On the banks of the Hamburg Outer Alster the five-star hotel The Fontenay immediately catches the eye due to its unusual geometric shape in ground plan and facade. The local architects Störmer Murphy and Partners have made three interlocking circles their design focus.
Where the circles of the hotel building merge, a glazed inner courtyard with trees forms the centre of the building. The hotel rooms usually have trapezoidal floor plans with semicircular walls and floor-to-ceiling windows.
The outer shell of the luxury hotel (www.thefontenay.com) is defined by a façade that alternates between concave and convex. Due to this sculptural, organic design, the construction made special demands on the façade builder and the glass supplier. Horizontal bands of glass and snow-white glazed ceramic plates in large format wrap around the building as if on an endless band.
Jochen Stüber
Façade without supports
The construction of the curtain-type and rear-ventilated façade does not require massive supports. This is achieved by the static integration of the corridor walls and the radiating wall bulkheads, which are load-bearing.
The inner structure developed by the planners thus provides the necessary stability to realise dynamic curves and radii of 1.5 to 22 m. The ceramic façade consists of 1200 m2 of white glazed Longoton elements with panel heights of 40 mm and 614 mm. The substructure with brackets has been pre-assembled to allow the later hanging of the façade panels without tools.
The glass surfaces, which were also mounted from the outside, were predominantly integrated into a post-and-beam system. Schollglas Technik GmbH Nossen produced and supplied around 4500 m2 of glass for them.
These are mainly triple insulating glass, type Gewe-therm sun solar control glass from Schollglas in various designs. A coating reflects the solar radiation hitting the glass pane. This glass coating, which can consist of precious metals or metal oxides, is arranged here with the insulating glasses on the outer pane to the pane interspace.
Jochen Stüber
Heat treated glass for the facade
The solar control glasses of the hotel rooms were coated with the highly selective sun protection coating sunbelt A60 from Arcon. They achieve a Ug value of 0.6 W/(m2K) - with maximum light transmission. Approximately half of the insulating glass panes consist of laminated safety glass (LSG) inside and outside.
Due to the special requirements placed on the building, toughened safety glass (ESG-H) with edge enamelling was also used for the façade. Thermal loads or exposed installation locations required individual solutions.
A special feature: the combination of edge screen printing with a sun protection layer as part of a fixed dimension coating. Schollglas solar control glass meets the functional and design requirements of the client.
