Fixscreen outdoor sun protection screens from Renson were integrated into the facade of the 100-metre Black Forest apartment tower in Shanghai, China to provide sun protection to the building’s interiors.
Designed by Köning Architecture, the Black Forest project had Orville – Suntek, China as the facade contractor. Renson worked with the project’s facade builder to integrate the Fixscreen 100 sun protection screens into the facade system. The bottom profiles of the screens were made extra heavy using weightbars to ensure they could withstand the wind loads at that height.
According to the contractor, CEG, they decided to work with large glass surfaces for the Black Forest project by using minimalistic window systems. This meant that the main surface of the facade was glass with almost no actual walls. The large glass surfaces would also result in overheating while glare might heavily impact the comfort of the apartments’ residents.
To prevent these problems, CEG decided to use external sun shading, which was not yet very common in China. Having heard about Renson through their contacts in the high-end window industry, and studied their products at a German exhibition, they introduced the sun protection system to their facade consultant.
CEG chose Renson because they could provide a custom-made solution where the external screen was perfectly integrated into the facade without disturbing the facade design. Renson also met their brief for a product that could deal with large surfaces but still guarantee high wind resistance. The wind resistance aspect was an important factor, given that the buildings were all at least 25 floors high and the Shanghai region experienced typhoons.
The Black Forest apartment project consisted of three towers including two 25-floor towers and one tower with 28 floors. The windows and sun shading of the first tower were installed in early 2015, all the apartments in this tower were sold and at least 70% of the residents have moved in and are currently living in the building. The windows and sun shading of the other two towers were done simultaneously starting in early 2016. By the end of the year a large part of the resident-handovers of the second tower was completed. The apartments in the third tower are currently in the market.
The contractors, CEG said the installation progressed very smoothly with Renson China working with the Renson headquarters in Belgium to provide full support to this project. Renson Fixscreen has not only solved the problems of overheating and glare in the towers but also keeps insects at bay with its mesh design.
