Nexus® lightweight brick faced soffit units provide a lightweight, precision-fit solution for London’s Royal Docks redevelopment.

Part of a masterplan to redevelop London’s Royal Docks, the largest enclosed docks in the world, the £81 million Great Eastern Quays scheme is delivering 350 high quality, sustainable one, two, three and four-bedroom mixed tenure homes on the site of a former pharmaceutical warehouse and commercial building alongside a retained historic pumping station at the eastern end of the docks.

The scheme comprises three separate 6-7 storey blocks, each constructed around a reinforced concrete frame. Regular full height glazing panels punctuate an intricate façade framework of high quality brickwork, carefully detailed to reflect and enhance the heritage of the surrounding historical dockside buildings.

A complete solution was developed using new Nexus® lightweight brick faced soffit units. Nexus, a two-part solution that combines custom-designed brick slip-faced stainless steel soffit units with a high integrity stainless steel MDC brickwork support system from Ancon, provides a lightweight, precision-fit solution that can be installed quickly and simply without recourse to the usual heavy lifting equipment.

Faced with real brick slips specially cut from the main brickwork batch, and permanently precision bonded to the required pattern, the prefabricated units were fixed back directly to the shelf angle and, using vertical and horizontal adjustment built into the system, perfectly aligned and matched to the main façade brickwork.

To meet the exceptional requirements of this project, a total of 2300 linear metres of the Nexus units were prefabricated and delivered to site.