Architecture

Winter has arrived, meaning the days are growing darker earlier and more people are feeling the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is a widespread condition in which mentally-healthy people experience mild depressive symptoms over winter due to less daily sunlight, having some negative effect on workforce productivity and social interaction.

A July 2015 McCrindle survey of 1,000 people indicated 33 per cent felt under-motivated at their workplace during winter, while 27 per cent felt generally less productive. Many commercial buildings exacerbate this problem with closed-off office spaces and dark decor, ill-fitting to capture the natural sunlight needed to boost our mood during the dark winter months.

Locker Group are leaders in introducing innovative architecture materials to enhance the visual appeal of commercial buildings to suit any concept or conditions. Below, we explore how three of our architectural products can help banish those winter blues by adding more sunlight to your office space.

Woven Wire

Woven Wire can be used on building facades for a sun-streaming effect, allowing maximum sunlight exposure. It is built in a variety of durable metal substrates to resist harsh winter weather and wearing, and are customisable to exact client specifications.

Woven Wire can also be used internally for a delicate textural finish over light shades, lowering the harsh artificial glare of lights. This function is particularly important, as the increased use of artificial light to compensate for shorter daylight hours during winter contributes to SAD symptoms.

Perforated Metal

One of our most popular and enduring items, Perforated Metal is typically used on building facades to add visual texture without sacrificing function – indeed, sporadic facade installations around a building result in little loss of warmth insulation, keeping your building warm and dry. It also contributes to encouraging natural sunlight flow through the metal sheet’s holes.

We are able to perforate a range of of materials, and would recommend darker-coloured metals like copper and brass, rather than cold grey and silver metals, to give your office visual warmth during winter months. These sheets can also be customised with an imprinted image in the perforation pattern, displaying a company’s logo or as an architecturally-integrated alternative to an art piece.

Perforated Metal helped Porsche achieve their distinct brand look, while keeping the building sunny.

Curtains

Locker Group’s Transit Curtains are the ideal solution for office spaces that you want to customise and re-shape easily. These wire mesh screens are widely used in modern commercial and retail spaces for their ability to allow light and airflow through seamlessly while still maintaining privacy between separate areas.

Attach the Curtains to tracks to effortlessly change the layout of your office whenever you want, or drape them from the ceiling to cover unsightly appliances – they have endless potential for a chic way of increasing natural light and breaking down stern dividing walls in office spaces. This is particularly helpful in addressing lowered levels of collaboration with work colleagues in winter months, a problem highlighted by 28 per cent of polled Australians in the McCrindle study.

Transit Curtains are used in retail to maintain lots of natural light and airflow.

Our range of architectural building solutions are built towards creating visually stunning and innovative spaces, designed to get the most from your environment. In the cold winter months, social isolation and depression in the workforce is going untreated, with dull commercial spaces dividing colleagues from one another and leaving them with little exposure to natural sunlight. Contact our friendly team today so we can shed a little light on how our simple architectural solutions could brighten up your winter blues.

As cities continue to expand and their centres becomes increasingly congested and expensive, investors are looking for office space in suburban and city-fringe areas. There, falling vacancies and rising rents are attracting these investors as part of a wider upswing in office relocation from the CBD to larger suburban spaces in search of better rental value. This gradual shift in prime office location has freed income for reinvestment and given businesses the opportunity to develop visually stunning commercial spaces operating in a variety of industries.

Perforated metal sheets

Multi-functional and eye-catching Perforated metal sheets are primarily used as external facades on buildings, due to their durability and simplicity, and offer a distinct and signature look. Customisable in a variety of shapes and sizes, these sheets are a true shortcut to a striking visual. The holes can also be perforated to a unique shape, opening the door for creative displays of a company’s identifying graphics or logo that are integrated into the very design of the office.

A distinct feature in a reception area,which provides partial screening for privacy. Or it can be integrated into the structure of the building, including in staircases and alcoves, to carry a bespoke note through your commercial space.

The Porsche Showroom in Brighton, Melbourne is a perfect case study for achieving a signature look for your offices by using perforated metal.

The Porsche Centre used perforated metal for its signature look.

Transit Curtains

Transit Curtains are ideal for a chic way of subdividing spaces in an open-plan office. Unlike other partitions, they allow light and air flow through almost uninhibited, while still maintaining privacy between separate areas.

The curtains are also removable and adjustable, should you want to expand your spaces or change office layout. Alternatively, they can be fixed to a wall or the ceiling to hide unsightly ducts and electrical amenities, beautifying your space instantly. The chains can be made from a variety of metals to different lengths and thicknesses, giving the customer true control over how they want to use their space.

Transit Curtains have already been used to visually bold effect in Cara & Co in the Sydney CBD.

Cara & Co’s Transit Curtains scream urban edginess.

