Architecture

Did you ever wonder what exactly it is that make airports all have that same quiet, bright, modern and clean feel? Perforated metal ceilings are one of the main architectural elements that you’ll find in almost every international airport. The advantages of using perforated metal are both functional and aesthetic: The metal creates a striking visual display for travellers as well as creating pleasing acoustics and a clean environment.

Discover the functional advantages of perforated metal – cleanliness and sound absorption – and how the material can be made aesthetically pleasing.

Sound absorption 

Have you noticed how strangely quiet airports can be and how sound seems to serenely echo throughout the open space? The Industrial Perforators Association (IPA) explains that one of perforated metal’s most important benefits is sound absorption. Any business looking to create a pleasant atmosphere without too many voices overlapping should consider perforated metal.

The material is designed to either absorb sound or scatter it. The IPA explains that perforated metal can remove or reduce sound by “tuning” the perforated sheet, in a sense.

It can be tuned by controlling the thickness of the perforated sheet and the size and number of holes in it. The holes make the sheet more “transparent” so that sound can easily pass through the material. Perforated metal can thus be customised to fit the amount that an airport, or any business, wants to control sound by controlling the number of holes and the thickness of the sheet.

Aesthetics 

In addition to being an effective barrier for sound, perforated metal is also aesthetically pleasing and versatile.  At Locker Group, we know that designers frequently feel too restricted in the design they can create because of the material they’re working with. But there are less limitations when it comes to perforated metal.

The IPA further explains that a company will be able to personalise the look of perforated metal because it’s capable of being manipulated into complex and curved sheets. Perforated metal brings a lot of product versatility, giving a business the capability to personalise its architectural products.

Also, spaces like airports often require divides between the many different terminals and airlines. So, perforated metal provides an attractively designed divide to an area, too.

Furthermore, perforated metal can make it so airports are flooded with beautiful sunlight but still able to provide shade. The sheets effectively screen light while also allowing some of it to enter. The entrance of light provides a sense of warmth while also practically shielding travellers from the glare of the sun.

Cleanliness

Lastly, perforated metal is unique in providing more sanitary condition, which is particularly important for airports, known germ factories.

Auckland, New Zealand is an example of a world-class airport utilising perforated metal for this very reason. With an exceptionally smooth surface, the material doesn’t trap microbes or bacteria as easily as its rougher counterparts. This can contribute to higher air quality, not to mention the fact that it’s easier to clean for maintenance staff. Considering over 8 million people pass through Auckland Airport annually, minimising the chances of germ exposure for travellers is essential – and perforated metal helps this cause.

Locker Group has experts in perforated metal who can help you customise the material for your company’s specific needs. You’ll glean the functional benefits of perforated metal as well as create striking and unique architectural designs.

Wire mesh has many uses and a range of architectural applications, both structural and aesthetic. But aside from the usual applications on buildings and public features, today we thought we’d look at a few fun, unconventional projects that could be achieved with our woven wire products.

1 Mazes

We have some great mazes open to the public in Australia: Last year the Tangled Maze in Springmount, Victoria made it onto the Telegraph’s international list of top ten mazes.

There are a number of materials a maze could be built of, but woven wire’s variable opacities offer a unique twist. Building a maze out of solid barriers that offer glimpses of where you want to go, or where other maze-runners have found themselves, adds a fun dimension to the experience.

Woven wire’s variable opacities offer a unique twist on a traditional maze.

2 Fashionably dressed statues

James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park, the bronze Queen Victoria in front of the Queen Victoria building, even the Big Merino in New South Wales – these statues are all great sightseeing attractions, but they’ve been there, relatively unchanged, for a long time.

Perhaps there is an opportunity for a tourism boost if these spectacular characters became a little more of a spectacle. Maybe a new outfit?

James could have a grand new coat, the sheep could have a jaunty hat, Victoria could have a full suit of armour. With woven wire’s range of finishes and configurations there are so many options for customisable outfits that could be attached to the statues and swapped out regularly. And with wire’s light weight these fun additions could be made without putting undue stress on the valuable statues underneath.

3 Unique playgrounds

This is actually something that’s already been done, and we’re proud to say Locker Group had a part in making it happen.

Frew Park in Brisbane contains a playground constructed in part from a stainless steel wire mesh. The architect Guymer Bailey worked closely with us to achieve his vision of an industrial-styled playground for Brisbane City Council. The project called for a material that would give the playground the feel of a tiny abandoned city while still meeting the requirements for safety and visibility. Our Boston 311 woven wire profile fit the bill nicely. This year, the Frew Park playground made the short list for Australia’s Best Playground.

Woven wire is a customisable product with huge potential; these are just a few ideas for how it could be used outside of traditional architectural uses. If you’d like to have a go at any of these projects, or have some creative ideas of your own that we could help you realise, please get in touch today.

While metal sculpture is a long-standing tradition (bronze sculpture was popular in the Renaissance, for example), the industrial age has given artists new materials and techniques to work with. How are modern artists using metal to create? And with the line between art, building and commerce blurring, what role can architectural products such as ours play?

