Rome’s Dives in Misericordia Complex by Richard Meier comprises the Church, three stand-alone sails in white concrete, the parish buildings and belfry. Frame profiles are produced by Schüco,while the special, completely transparent insulating glass is by Pilkington; Italcementi supplied the white cement and Mapei products were used in a number of different building applications.
Schüco produced the profiles for the vertical glazed surfaces, the large skylight, the glazed facades of the sails as well as the frames for the doors, windows and walls of the parish building. The extremely lightweight yet resistant support structures were especially designed to absorb sail movement due to wind stress and thermal dilation without transmitting these stresses to the glazing. Special telescopic aluminium profiles calendered to conform with the intersections of the sails compensate for the structure’s movements.
The church’s extensive curtain wall is borne by a structural lattice of steel flats covered by specially extruded aluminium sections, giving the impression of large expanses of glazed surface with no visible support structure. The skylight in the central nave - 36 m long with a free surface area of more than 13 m - is secured to an external steel tube grid. The project was developed together with New York practice, RM.
Frame specialists Frener&Reifer were entrusted with the executive project and installation.
Pilkington supplied a series of products especially designed for the project. The insulating glass for the skylight comprises a 10 mm external layer of toughened Optiwhite glass, a 15 mm air gap filled with argon gas, followed by a 12.8 mm inner layer of stratified Optilam Therm N. The curtain walls and other glazed surfaces comprise several types of insulating glass: external layer of toughened Optiwhite, argon gas air gap, inner layer of Optilam Therm N; joints are in 8.8 mm stratified Optilam N. All glazed surfaces guarantee extremely...
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