News

So much has happened that I need to arrange them to chapters! First of all, it is winter, so we have a few clouds, resulting in stunning sunsets. Above image was taken from our office terrace, just yesterday.



What's on site

(Note: Koltay Façades do not do fabrication, installation or construction work. We act as facade consultants for the projects mentioned here.)

Al Forsan in Abu Dhabi and Kapsarc in KSA are nearing handover dates, few months to go. Al Forsan has most of the curtain walling installed, the point fixed glazing and the external shading features are yet to be erected. We provide periodic site inspections at this stage.

Address The Boulevard Hotel had the embed pullout tests, April witnessed it - they are strong enough to receive the glazed units. Opus has had major progress on site with the concrete cores, and meanwhile the system design for the facade and the glass selection is ongoing.

Burj Vista and Sky View, consisting of 2 high-rise towers each, 60-80F, are getting their piles in place, nice to see the day-to-day progress as we drive by (both are near Burj Khalifa). It is relatively early days for the facades, we are still in the midst of design development and working on them from our office.



What do we design

We work on the detail design, pre-engineering, system concept options, specifications of a number of high-rise towers (more than 10 currently...) , sky bridges, glass floored observation decks up high, giant glazed skylights, freeform glass enclosures, a large hundred plus meters long tensioned cablenet wall - actually two of them! We have a new Rotana hotel project on the Creek, excellent location. Roof deck infinity pool with great views of downtown - making placing a BMU machine a real challenge, but well... we have some ideas!

Fountain Views, a really big project with 4 high-rise towers over an 11F retail podium, connected to Dubai Mall by bridges, is still undergoing some modifications and architectural updates. The curtain wall has an interesting in-plan zig-zagging geometry, all up to 70 storey. We have developed a unitized system to allow for quick installation and minimize site workmanship issues.



Awards and Presentations

Koltay Façades was shortlisted this year as the "Engineering Consultancy of the Year" at the Middle East Architects Award. Yay! We attended the gala dinner on the 5th of November, picture above.

We also had two technical speeches recently. Invited as the guest speaker at Technical University of Budapest's annual Building Construction Technology conference, Agnes was talking about Principles of Achieving Water-Tightness of Glazed Cladding Systems in High-Rise Construction. Pros and cons of face sealed systems, back drained systems with compressed gaskets, pressure equalized systems were discussed in detail.

The second event was organized by Dow Corning and DuPont, who kindly invited us to talk about our "pushing the limits of technology" type projects to the attending architects, consultant, contractors. Brad and Agnes selected four of our projects, mostly talking about our independent research and experience with unitized cold bent systems, structural use of glass, and the design process that resulted in the application of cast glass laminated to IGUs.



Article

Jotun has interviewed Koltay Façades for the upcoming issue of their magazine, Kaleidoscope, which is published twice a year. The article is available online here:The Koltay Way - Kaleidoscope Interview..

And in other news, I managed to lock my car keys inside the car a few days ago, along with my phone, money, home keys, etc...