10/24/2012 |

Sky Tower - a city within a building

TROSIFOL glass façade for Poland's tallest residential building

 

The Sky Tower, a high-rise building in Wrocław, Poland, has recently set new standards in terms of size and height.With a height of 212 metres, 50 storeys, 21,987 square metres of office space and 24,349 square metres of commercial floor space for retailing and services, the Sky Tower even scores beyond Poland's borders. The Sky Tower complex actually comprises three buildings: the "Podium B1" (the podium), " Wieża B2" (the tower proper), and " Żagiel B3" (the sail).The apartments and luxury flats ranging from 45 to 222 square metres in size are accommodated in buildings B2 (184 units in 10 different basic layouts) and B3 (52 apartments with 23 different ground plans).140 boutiques, delicatessen outlets, restaurants, cafés, sports facilities and a wellness and spa zone in fact make it unnecessary to ever leave the complex. For anyone working in one of the luxuriously appointed air-conditioned offices, the Sky Tower offers everything one could possible wish for on total space of 171,000 square metres.

 

New landmark for Wrocław and Poland
The new Sky Tower is designed to stand out and set standards of modern comfort, luxury life-style and engineering. The choice of location is burgeoning Wrocław that aims to sharpen its European profile. "Openness, energy and ambition" are the attributes that Wrocław as the capital of Lower Silesia wishes to outwardly communicate. At the same time, the Sky Tower offers a breath-taking view of the pulsating city and its environs and thus creates a meeting place and a new landmark for the region. It is visible not only to travellers arriving at the airport, but in good weather even from the Karkonosze mountains (German: Riesengebirge) on the Czech border. As a focal point for top international companies and traders and a premier address and secure investment for its 236 tenants and flat owners, the Sky Tower will also symbolise a modern, ascendant Poland that is fast catching up with the world's leading industrial nations.
On the 50th floor at a height of about 200 metres, crowning the Sky Tower's 25,000 tonnes of steel and roughly 4 hectares of glass, is a viewing platform that is set to become one of the foremost tourist destinations of the city of Wrocław.

Wrocław
With its population of some 650,000, Wrocław (German: Breslau) is Poland's fourth-largest city and the country's biggest academic centre. An international airport, the motorway and railway stations integrate Wrocław in the European transport network. Theatres, an opera house, a concert hall, clubs, museums and art galleries create a broad cultural foundation with which Wrocław hopes to attract further investors. LG Philips, Hewlett-Packard, Sharp, Siemens and Toyota are just some of the big-name companies that have already seized the opportunity. A mixture of different cultures gives the city a character of its own. Wrocław sees itself as a vibrant, eager, modern and cosmopolitan city in the throes of dynamic growth.

The building's location
The Sky Tower is located in the Krzyki district, an area of heavy investment and which in a few years is set to become Wrocław's new shopping and commercial quarter. The main axis and thoroughfare of the district is Ulica Powstańców Śląskich, a continuation of Ulica Świdnicka leading from the Old Town's marketplace (Rynek Starego Miasta). The complex will ideally be just a short distance on foot from the central railway station and bus station (10 minutes) and marketplace (15 minutes). The motorway A4 slip road and the airport are roughly 20 minutes away from the complex by car.


The Sky Tower project
Work on the Sky Tower got underway back in 2007. In February 2012, work on the technical infrastructure and roads around the Sky Tower was completed. The shopping centre opened in May 2012 and construction work on the complex is due for completion by the end of the year.

A particularly impressive feature of the Sky Tower is the glass façade visible from afar. For the glass used for this, the Polish glass processor PRESS GLASS SA, a specialist in such large-scale projects, was contracted to supply the total of 37,000 square metres of glass. PRESS GLASS supplied 28,000 square metres of glazed units including laminated safety glass with TROSIFOL film in 88.2, 66.2 and 44.2 sheets.
To uphold the building's high standards and protect the luxury flats from road noise, PRESS GLASS opted for TROSIFOL SOUND CONTROL film 0.76 millimetres thick for the façade. This is where the architects and clients demanded an extra-high level of noise mitigation.
In the basement, mainly beneath the shopping centre, the Polish glass processor used units some 1,000 square metres of 0.76 millimetre thick TROSIFOL standard PVB film because no elevated standards of sound reduction were demanded here.
PRESS GLASS chose its longstanding supplier Kuraray and TROSIFOL film because of the product's features. "We were also certain that TROSIFOL could supply the required quantity with the demanded quality on time," Gerard Plaze, Promotions Manager of PRESS GLASS SA.

