenges, they supplied a complete design package for guidance, aligning external works with complementary construction phases on site. Through detailed planning and agility, the external programme was delivered for the client on time and budget.

What makes it special
Spanning almost 10,000 sqm, Newbury Racecourse Apartments was one of Aliva’s first to employ self-cleaning ceramic tiles. The tiles are treated with an ultra-thin nano-technology coating developed in Japan and applied in Italy, which reacts to humidity and sunlight to protect the tiles’ surface. The cost implications of this disruptive solution are offset by the reassurance that external cleaning costs will be minimised, and property value maintained over the long term

Aliva’s use of Hydrotect coated ceramic tiles at Newbury secured an international award for the best use of the technology in architecture from its Japanese manufacturer Toto.