245 Summer Street, Boston
The owner of 245 Summer Street, Boston, was keen to integrate lightweight ceiling panels into their office scheme to help diffuse light and improve the appearance of the interior of the building. However, titalso had a particularly unusual requirement: not only did they want the ceiling panel to be backlit, but it also had to be suitable for both internal and external environments. The owners therefore approached Architen Landrell to create a mock up of the panel to test the light transmission and durability of their scheme.
Architen Landrell's wide ranging expertise in technical fabric and our performance in differing environments worldwide meant that we were able to achieve this task in conjunction with the manufacture Gore in the USA and recommend their Tenara fabric.
This fabric meets class O fire rating in the UK and is suitable for both indoor and external applications. The high light transmission properties of Tenara facilitates the use of back lighting, this being one of the client's main requirements for this project.
Tenara is also very easy to maintain, and very long lasting and durable, with excellent colour-retention properties. It is used mainly for external structures, but is also finding a niche in internal applications where a solid (as opposed to mesh) class O fire-rated membrane is required that also has excellent light-transmission and diffusion properties.
The fabric can be tensioned on to perimeter frames (as in this case), or tensioned with proprietary yacht rigging tensioners to existing building structure in sail-like forms.