Sound protection with TROSIFOL SOUND CONTROL
In developing TROSIFOL® SOUND CONTROL (TROSIFOL SC), a special acoustic PVB film, TROSIFOL has achieved a breakthrough to a product for high-grade acoustic glazing. In multiple insulating glazing, this product combines outstanding sound protection characteristics with all the benefits of a conventional TROSIFOL PVB film for laminated safety glass (LSG). LSG produced with TROSIFOL displays outstanding safety properties, as glass fragments resulting from breakage remain stuck to the film and thus strongly reduce their potentially harmful effect. TROSIFOL SOUND CONTROL demonstrates its exceptional sound protection performance even in monolithic laminated safety glass. Although the use of LSG instead of float glass yields a 2 dB improvement in noise mitigation, using TROSIFOL SOUND CONTROL in the same assembly of the same thickness achieves an improvement of up to 5 dB in the sound insulation values (compared to one sheet of float glass).

TROSIFOL SOUND CONTROL is approved by the building authorities in accordance with the "Technical Rules for Edge-protection Glazing" and the guideline "Technical Rules for Linearly Mounted Glazing" of the German Institute of Construction Engineering (Certificate No. Z-70.3-89). The product thus satisfies the requirements of conventional laminated safety glass, even when used overhead and in edge-protection glazing.
A new development is sound insulation with TROSIFOL SOUND CONTROL SC+, which yields remarkable efficiency-boosting advantages in the mass production of acoustic LSG (not used on the Sky Tower). As confirmed by several test bodies accredited Europe-wide, laminated safety glass produced with SC+ achieves sound insulation values of over 50 dB in ISO glazing, depending on composition.

With its superior efficiency, new multilayer TROSIFOL SC+ PVB film is ideal for high-performance processors specialising in jumbo widths. It has been developed specifically for efficient processing and thus displays its strengths only in this area.
Combinations with white translucent, coloured or colourless TROSIFOL PVB films are also readily possible. This means that the new SC+ film extends TROSIFOL's existing sound protection range to include a productivity-boosting variant without compromising on the familiar outstanding optical properties of clarity, transparency and light stability.

It goes without saying that the new multi-layer film also combines its outstanding sound insulation values with the accustomed safety characteristics. In assembly 44.2, laminated safety glass with TROSIFOL SC+ achieves safety class P2A conforming to EN 356 and Class 1B1 in accordance with EN 12600. Test certificates from MPA Darmstadt are available on request.

These attributes enable glass processors to produce LSG with outstanding acoustic and safety properties. In terms of processing, the new film is identical to the proven TROSIFOL BG range of films for architectural glazing. TROSIFOL SC+ is supplied refrigerated in roll lengths of 230 and 470 metres and in thicknesses of 0.50 and 0.76 millimetres.

Background PRESS GLASS
PRESS GLASS Company was founded in December 1991 in the form of a Polish-Swedish joint venture company. The headquarters of the firm was located in Wreczyca Wielka near Czestochowa (Poland). The total surface area of the production hall amounted to 600m2 and production commenced in January 1992. Focusing on modern technological solutions within a short period of time PRESS GLASS became the most modern plant producing double glazing glass in Poland and one of the most modern in Europe. The company continues to strive for perfection regarding production management and customer services, which was recognized in July 1999 when it received the quality certificate ISO 9002 and in July 2002 it received the ISO 9001 certificate (ISO 14001 in August 2008).
The scale of production led to the constant need to reach perfection in terms of the
level of services. As the first firm in the market to do so, PRESS GLASS introduced a system known as PG-Net to allow its clients to monitor their orders on the Internet. Its task was to allow for the automatic circulation of documents between the factories of PRESS GLASS and the company’s partners.
http://www.pressglass.eu  


Background TROSIFOL
TROSIFOL® is one of the leading manufacturers of PVB film for laminated safety glass worldwide. TROSIFOL products are mainly used in applications for automotive and architectural glazing, special TROSIFOL films are used to encapsulate solar cells with long term durability in the photovoltaic industry. PVB is the background material for all TROSIFOL films used as an interlayer in laminated safety glass since the middle of the thirties of the 20. century. The experience gained from the processing of this material since 1953, thanks to ongoing research and development, is one of the main reasons for technical leadership and worldwide success of TROSIFOL. TROSIFOL is a Division of Japan based chemical group Kuraray Co. Ltd (Tokio) which is the world’s leading producer of polyvinyl alcohols (PVA), one of the initial products for TROSIFOL PVB films.
Kuraray Europe GmbH has installed an integrated externally monitored management system that satisfies the requirements of a quality management system conforming to DIN EN ISO 9001:2000 with the supplementary demands of the automotive industry ISO/TS 16949, an environmental management system conforming to DIN EN ISO 14001:2005 and an occupational safety and health management system conforming to BS OHSAS 18001:2007.
http://www.trosifol.com


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Press contact:
Steffen Weber, Head of Business Development & MarketingKuraray Europe GmbH, Division TROSIFOL,Mülheimer Strasse 26, D-53840 Troisdorf, GermanyPhone +49 (0) 22 41 / 2555 201Fax +49 (0) 22 41 / 2555 299E-mail: trosifol@kuraray



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