Expanded metal mesh

Using Expanded metal mesh is becoming increasingly popular with designers who want to give an inventive industrial edge to their commercial project. The mesh panels are designed with two specifications in mind – lighting and privacy.

Smaller mesh gaps block light, ideal for building facades or external areas to minimise sun glare and heat, while larger gaps allow more through, encouraging internal light-flooded spaces. Similarly, smaller gaps allow greater privacy between open spaces, while larger gaps encourage a transparent semi-open plan feel.

The mesh can be coloured to client specifications, and provides a burst of visual energy to give your office the visual dynamism of a city centre space.

Agilent Technologies laboratory and offices in suburban Melbourne have used this Expanded mesh to dynamic effect, giving their building a uniquely memorable look.

Expanded metal mesh provides a gritty industrial look.

Innovating my Office Space

Whatever the specifications, Locker Group has numerous options for your design needs in creating innovative and architecturally winning visuals. We are highly trained technical professionals who pride ourselves on working with clients to develop a durable product that fits their exact specifications. Give your suburban commercial space an elegant big-city treatment by contacting Locker Group today, and hear how we can create something truly memorable for you.

Last year, the latest film in Marvel’s cinematic universe, “Thor: Ragnarok “, wrapped filming its Brisbane scenes, which saw portions of the CBD transformed into a mini-New York. The Big Apple is a frequent destructive stomping ground for Marvel superheroes, with regular revisits for rounds of bad-guy busting, building-breaking brawls. The caped crusaders excel at saving humanity from doom, but can certainly make a mess in the process.

Locker Group’s range of building materials and innovative designs have already delivered visually-stunning structures all over Australia. Below, we explore some the signature architecture range, and see how it can captivate even Marvel’s Avengers.

Woven Wire

The city’s people hide in buildings, watching on while the epic battle begins outside. Luckily, with Locker’s architectural woven wire, they can watch in peace.

The architecturally innovative design can be made from a variety of metals, and combines a delicate textural finish with a robust substrate for a striking look. This makes it ideal for sun shading, partial one-way screening, or just giving your building facade a funky edge. Woven wire is manufactured to individual specifications, and is guaranteed to impress any nearby superheroes.

Hi Light Louvres

Trapped indoors while humanity’s fate is decided outside, the hot sun is beating down hard and fast, making indoors an uncomfortably stuffy place to be. You could roll down a window, but that’s risky with the brawling outside. Locker’s Hi Light Louvres provide perfect sun shading and protection from glare, and the design also allows for natural airflow, keeping your building cool and breezy.

Available in a variety of finishes for different looks, our Hi Light Louvres are resistant to UV damage. The dazzling array of bright colours are industry-vaunted, and are perfect in brightening traditionally dull monochrome inner-city spaces (and standing out in your superhero fight).

Pic Perf Metal

With the bad guys defeated and the day saved, it seems only right to immortalise the faces of the victorious Avengers in the city’s architecture, as a reminder of their heroic work.

Locker’s Pic Perf perforated metal screens use durable and customisable facades to create long-lasting metallic images. Using an innovative three-dimensional crescent system, Pic Perf can be customised to variety of surfaces and sizes, adding eye-catching dimension in a variety of finishes. Maps, symbols, and even portraits can be brought to life in metal, giving a structure a truly unique character. The Avengers’ heroic mugs can be preserved in the city always, watching out for evildoing.

If well-meaning superheroes have wrecked your building and you need a jazzy revamp, or if you just want to explore some innovative building materials and styles to give your structure a visual edge, contact Locker Group today for information on how we can give your structure new architecturally heroic appeal.

Here at Locker Group, we’ve been delivering a range of quality perforated metal products on time and to a variety of specifications for years. Did you know that perforated metal has all sorts of different uses? Here are six reasons to use the product in your architectural designs.

1) Safety

If your project could do with more safety features, look no further than perforated metal. Its holes make it easy to see out of buildings but hard for those trying to look in, making it an ideal material to use in schools and car parks.

There’s also an anti-slip element to Locker Group perforated metal products. For instance, our Safe-T-Perf has raised elements surrounding each hole, providing a highly effective way to stop you slipping. The holes also allow water and other liquids to drain, while they’re still small enough to stop valuable tools and equipment from falling through.

Perforated metal allows you to mitigate some of the effects of Australia’s harsh sun.

2) Protection

In Australia, the effects of climate change are becoming particularly obvious (2016 was Australia’s fourth-hottest year on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology). This means architects need to continue to think of innovative solutions to the challenges that buildings face as a result of environmental issues. Perforated metal is one such solution.

Architects need to find a balance between sun and shade, natural light and protection from glare. As online architectural community Architonic point out, this is where the holes in perforated metal come in. They allow enough sunlight to enter into a building so that those inside can see, while still protecting them from harsh glare. Perforated metal also allows ventilation while mitigating the excessive warming effects of the sun, meaning tenants can reduce their air-conditioning usage. In winter, the holes will still allow sufficient sunlight to enter a building so that it can remain warm.

