Community hub in Bath receives gold cladding

The Mulberry Park ‘trailblazer’ community hub on the southern fringes of Bath, a renovation of the decommissioned Ministry of Defence site on Fox Hill in Combe Down village, has been fitted with a new Proteus TECU Gold cladding panel façade.

The community hub itself cost around £10M and was commissioned by the Curo housing association, having been designed by BDP architects, and it is primarily used as a local educational facility, accommodating a 210 place primary school and a 70 place nursery.

Furthermore, the facility supports the development if 700 high quality homes and spaces while also providing a variety of public use facilities such as: a café, a clinic, a fitness suite, and a business enterprise, and flexible spaces for hire.

The building itself consists of a PPC coated aluminium support frame on the school hall with the third floor being cantilevered above the main entrance and public square, while it also features the Proteus SC perforated TECU Gold Panels.

The panels themselves are fitted at the ground floor level so as to provide structure in addition to an aesthetically pleasing, hard-wearing layer that protects the building from the elements, consisting of a copper-aluminium alloy which offers mechanical abrasion and is corrosion resistant.

Another interesting feature of the panels is that they were initially a bright gold colour, upon installation, but, after a brief oxidation period, turned into more of a warm gold colour.

The elevated third floor section was installed by the company Cladanco to act as an enterprise space but was actually inspired by the temporary floating Mulberry Harbours which were used for the invasion of Normandy during the Second World War.

The community hub development recently won the South West Community Benefit category at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Awards 2019 for outstanding achievements in benefitting its local community, as shown through said community’s feedback.

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