Design
Commissioned by Hesco Bouw, Metadecor provided the 3D-shaped wooden facade for the ‘Huus veur Sport en Cultuur Zuidwolde’. The house is a multifunctional accommodation in which new functions such as a library, theater hall and care facilities are integrated around an existing sports hall. The building is covered with a 3D facade of wooden slats that undulate around the building volume.
The basis for the facade design was laid in a parametric design by ArchiTech Company. The 3D wire model supplied by ATC has been loaded into Grasshopper by Metadecor and supplemented with various design criteria, such as profiles, slat dimensions, minimum and maximum distances, etc. The design is then linked to Tekla Structures, where further (detailed) elaboration is carried out.
Facade design
The facade consists of mounting brackets that are to be mounted on the architectural facade. Aluminium tube trusses will then be mounted in the brackets. Prefab frames are hung between these trusses. The frames consist of aluminium box profiles and flashings, with the wooden slats pre-assembled on them.
The shape of the facade and the center-to-center distance of the slats has been chosen in such a way that the sun enters only as desired: sun blocking in the south, sun open on the north facade. The wooden slats are labeled  with an FSC and PEFC quality mark. Through a combination of critical calculations and making an efficient design, the amount of aluminium used has been kept to a minimum.
The project was developed using BIM, which helped in particular with the fine-tuning of the mounting brackets on the underlying construction. The facade is mounted on various surfaces: on prefab wooden wall elements, on steel construction parts and on an aluminium curtain wall. With the exception of the curtain wall, all parts were designed in 3D by other parties, although the wooden mullions and transoms of the curtain wall were drawn in 3D. By working with other parties in BIM, we were able to match the mullions in the prefab wooden wall elements to the grid of the facade, have mounting features included in the steel, and place consoles in the curtain wall for the purpose of mounting the trusses.
Tekla Structures
Because the facade undulates around the building, no part is the same. To guarantee the dimensions of all unique assemblies, we paid a lot of attention in Tekla to making smart links between parts, for example, with cut mortise and tenon connections and puzzle pieces.Â
One of the most difficult couplings is the mounting of the wooden slats on the aluminium frames. This coupling has a number of requirements: a slat is almost never parallel to the frame (there is always a small angular displacement), the contact surface between the wood and the aluminium  must be kept to a minimum and, finally, the center-to-center distance of the slats varies. In order to meet these requirements in a single coupling, a laser-cut comb-shaped plate was chosen. This plate reduces the contact surface between wood and aluminium , allows an angular rotation and fixes the position of the wooden slat in relation to the aluminium . This greatly simplifies the assembly of the slats, since all the complexity is in the cut part.
We made maximum use of the Grasshopper – Tekla combination to capture the complexity of the design in the machine-produced parts. With this we guarantee good control of dimensions and manufacturability, with which we confidently look forward to another striking Metadecor facade.
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