In very humid environments, our stainless steel products are the perfect material, as they are more rust resistant and won’t corrode easily.

3) Eco-friendly

If you take a look at our perforated metal brochure, you’ll see that we make the product in a variety of materials. This includes aluminium, which is 100 per cent recyclable. This means that, when the time comes, the materials used to build your project will be used again instead of simply going to landfill.

We make many of our products out of easy to recycle materials.

4) Sound Absorption

Perforated metal is excellent for use in buildings where noise is a problem – for instance in offices or schools. Perforated metal panels help to diffuse noise, for example by reducing echoes. They are also a commonly used element in acoustics.

5) As a partition

Perforated metal and Pic-Perf can be used to divide a room up while still allowing for ventilation and a sense of airiness that wouldn’t be possible with a traditional wall.

6) Aesthetics

Architecture isn’t just about functionality, something that we recognise in our product designs. That’s why our perforated metal comes in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours – for instance, if you choose Aztec, the holes will be triangular in shape, while the champagne design replicates the look of different sized bubbles. For more patterns, download our product range brochure.

Don’t forget Pic-Perf either. This Locker Group innovation allows you to replicate pictures on to metal by punching holes in it – a great way to jazz up any building.

There are a lot of different applications for perforated metal. For more information on any of our products, please get in touch with the team today.

Here at Locker Group, we know that aesthetics are just as important as functionality when it comes to good architecture. Here’s a list of five innovative ways to make the interiors of your architectural projects more striking with Locker Group metal products.

1) Consider ceiling panels

Ceiling panels are a great way to provide both a functional means of separating two floors, and create an innovative and exciting alternative to a normal plain white ceiling. You can even suspend them in order to make a high ceiling less imposing. With Locker Group metal products, we make orders to fit, so that you aren’t limited to just one shape or size. We even supply a range of different colours to make your ceilings as exciting as possible.

2) Get into vertical gardens

Albany High School shows there’s lots of ways to make your stairways more exciting.

Vertical gardens are all the rage at the minute, and are being touted as one of the key ways that urban living and the environment can become more harmonious. Woven wire is a good material to use for these, as it gives something for plants to climb up and hold on to.

3) Make your ceilings linear

Lots of architects are starting to veer away from more traditional ceiling panels and are now moving towards what’s known as linear ceilings, where the ceiling appears to move in one direction. Often the lines are continuous without breaks in between. Our perforated metal is a good option for this, especially if your building project is in a loud environment, as it has acoustical properties that help to minimise noise levels.

4) Add texture with wire mesh curtains

If you want to break up a room our wire mesh curtains are an excellent option. They can be used to define smaller spaces while still allowing for air circulation and a more open feeling than if you were to simply build a conventional wall. They are also a good way of hiding unseemly marks or electrical amenities.

5) Spice up your stairways

Balustrades don’t have to just be one long piece of metal. Consider placing woven wire or perforated metal underneath the handrail to add more texture, as well as enhance the safety of your stairways. Our work in Albany High School is a great example of this.

Locker Group provide a variety of products to different specifications, and we’re happy to hear new suggestions and ways of working together. Contact us today for more information.

Creating a house that’s filled with character, but also lives up to the standards of modern living, is a difficult challenge that many architects face on a daily basis. Fortunately, there is a solution. The KUD perforated metal house in Brunswick, Melbourne, represents a new way of thinking about architecture in a neighbourhood that’s almost exclusively made up of traditional terraced houses.

It was also a project that Locker Group worked closely on, having supplied the perforated metal that was used in construction. Here’s a bit about the house and how it’s helping change the face of architecture in Australia.

The KUD house feels spacious and airy, despite its small footprint.

A new approach to terraced housing

The project is burrowed in the middle of a row of terraced houses, many of which have stood in the same place since the late Victorian era. Although it’s true that these buildings have heaps of character, KUD felt that they’re not the best houses in terms of design or comfort. Instead of choosing to build an ugly replica, they decided on a new approach. They would use Locker Group Pic-Perf metal to create an image of the facade of a terraced house onto the outside, while using modern materials to build it.

The exterior is particularly innovative. It’s made up of a mixture of perforated steel, glass and curtains, which open, fold up and slide out to let light in. This means the family have privacy when they want it, but can also create a more open-air feeling when required. In fact, the north and south walls can open up completely, allowing for breezes to pass through during Australia’s hot summer months. Essentially, the architects have dispensed with the need for air-conditioning, something that Australians need to start doing if we are to help solve the world’s environmental crisis.

The high use of glass in the building also adds to the feeling of space and airiness in a site that is only 5.5 x 14.4 m wide.