Abdul Qader al-Na’ib’s scrap metal sculpture

Abdul Qader al-Na’ib, a 24-year-old artist in Baghdad welds together pieces of found scrap metal and used car parts to create robots, vehicles and animals. Na’ib gets his metal by scavenging at the dump or in the street where people have thrown things away. Working in scrap metal for just a couple of years, Na’ib now has sculptures on display in schools and ministries, and has opened a workshop where the public can admire and purchase his pieces.

Na’ib likes the medium of scrap metal not only because it is unique, but also because it reduces waste.

“I liked the idea because I wanted to do something different and I wanted to do something to serve the society,” he told Reuters.

The industrial age has given sculptors new materials to work with.

Richard Serra’s steel plate creations

Richard Serra is an American artist who makes large-scale abstract sculptures from steel plate. His 2006 piece “Sequence”, for example, is 67 feet (20 metres) long and weighs more than 200 tonnes. His work has received mixed reactions; his 1981 piece “Tilted Arc”, a 12-feet high and 120-feet long steel wall through the middle of Federal Plaza in New York, received numerous complaints from locals. After a drawn-out court case, the piece was dismantled and removed less than 10 years after it had been installed. The Guardian called it “one of the most controversial works of public art of the 20th century.”

Serra’s later sculptures have been more well received, and his work was celebrated in a career retrospective at New York’s Moma in 2007.

Jeff Thomson’s corrugated iron animals

New Zealander Jeff Thomson has been using corrugated iron for sculpture since the 1980s, creating animals, letterboxes and other common objects. Perhaps most famously, he covered a Holden station wagon in the material. His work has a sense of humour and play to it, and he has engaged everyday New Zealanders with public works such as populating Auckland’s Albert Park with a herd of corrugated iron elephants in 1985. Thomson has used other materials such as wire netting and plastic, but it is his corrugated iron work that is most well known.

The artistic potential of Pic-Perf

Pic-Perf is an architectural product that sits on the threshold of structural and visual art, allowing you to recreate any image with perforated holes in a metal sheet. It has practical applications such as making partitions, balustrades or sunscreens, but it can also be used for purely aesthetic purposes like signage or decoration. Pic-Perf images work on the same principle as half-tone printing, with the size of the holes determining the tone of the image. The technique can be used on different materials and with different finishes, letting you choose an end result that suits your needs.

Pic-Perf images can be made small enough to be hung on the wall like a traditional piece of art, or big enough to cover that entire wall and the rest of the building. The perforated metal sheets are long-lasting and can be relocated, so art created as an installation doesn’t necessarily have to be confined to its original setting.

Many of Locker Group’s range of products have applications that go beyond the purely functional – they can be used to create striking sculptural art as well. Or better yet, create something that combines both aspects. Products like Pic-Perf can be used for practical features like screening that are also aesthetically pleasing and make beautiful settings.

If you’d like to talk about how our products can be used to achieve functional, stunning architectural features, please get in touch today.

As climate change becomes an increasingly pressing issue, more businesses are looking for ways both to reduce their carbon footprint and avoid the increasing cost of energy. Incorporating Locker Group’s Atmosphere facade into your building is a way to minimise the impact of both and look after your workers in the process.

The silent killer

In its report ‘The Silent Killer: Climate Change and the Health Impacts of Extreme Heat’ the Australian Climate Council warns about the threat this phenomenon poses to Australians’ health in terms of heat-related illnesses. Since 1890, the deaths caused by heat  waves outweigh the combined total of those caused by earthquakes, floods, cyclones, bush fires and severe storms combined. Record-hot days have doubled in Australia since 1960, and the intensity of heat  waves is increasing. Ensuring your buildings are climate controlled is an obvious way to alleviate the effects of heat  waves on your staff, at least while they’re at work, but HVAC systems are expensive – and powering them may be increasingly unreliable.

Climate change increases the dangers of heat-related illnesses.

Power price woes

In a recent report, independent think tank the Grattan Institute looked at South Australia’s unexpected spike in electricity prices this July. Over the month, prices averaged AU$230 per megawatt hour – more than triple that in Eastern states – and peaked on the seventh at $9,000 per megawatt hour. An unfortunate combination of low wind, closed coal plants and the temporary lack of a backup electricity connection meant that the state was relying almost entirely on gas for its power generation, leading to a huge price surge.

Around 40 per cent of South Australia’s electricity comes from wind, which is, by its nature, variable and inconsistent. And while the other contributing factors were inconveniently timed, they weren’t implausibly rare. Its analysis lead the Grattan Institute to conclude that we shouldn’t take power for granted – the wholesale electricity market as it currently stands may not be as secure as we would like.

A step towards a solution: Energy-efficient buildings

You can’t rely on air conditioning if the power’s gone, so many business are looking to architectural solutions to maintain a comfortable temperature for staff. Buildings that make use of natural sunlight and airflow for their heating, cooling and ventilation needs will by extension rely less on electricity-run HVAC systems. This has the complimentary benefits of both reducing money spent on electricity while also reducing your business’s carbon footprint. A way to achieve this is to incorporate screening media such as Locker Group’s Atmosphere facade into your architecture.

