'Engineering circular facade listens closely'

The facade finishing of Porsche Centrum Rotterdam will be completely finished according to the Corporate Identity of the German car manufacturer. Aldowa designs, supplies and assembles all aluminum facade panels to the transformation building. "Especially the CI facade is a challenging design - a composite circular facade with minute tolerances," says project manager Martien Trouborst.

The engineering phase of the project involved a year of intensive cooperation between architect VBJ, builder of the steel facade structure EBRS and Aldowa. In addition to 64 curved elements for the CI facade, the specialist in aluminum facade systems produced two aluminum cassette facades with bulky elements of 5 by 1.2 meters (closed facade on the highway side) and perforated aluminum cassettes for the glass facade on the office side. All elements are finished in the characteristic gray of the existing Porsche showrooms and are assembled in-house by Aldowa. "Both for the CI facade, the highway side and the office side, we provide the aesthetic facade finish. The thermal sealing is provided by the builder of the facade construction; we connect to it, with minute tolerances. To the steel structure there is no more than a tab to which the elements are anchored with M16 bolts."

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With its huge elements, the cassette facade offers a sleek appearance along the A20 freeway; the perforated facade, in combination with the glass facade behind it, ensures sufficient daylight in the interior. It was quite a job to design out the final setting; of course, the architect must also follow the Porsche manual. The final technical design of the circular CI façade in particular took a long time to work out, Trouborst says. "The desired end result is fixed in advance, but before the facade design, which includes elements such as logo and LED lighting, is finalized on paper, you are a year away with several parties." The CI facade is composed of 64 aluminum facade elements of approximately 2.5 meters in length. The curved elements are coated on two sides, with a unique wavy cutout on the underside of each element that as a whole refers to the rear of a Porsche, with the LED lighting representing the brake lights. "The overall facade appearance alone is worth a visit to the showroom," says Dr. K. K., who is also the owner of the showroom.