On the grounds of the iconic old central bank built in 1974 by John Sisk & Co. Ltd, One Central Plaza has been extended and refurbished into a modern Grade A office block in Dublin’s city centre. This unique building, still Ireland’s only suspended structure required a deep retrofit. This included replacing the existing GRP Macalloy encasement boxes that housed the steel tension cables suspending the building.
The design team lead by Henry J. Lyons Architects agreed that Aluminium sheet metal provides the best solution to replace the brittle GRP material, being both lightweight and flexible the aluminium could be formed into custom shape to house the steel cables.
As a specialist aluminium sheet metal fabricator Spanwall was approached by long-term customer Architectural Aluminium. With major design input from Spanwall, both companies worked to produce a perfect replica of the original encasements. The design met with the architect’s vision and ensured ease of fitment on site as there were numerous hurdles to overcome from existing features.
Spanwall fabricated the new Macalloy encasement boxes at our Carryduff factory, in total 84 individual boxes were manufactured using CNC Router, Tig & Mig welding, Rivnut Machine and Rolling Machine.
The challenge was a departure from the normal façade solution Spanwall is task with delivering, but with over 50-years of specialist sheet metal fabrication experience and one of the UK and Ireland’s leading fabricator, Spanwall delivered a solution that is in keeping with this iconic Dublin landmark and one that will still be performing in another 50-years.
Spanwall also fabricated and supplied the bespoke soffit panels at the ground level Cantilever.
