Curtain walls coat the most important office buildings, facilities, and tertiary sector buildings, because they are the most prestigious mean to improve its own image.
Mapier Group, which has already realized many of these structures, is available to designers and users to provide, with its services, curtain walls with great architectural versatility features, and with high technical performances.
Main features of curtain walls made by Mapier Group: Mapier Group realizes curtain walls in 6060 extruded aluminium alloy ( UNI 9006/1 ), according to European standards. Electrocoloured anodization or powder coated ( 60 micron ) in many RAL colors, or special colors, make them suitable for any architectural context. Curtain walls differ in the following categories: 1. Mullions and transoms curtain wall 2. Unitized façades 3. Structural façades 4. Semistructural façades 5. Point fixing façades
1. Mullions and transoms curtain wall The mullions and transoms curtain wall consists of vertical and horizontal elements that form a structural grid. The mullions fixing to the wall structure is performed with galvanized steel brackets, disposed to adjustment in all directions, to recover any irregularities of the wall structure. Among the junctions of the vertical mullions and the horizontal transoms are considered special expansion joints.
To the system can be applied every type of glasses and/or blind panels, mounted with appropriate spacers. In the pressor sections and in the external horizontal covers are expected holes to allow the compensation of the steam pressure and the drainage of water on the outside, and to allow the ventilation of the perimeter of the glass sheet too. To the pressor sections are also applied EPDM gaskets that stick to the glass and guarantee watertightness.
2. Unitized façades The unitized façade is formed by prefabricated units that contain both the aluminium grid and the blind panels (transparent or opaque). Prefabricated units are assembled in the plant and then transported to the construction site to be mounted on the building.
3. Structural façades This system gives to the facade an effect "all glass" without seeing any aluminum frame. The glasses with polished edges are glued with adhesive silicone to the aluminium frames that compose the façade structure. The glass weight is relied on structural adhesives or, in some cases, there are particular reduces profiles retractable that work together with structural adhesives to support the glass.
4. Semistructural façades Semistructural façade is a type of wall with profiles visible from the outside, but these profiles are very thin. If you look from distance a building with semistructural facade, you can see that these external profiles become almost imperceptible to the eye, given their reduced thickness.
5. Point fixing façades The point fixing façade is created by fixing the glass sheets, which have special holes for the fixing with the so-called “rotules”, that are metallic component spider-shaped, that sustain every single glass that will form the wall.
The “rotules” have a junction that, connecting glass and metallic element, forms a sort of hinge, to make the whole structure not too much hard. An evolution of the fixing point system is represented by a system that does not need holes in the glass in the fixing points.
