(Situ, New York)
The Office of Thierry W Despont hired SITU Fabrication to provide consulting services for the fabrication of a series of sculptural facade panels for The Dorchester Hotel in London.
The rippled metallic panels span the full 8-story height of the building, cladding a number of the balconies which overlook London’s Hyde Park.
The project began with assisting Despont’s team develop the 3-dimensional geometry by producing a series of digital solar studies, scaled models and a full-scale mockup.
Once the geometry was finalized we provided design-engineering services to develop a construction which has the luster of cast bronze while minimizing weight and cost. To meet these criteria, the panels consist of CNC-milled high-density foam, which is then hard-coated with polyurethane resin and finished in cold-sprayed LuminOre White Bronze. A fiber-reinforced plastic and steel armature, embedded within each panel, improves the stability of each panel and provides anchor points for mounting to the building envelope.
