Kalwall, Partners Come to Aid of London Boxing Club in “DIY SOS”

MANCHESTER, N.H. – New Hampshire-based Kalwall, its UK distributor Structura and German curtain wall innovator RAICO pitched in to help a revered London boxing club rebuild after the devastating Grenfell Tower fire destroyed its home. The community effort to provide the Dale Youth Amateur Boxing Club of London with a new facility was featured on the BBC hit show DIY SOS, documenting the project after the club’s previous home was lost in a deadly fire that caused 72 deaths and destroyed the Grenfell Tower in June of 2017.

The club has been providing a safe harbor for young people in the community and training top boxers for almost 50 years. After the fire, the club was training out of an abandoned parking garage. The new facility, built on a nearby site, took 63 days to complete and is part of a larger development project.

“We were honored Structura asked us to be involved in such a worthwhile project,” says Amy Keller, VP of International Sales/Principal for Kalwall. “When we learned what the club means to that community, we absolutely wanted to be part of helping them get into a new home. And from a design aspect, the project was a great way to partner with RAICO.”

Kalwall, Structura and RAICO teamed up to provide the curtain wall system that envelops the builiding. The façade is comprised of 200 square meters (656 square feet) of Kalwall translucent sandwich panels. The panels are incorporated into RAICO’s innovative THERM+ stick built curtain wall and was the first project in the global partnership between Kalwall and RAICO.

Canton, OH - Quality that out shines the unusual!

Be bold, be dramatic, be Belden! Brick...Your only limitation is your imagination.

By Paul Collyer, Vice President of Business Development, Metl-Span

LEWISVILLE, Texas – Insulated metal panels (IMPs) can be installed either vertically or horizontally. With most manufacturers’ wall panels, the exact same panels are used for either orientation. However, there are key differences in how the supporting wall system must be designed to accommodate the panel direction. In addition, the details used to design and the labor used to install vertical vs. horizontal panels can be quite different. Let’s explore some of the similarities and differences in the two approaches.

Vertical IMP applications

Vertically installed panels typically offer the most cost-effective and simple wall assembly. There are numerous panels available in lengths of up to 52 feet, offering the ability to install a single panel from base to eaves.

When laying out the panels on a wall, the starting panel at the corner can be cut along its length so the first and last panel on a wall elevation are equal in size (width). Standard metal flashings are generally used to close off the cut ends and edges of vertical panels.

Windows are usually installed to align with the outside plane of the structural framing and are therefore recessed (not flush) relative to the outside face of the panel. Typical wall framing systems for vertically installed panels involve the use of horizontal supports, usually light or heavy gauge girts.

Horizontal IMP Applications

Horizontally installed panels require more sophisticated details and tighter tolerances for both panels and framing. Panels are usually arranged so the ends of the panels align with architectural features, such as framed openings for windows and doors. Corners are often built with factory-folded transverse bent panels, shipped to the jobsite ready to install.

The vertical ends of horizontal panels are often post-fabricated with trimless ends. This involves manufacturing the exterior panel face longer than the interior face of the panel, providing extra metal at the ends that can be bent back at a 90-degree angle. This trimless end is an efficient and attractive way to cover the exposed foam core at the ends of the panels.

Some companies offer an integrated window system that fits directly into the panel’s joinery, allowing them to be installed to provide a flush window system. That along with the exterior panel faces improves continuity of building control layers. Horizontal panels also require a vertical support system, which is generally comprised of a steel stud wall assembly or occasionally a vertical tube steel system.

When using horizontal panels, it is also generally necessary to use thicker (22 gauge) exterior faces to achieve satisfactory aesthetic performance, particularly when using flat or nearly flat panel profiles. Thicker gauges tend to stiffen the metal and provide a visually flatter appearance than lighter gauges, greatly reducing the tendency for oil-canning (waviness). Also, it is important to keep horizontal panels shorter (usually no more than 20 feet in length) than those used in a vertical orientation. This is because the casual observer tends to detect more visual flaws when looking along the length of horizontal panels than looking up and down vertical panels.

CAMBRIDGE, ONTARIO – Arriscraft, manufacturer of naturally-made products that emulate quarried stone, has augmented its natural limestone product offering with the introduction of Adair® Georgian Blend. Arriscraft is the stone products group of General Shale, the North American subsidiary of Wienerberger AG and a leading manufacturer of brick, one of the world’s oldest green building materials.

“Our customers will love the rich colour blend of this full-bed Adair® limestone product,” says Marta Zonneveld, Marketing Manager. “The new ashlar configuration also makes our Adair® limestone more accessible for residential customers. Unlike most quarried stone that has to be custom cut on-site, our new Adair® Georgian Blend comes in a classic pattern and can be installed much like our Building Stone, through standard installation techniques.”

Adair® Georgian Blend is an equal mix of the traditional Sepia and Blue-Grey Adair® colours and features a split face texture. Three face rises (2-1/8”, 4-3/4” and 7-3/8”) in random lengths up to 23-5/8” make up the ashlar configuration. The colour blend and size combination augment the natural appeal of this classic quarried stone.

