Customised perforated sheets for large-scale free-form façades

Neunkirchen, 5 April 2022. For the new Edeka building in the Tailfingen district of Albstadt in Baden-Württemberg, a partially transparent 3D façade has been created using perforated sheets. For this structure, SCHÄFER Perforated Metal supplied 1,250 square metres of perforated aluminium sheets with a double-sided matt metallic powder coating. The free-form design required custom-made segments in 23 widths and 179 lengths.

"The EDEKA project in Tailfingen is one of the buildings for which it made sense to plan in 3D, instead of 2D as is usually the case with façades. The building has a very angular shell, which is enveloped by the perforated lamella façade, creating a soft, curved line that dynamically rounds off the exterior view of the building," says Anna-Lena Haardt, project manager at LACKER in Waldachtal. 

Therefore, LACKER designed a substructure that carries the transition from polygonal to a free-form curved line. Static requirements resulted in the selection of a steel construction that protrudes freely up to three metres from the actual shell of the building.

The triangular shape of the lamella profiles – which were not originally designed as profiles but as sheets with folded edges - was dictated by the architecture. The advantage of the lamella profiles, which were specially manufactured for this project, is the integrated groove to hold the perforated sheets, a feature that kept assembly work to a minimum. The perforated sheet segments are inserted into the sections from above at a height of up to 14.5 metres.

"We have already worked with SCHÄFER perforated sheets several times and know the great variety of possible perforations. In the end, we decided to use two millimetre thick perforated aluminium sheets with staggered round perforations," explains Anna-Lena Hardt. 

"For this project, we supplied large quantities of different perforated sheet segments ready for installation with notched corners, folded edges and a DB 703 powder coating. The RV 8.0 - 10.0 specification results in a free cross-section of 58 percent, which creates the façade’s partial transparency," adds Thomas Schmidt, Business Unit Director at SCHÄFER Perforated Metal.