Architect: Buschow Henley
Type of works: SikaTack Panel Adhesive provides smooth, seamless cladding at RIBA award winning school.
When it came to providing a smooth, seamless cladding aesthetic to a new £6.2 million building at Ealing’s prestigious St Benedict’s Senior School, it was going to take a secret fix – and SikaTack Panel Adhesive was the perfect, cost-effective solution.
A winner at this years RIBA awards, the new school building replacing a dated 1960s structure and houses an assembly hall, chapel, exam hall, music school and more. Making it stand out within the school, it features 1,000m2 of ivory polished concrete panels specified by architect Buschow Henley, held securely in place by SikaTack Panel Adhesive – without a single nut or bolt spoiling the façade.
“The cladding needed a smooth concrete aesthetic, which matched the large amount of internal exposed concrete,” stated Guido Vericat, Project Architect at Buschow Henley, “and for that we needed a secret fix. This meant there would not be rivets all across the façade, and we could achieve a seamless look. SikaTack provided the ideal solution.”
Developed by Sika, a global leader in specialist construction materials, SikaTack Panel Adhesive is a secret fix system that requires no screws or brackets. Instead it utilises elastic bonding technology to fix panels to the structure. Without the need for extensive metal fittings used in methods such as mechanical fixings, SikaTack provided significant cost savings, with no detriment to quality.
Together these characteristics made it the ideal product to fix the impressive [fibre C] glass fibre concrete cladding which was supplied by Cladding Solutions, with who Sika worked closely with throughout the project.
Its innovative approach to securing the panels means it can not only hold up vast weight, but it combines this with flexibility. Utilising elastic bonding rather than metal fixings, it allows for higher stress and movement, eliminating the risk of panel failure.
Compared to traditional or alternative cladding methods, SikaTack Panel Adhesive is simple, fast and cost-effective in application. It requires a carrier frame to be fitted upon the building, which is cleansed with Sika Cleaner 205. This frame and the cladding panels, are then primed with SikaTack Panel Primer. Using a special 3mm thick, black double-sided tape, the panels were temporarily held in place whilst the SikaTack panel adhesive takes effect.
With all products provided by Sika, as part of a complete SikaTack package, specialist contractor ECL had all it needed to provide the school with cladding that had an unbeatable appearance, realising the architect’s original vision.
SikaTack is approved by the British Board of Agrément and accredited by the highest standard of quality assurance, ISO 9001/EN 29001. The product has also been tested to extreme conditions and has been proven to perform without any reduction in performance.