Responding to your environment

KUD wrote on their website that they felt the current rows of terraced houses in Brunswick “dictate the neighbourhood” rather than respond to it. So, while the outside design on the perforated metal helps the house to blend in and accommodate it in the community, the architects decided on a radical design for the interior.

The KUD house’s interior has been rearranged to better respond to the environment.

While most terraced houses have a traditional layout with the living space on the bottom, KUD decided to invert this. Their reasoning makes sense – why not have the areas where people tend to spend most of their time upstairs, which gets more natural light, ventilation and privacy? That way the bedrooms remain cool, which is ideal for sleeping. By reinventing the way we order our houses, KUD have illustrated the fact that that we need to stop doing things just because that’s how it’s always been done, and actually start to consider how buildings can respond best to their environment.

Sparking a public debate 

The idea of the KUD house wasn’t just to build an innovative new home. The architects also aimed to spark a debate about terraced houses, and why we are so keen to romanticise old homes that aren’t always well-designed or conducive to comfort.

At Locker Group, we’re always keen to help with new and exciting projects like the KUD house. We ensure we talk to our clients so that we can help provide the solution to these wider problems. Please contact us today for more information.

The sun can present a huge problem for architects in Australia. Fortunately, Locker Group have the solution. We make expanded metal to a variety of specifications in order to protect your building from the sun’s harsh glare. The Icon, an apartment building in St Kilda, Melbourne, represents one of the most innovative and creative ways our product has been used. Here’s why.

The Lego Tower

The Lego Tower features expanded metal in a variety of different colours.

This amazing creation is the work of a collaboration between artist Matthew Johnson and architects Jackson Clements Burrows (JCB). It features six artfully balanced cubes, which are wrapped in several different colours of Locker Group expanded metal. As the sun moves over the sky, each piece of metal changes colour slightly, giving it a dynamic, playful quality.

While many think of metal as purely existing in different tones of grey and silver, The Icon is changing that perception. In fact, the building is also known as “The Lego Tower’ due to its similarity to the coloured building blocks. Mr Johnson said the design was intended to brighten up an otherwise fairly “dead” area of St Kilda.

“Having visited and inhabited St Kilda through parts of my life, one can’t help but feel there needs to be something … totemic or sculptural that is like a signifier to this neighbourhood,” he told domain.com.au.

“Because you are creating this vertical habitat in that location, it’s actually invigorating a whole site in an intelligent way rather than just building another faceless building.”

A sense of community

The idea of the different boxes, according to Andrew Jackson, director of JCB, is to create a feeling of community, with each separate colour representing a different neighbourhood.

“It was a way of thinking about an apartment building not just as a singular entity but a collection of communities,” he said to architectureanddesign.com. This must surely be something that architects of the future will take into account, as people try and move away from the traditional conception of tower blocks as lacking in community spirit.

As The Icon proves, expanded metal provides both an aesthetically pleasing and functional way to deal with the sun, by cutting out glare while still making the most of available natural light. It can be used above windows, entrances, walkways, or along the whole length of a structure. If you would like to use expanded metal for your project, please contact us.

People value peace and quiet. This is why it’s so important to consider acoustics when undertaking an architectural project. Here at Locker Group, we know how diverse perforated metal is, which is why we provide custom shapes and sizes to meet any requirements. Did you know that perforated metal is a key application in acoustics?

There are two main ways perforated metal can be used in acoustics. The first is as a facing for something else, and the second is as a tuned resonant absorber.

Perforated metal is a great way to shut out unwanted sounds.

As a facing for acoustical material

Different acoustical materials will be used with the goal of either absorbing, reflecting or scattering sound, depending on what you are using your acoustic application for. This material, frequently foam, normally needs to be encased in something that will protect it. This is where perforated metal comes in. You will need something that will let the sound waves pass through, while still providing enough protection for your acoustic material. Perforated metal, which is strong but has lots of holes in, is perfect for this.

Tuned resonant absorbers

The second way perforated metal is used in acoustics is with a tuned resonant absorber. Often, you will only want to reduce sound that’s at a particular frequency. Tuned resonant absorbers are excellent for absorbing sound at a low frequency (100 Hz or under).

With these, the perforated metal takes an active part in determining which frequencies need cutting out. It is used in conjunction with a trapped layer of air to concentrate the sound absorption of the acoustical material onto whichever frequency range the sound that needs cutting out falls in.

The air particles will begin moving in and out of the perforated metal’s holes violently at whatever frequency the tuned resonant absorber is set at. These air particles are then pumped back and forth with the adjacent acoustical layer. At this point, the acoustic energy will transfer into heat due to the friction created, and so will no longer be heard as sound.

As you can see, perforated metal supplies an easy solution for sound absorption and other acoustical solutions. Our products come in a range of materials, including stainless steel, aluminium, mild steel, corten,titanium, copper, brass, alloys and polypropylene. For more information, please contact us.