CityPoint

CityPoint is a landmark 36-floor commercial building in a prime City of London location, close to Moorgate and Liverpool Street stations. The property provides office, retail and leisure accommodation of some of the highest standards and specification in London.

Corporate law firm Simpson Thacher (STB) occupies nine floors in the centre of the building, working with architect Gensler and workplace fit out expert BW to design the interior. They approached us to design, manufacture and install blinds and curtains to protect staff and visitors from glare, thermal variations and add privacy to their meeting spaces.

The Requirements

Gensler worked with our Specification team to create the best spec possible for the project. We were selected for the task because of our long-established and successful working relationships with both BW and Gensler.

Following an extensive refurbishment of the entire office complex by the developer, STB moved into an empty space with freedom to fit it out as they wished.

The £1.2 million project included blinds for levels 17 through to 22 in the first phase of the fit out, and levels 11, 12 and 14 in a second phase completed in December 2022.

The Challenges

The second phase had a special set of challenges as levels 11 and 12 incorporate extensive areas of horizontal and sloped glazing requiring tensioned shades, as seen below.

We also discovered there were no fixing grounds for the blinds and a complete design solution was needed. Other BW sub-contractors had already tried to solve the problem without success, so the project was dependent on us to provide an answer.

Our Solution

For most of the project we supplied a combination of Draper manual chain and motorised blind systems, using SilverScreen® and our own ShadeTech® AlphaShade 20 fabric.

We specified Guthrie Douglas TESS100 and TESS101 as the specialised systems for the latest phase. Guthrie Douglas manufacture some of the highest quality tensioned systems to fit curved, triangular and corner glazing. The versatile fabric system, without a headbox, is based around a unique spring mechanism which holds the fabric flat and adapts to the surrounding environment.

To address the lack of fixing grounds, we designed and installed custom metalwork for each window to hold the blind and integrate with sprinkler systems, fire alarms and lighting.

We also supplied a range of motorised curtains using Silent Gliss 5600 electric curtain track with Kvadrat Unix fabric. The curtains soften the views from the windows and add insulation at night. They can also be drawn to create private meeting spaces for the kind of confidential meetings common to law firms.

The Outcome

Russell Keegan, Waverley Projects Director, said,

City Point was a brilliant project to work on. It’s great to work on a prestigious office building with such responsive, positive clients. The excellence of the design, specification and fabrication meant that the installation was relatively straightforward for our teams. That’s always a positive achievement.

The integration and functioning of our custom metalwork surprised everyone on site for its smooth integration and functional efficiency, and the blinds then seamlessly fit into the structure and work incredibly well.

If you’d like to discuss intelligent solar shading systems for your projects, contact us here and our team will be happy to help!