COLOUR PERSPECTIVES Project: Spire Specialist Care Centre, Bristol I UK Architects: CSM architects, Newport | UK Construction: Tray panels suspended Year of Construction: 2014 Product: ALUCOBOND® plus naturAL Copper + Anthracite Grey Aztec West is a tidy place, organised according to coloured surfaces: the large grey car park and curving Park Avenue, the neat green grassy verges and greenery, the buildings’ red-brown brickwork. The business park features low-rise office blocks and hotel buildings which are loosely linked like the islands of some archipelago. It is located on the northern fringes of Bristol at one of the most important motorway junctions in Southwest England. This is not somewhere you come to on a whim; you drive here with a goal in mind. Perhaps that explains why it is a suitable location for the private Spire Health Care facility, specialising in outpatient radiotherapy treatment. Spire Specialist Care Centre is a two-storey oblong block with an entrance on the north side and a closed south facing rear façade. The façade is arranged in two bands of floor-toceiling length copper-toned ALUCOBOND® panels. Although the building expresses its own individual identity, its façade blends well with the palette of colours in the vicinity. The colours of the ALUCOBOND® panels reiterate the tones of neighbouring brickwork. The windows are also set in storey-high panels, but these are anthracite-coloured and create a rhythmically patterned surface. The façade interacts with the environment due to its reflectivity, mirroring trees, cars and sky when viewed from an angle. The colours of the panels seem to adapt to their surroundings, and the building’s edges all but disappear. On the other hand, the façade takes on a matt appearance when seen face on. The pattern created by the anthracite and rust-brown is clearly perceptible, and the changing incidence of daylight brings about fractional changes. Architecture, colours and impressions change according to the observer’s viewpoint. Forms & Elements 02/2015 14
ALUCOBOND® | Forms & Elements
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