Toorak

System design and fabrication planning for the zinc-clad underside of a roof of a private residence in Victoria, Australia. Project in employment at AR-MA. Personal responsibility: Project lead, system design, parametric modeling for fabrication.

Client
Craftmetals Melbourne
Project Type
Facade
Location
Victoria (AU)
Year
2015
Status
Completed
Formation
Vorhammer at AR-MA

Part of the private house in Melbourne, designed by architects Wood Marsh, consists of a 300 m² bowl-shaped roof – clad with over 1800 diamond-shaped zinc elements. The task was to design a system for the folded zinc shingles and the plywood substructure as well as to generate the corresponding manufacturing data. An overall period of fewer than eight weeks was available for manufacture and installation.

The double curvature of the roof and the elliptical shape in floor plan require individual geometries for all components. The large number of parts dictated in-factory fabrication. Each panel needed to be cut and folded from flat sheet metal and put together on site – like a puzzle with tolerances of less than 2 mm. The substructure is made of flat plywood sheet material that can be deformed on site to accommodate the geometrically complex surface.

Simplification of the geometry, minimization of unique part-count, and the development of a system to categorize and label all parts while taking into account the entire manufacturing and installation process constituted critical parts in the process. A parametric 3D model was developed in close cooperation with the client and the architects. Under consideration of all material-, production- and construction- restrictions, shop drawings for more than 2300 individual parts were generated. The result is fully automated documentation for the coordination in-factory and on-site as well as a digital set of production files for the CNC cutting of all parts.