Arriscraft’s Adair® Limestone is a natural, quarried stone harvested in the Georgian Bay region of Ontario. Since the 1960s, the quarry run has offered Blue-Grey and Sepia tones. In addition to the new full-bed, Georgian Blend, Arriscraft produces Adair® Masonry Units, Anchored Dimension Stone, Tile, Landscaping Stone, and Thin Adair®.

With a focus on increased performance and quality, Vectorworks 2019 allows designers to work faster and accomplish more

Columbia, MD (September 12, 2018)—Global design and BIM software solutions provider Vectorworks, Inc. announces the 2019 release of Vectorworks Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Fundamentals and Designer, as well as BraceworksTM and Vision. With a focus on increasing design efficiency through overall performance and quality, this new release offers innovations and enhancements to significantly improve the 3D and BIM modeling, 2D documentation and presentation workflows for designers in the architecture, landscape, entertainment and interior design industries.

“For this release, we listened closely to our customers and balanced new innovations with exceptional quality and performance improvements,” said Vectorworks CEO Dr. Biplab Sarkar. “Specifically, in Vectorworks 2019 we concentrated on our customers’ most common workflows and usage patterns to increase their overall productivity with Vectorworks products across the board.”

Users of all Vectorworks products will enjoy significantly faster workflows and improved software performance thanks to multiple core support in the Vectorworks Graphics Module, new layer and class search and filter options, and image effects. Vectorworks Architect and Landmark customers will experience improved BIM capabilities, including 3D site model sculpting; the unique ability to have BIM objects display with varying levels of detail in plan, elevation and section drawings; enhanced openBIM interoperability; and a new partnership integration with AutoTurn online for analyzing vehicle swept paths. Vectorworks Spotlight users will enjoy support of the new My Virtual Rig (MVR) import and export file format, as well as enhancements to 3D modeling with Spotlight tools and commands. Braceworks users will benefit from support for bridle analysis. And users of Vision will discover an improved user interface and up to 7x faster performance of the previz application.

"Vectorworks 2019 is a release that will have a dramatic impact on productivity, allowing designers to make their day-to-day design work faster and easier,” said Vice President of Product Development Steve Johnson. “Users will experience the benefits of this version the moment they open the new software and see files open up to four times faster. Advances with the Vectorworks Graphics Module now take advantage of all available user hardware, and harnessing the power of all available CPU cores with increased usage of GPU on sheet layers makes all workflows feel much faster. Users will greatly benefit from the ability to refine renderings and images without having to export to Photoshop. And, the ability to add, show and adjust the level of detail that hybrid objects display in a drawing is something no other BIM program offers.” To learn more about the release of Vectorworks 2019, please visit vectorworks.net/2019.

The English-language editions of Vectorworks, Braceworks and Vision 2019 are available today. The release of localized European, Australian and New Zealand editions will be followed by Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese versions. For more information about the availability of Vectorworks 2019 in your market, please contact your local Vectorworks distributor. Members of the Vectorworks Service Select maintenance program will receive their upgrades to Vectorworks 2019 as soon as the product is released in their local markets.

Note to editors: Please visit vectorworks.net/2019/press for images and other media, including feature illustrations, videos, testimonial quotes and more.

LEWISVILLE, Texas, Sept. 6, 2018 – The leaders of the Soul City Church on Chicago’s west side sought help with plans for expansion to meet the needs of a growing congregation. The project evolved into a 29,000 square foot addition and 20,000 square foot renovation of the existing building, complete with insulated metal panels from Metl-Span.

Insulated metal panel systems offer a wide array of profile, texture and reveal configurations. The product provides high-performance thermal efficiency and moisture control, while a factory foamed-in-place insulating core minimizes insulation gaps.

Just more than 18,000 square feet of Metl-Span’s CF 7.2 Insul-Rib was installed on the Soul City Church. The panels contained a 4-inch urethane insulating core. The exterior was the Insul-Rib panel in Slate Gray PVDF and the interior was a Light Mesa finish in an Igloo White polyester.

Working in tight quarters created some logistical challenges for T.A. Bowman Constructors LLC of Chicago. Safely installing insulated metal panels measuring 40 feet long and 3 feet wide required some planning and the enlistment of special equipment.

“On the east side there’s an existing building and there was an alley on the west side,” says Tom Bowman Sr., owner and project manager at T.A. Bowman. “The south side was an active city street, so there was a lot going on in that area.”

Because insulated metal panels are a single-component product, installation requires only one pass from the crew, minimizing labor time and costs. Bowman says this install required a crane to move panels into place and manlifts to move installers up and down the building, but it was done in less time than would have been required with other products.

T.A. Bowman Constructors supplied the steel framing, steel erection as well as the engineering on the project. Focus Construction of Chicago was the general contractor.