Built to house 220 people from ArcelorMittal’s digitalisation teams, the INDI (Industrial Digitalisation) building in Ghent is setting high standards in office construction. With its open spaces, low overall height, and high level of energy efficiency, the building is a showcase for ArcelorMittal’s steel solutions. One of the most striking is the Granite® HDXtreme aesthetic cassettes, type Coques MD, that clad the outside of the building. This organic coated steel offers best in class resistance to corrosion thanks to its three-layer coating system. As the INDI building is located on the ArcelorMittal Gent site, close to the industrial environment of the mill and the sea, Granite® HDXtreme was the intelligent choice.
Sustainable construction solutions to suit the built environment
The INDI building is situated less than two kilometres from the Ghent-Terneuzen canal, a major inland waterway that connects ArcelorMittal Gent to the sea. The site is also located in a heavily industrial environment which includes the mill and other businesses. Granite® HDXtreme enables ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products to offer a 20-year guarantee in these locations.
A robust grained polyurethane coating protects Granite® HDXtreme from scratches during forming operations and transport. Granite® HDXtreme is also very sustainable, making it an ideal fit with ArcelorMittal’s Steligence® approach to creating sustainable built environments. The INDI building marks the first time the Steligence® concept has been fully deployed in an office building. Steligence® also includes a range of sustainable steel construction products, both long and flat, many of which were utilised in the INDI building.
Extensive use of ArcelorMittal products
The INDI building is a living showcase of products from ArcelorMittal including:
- Granite® HDXtreme coated Coque MD cassettes
- ST Sidings post-painted
- Carrier-type Promisol S Hybrid® sandwich panels for airtightness and insulation
- Angelina® beams: lightweight, long-span, structural elements that allow for large, column-free spaces
- Cofraplus® composite floors: trapezoidal steel sheets with open ribs to shutter and reinforce concrete floors
- Indaten® weathering steel: used as borders to separate grass and gravel areas in the grounds
- Magnelis®: steel finished with this innovative metallic coating has been used for the lighting poles on the INDI building’s grounds
- Slag from the nearby Gent mill has been utilised in two ways: crushed to form gravel for the car parks and processed to remove calcium in order to be utilised as a foundation for the asphalt parking area
Architect: Arcadis
Facade installation: HABEMO
Photography: DIrk Verwoerd Architectural Photography
