Hunter Douglas used its engineering and creative expertise to design a unique solution for a £1.6 million prestige building at Goodwood Aero Club.
The contemporary Aero Club building, designed by London-based architect State of the Craft to house the café and flight school at this world-famous aviation site in Chichester, West Sussex, is visually striking, with clean, linear lines.
To complement this ultra-modern, sleek look, the architects commissioned Hunter Douglas to design and manufacture 24 fully automated and motorised external roller blind systems, each measuring 7.5 m2 (80.7 ft2) for the predominantly glassfronted building.
The motorised external roller blinds are protected from high winds with automated wind sensors. Each section has its own remote control for the corresponding group of blinds and Hunter Douglas also supplied a master remote control for the site manager so that a single button can control all the blinds simultaneously.
Mike Foulston, Specification Sales Manager at Hunter Douglas, worked closely with the architects and award-winning local building contractor Tasker Catchpole to create a system that would fulfil the design aesthetic and be fully functional.
"We were tasked with providing a bespoke solution to anchor the side guide wires of the blinds to the polished concrete floor that are peripheral to the building,” he said.
“It created numerous challenges for the design team but we found a neat and innovative solution to ensure that we could stay true to the architect’s vision. Key to this was Hunter Douglas continued efforts to meet the needs of the project on time and to a tight deadline.”
Architect Mário Lourenço specified a Helioscreen fabric, a PVC-coated fibreglass fabric that has superior solar heat and light control properties, in Carré Black.
Hunter Douglas powder-coated the bespoke anchors to complement the external glazing hardware, and the leading specialist manufacturer also created a tailor-made closure to cover the pocket behind the blind headbox, which was powder-coated to match external glazing, thereby creating a clean, seamless finish to the overall installation.
John Wells, project manager at Tasker Catchpole, said: “It was a complex design that create a number of design challenges for us and Hunter Douglas, but the team was exceptional in the way that it tackled the problems, coming up with a creative solution that enabled us to work together to make this one-off design work perfectly and look great, too.”
