Fragile Lab, Antwerp
designers:
Import Export Architecture
client:
Natale bvba
general contractor:
L&S Projects; Gebr. Doms bvba
location:
Antwerp, Kammenstraat 82
status:
completed in 2007
This transparent, slender building houses two showrooms, a workshop and a meeting room for Fragile, the maternity clothing brand. Slender vertical tubes, rather like bamboo poles, hold the various floor plates in the air, suspended between two rough sidewalls. As a concept store, this fragile looking construction is in fact the signature building of the clothing label. However, in order to be realized, an efficient and appropriate building material had to be found. These turned out to be 6 cm thick steel columns and wafer-thin, almost floating floors impaled between the columns.
In the façade, six columns penetrate the three floor slabs on the inside. The off-kilter columns have been placed very precisely through the floor slabs and form a three-dimensional, rigid construction. The floor slabs of the wind braced structure comprise a steel formwork divided into sections and filled with concrete. This construction ensures that the slanting columns cross each other without intersecting one another. Special hinged connections fix the columns to the floor plates at the round sleeves where the columns penetrate the floor. As a result the columns only bear axial loads and no shear forces, enabling them to be even thinner. Consequently the columns bear both the load-bearing function of the vertical forces and the horizontal (wind) forces of the façade. This unique method avoids the necessity of ordinary wind braces between the columns and produces a highly innovative yet thoroughly sound structure. In the rear elevation, the columns are placed on the outside of the glass wall which curves around the site in a fan-shape. Here the columns are slanted but parallel with the outer wall. They are attached to the narrow floor plate which acts almost like a beam, by means of bearing fins.
The result is an effective and surprising structure that emphasizes the idea of the bamboo poles.
client:
Natale bvba
general contractor:
L&S Projects; Gebr. Doms bvba
location:
Antwerp, Kammenstraat 82
status:
completed in 2007