Atmosphere facade

Atmosphere facade is an effective solution to the problem of how to make the most of sunlight without being overwhelmed by it. There are a range of options both for appearance and function that let you customise the product to your specific needs. Atmosphere is a facade made out of angled perforated panels floating from the building envelope on tensioned steel cables. These can be arranged in different configurations depending on whether the focus is heat reduction, maximising visibility or minimising glare. On a typical Melbourne building, having Atmosphere installed in its E2 configuration can lead to energy cost savings of 45 per cent per year (covering heating, cooling and ventilation).

Atmosphere achieves the balance of reducing heat and glare without cutting out natural light, and can be incorporated into a new building or retrofitted to an existing structure to increase its energy efficiency. Pic-Perf panels, which let you print an image onto the metal with perforated holes, can be added for a unique aesthetic appeal.

Get in touch today if you’d like to talk about how Locker Group can help you make your building cooler and more sustainable.

Somewhere between 30 and 15 B.C., Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio wrote De architectura. Later published as Ten Books on Architecture, it would become the definitive treatise for conceptual design and inspire the future genius of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and other members of the Early Renaissance.

In Latin, Vitruvius wrote that a well-designed building incorporated three elements, famously translated by Sir Henry Wotton to ‘Firmness, Commodity, and Delight’. The phrase very quickly became the foundation of aesthetic design, inspiring exquisite and refreshingly unique architectural structures that pushed the boundaries of materials and technology in unison.

Now, of course, there are many options available to strengthen firmness, efficiently make use of the building as a commodity, and accentuate the aesthetic properties of a structure.

Beauty surrounds architecture and is an inherent part of its design.

Architectural and design harmony

The role that materials play in constructing buildings is increasingly relevant than in the past as the public voice for design aesthetics becomes more prominent. For example, buildings made entirely of glass offer a notion of positive transparency to the public from the outside, but inhabitants feel differently. A study by Urban Green Council asked: “Do tenants who live and work in all-glass buildings actually take advantage of the glass by keeping their blinds open?”

According to the results, almost 60 per cent of the window areas were covered with blinds, with the majority of all buildings in the study covering between 40 and 90 per cent of their glass windows. This represents a need for balance in materials, something Locker Group aims to provide with Pic-Perf.

A globally popular inclusion to Locker Group’s architectural products, Pic-Perf allows designers to display any image they desire on perforated metal. With a unique and relocatable aesthetic design, Pic-Perf also offers new and existing structures ventilation and sunscreening, thanks to its perforated metal construction.

Pic-Perf in action around the world

Pic-Perf can be utilised to create a subtle backdrop for an often-used public space, or an awe-inspiring centrepiece for a business – both inside and out. One shining example of its use is in the award-winning Tip Top apartments in Brunswick East, Melbourne.

Paying tribute to the previous use of the site – Northern and Tip Top Bakeries – the redesign of the project incorporated a number of Pic-Perf applications inspired by the project’s heritage. The entrance itself displays a visually stunning representation of a horse-drawn carriage, transforming the area into a veritable work of art.

This encompasses the future of architectural design in the present, and perhaps the solution to common issues in the construction world. Heritage or character buildings that display a sense of old-world aesthetic design are often- fought over by the public. Many wish to have them pulled down for more efficient projects, while others argue vehemently of their design importance.

Material efficiency and beauty of design shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive, and with customisable products such as Pic-Perf, Locker Group is proving around the world that the public can experience both to the highest standard.

Considerations for using Pic-Perf 

Perforated metal offers greater resistance to wind than solid sheeting, along with a number of other benefits:

• Increased ventilation and airflow.
• Greater shade protection from the sun.
• Clearer vision from both the inside and out.

Most importantly, however, the image you choose has almost limitless potential. We can incorporate logos or brand symbols, a collage of images or even abstract artwork. Due to the flexibility of the design, the product is scalable to any size; Pic-Perf can be created small enough to fit in your office, or large enough to cover an entire building.

With Pic-Perf, even the great Vitruvius would be satisfied by this ultimate synthesis of form and function. To learn more about the range of Locker Group products, reach out to our team today.

As popular as the design has become, open-plan offices aren’t winning any awards in the hearts and minds of office workers – at least, not in their current iteration. They are noisy, there’s no privacy and some studies have even shown that they reduce productivity overall. For something that’s intended to improve co-worker communication, interaction and efficiency, it sounds like it might be doing the exact opposite.

However, the open-plan office might still be saved – with the clever use of Locker Group products, of course. A few simple chain curtains could be the answer to all those employee grumbles.

Are open plan offices all they are cracked up to be?

The issues of open plan

Here are a few statements that you might find some office workers agreeing with: Open-plan offices are too noisy, disregard privacy completely and actually result in more fights between coworkers.

And they’d be right, at least according to surveys from Gesler Research in the UK as well as a paper in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. According to the former, people are sick and tired of working solely in open-office environments, and this design is actually having a detrimental effect on their work.

Meanwhile, the latter demonstrates that open-office environments, as they are now, score much lower in key environmental quality standards, including acoustics and privacy. Apparently, the benefits of the ease of interaction that open plan allows for is outweighed by the penalties that too much noise and not enough private space creates.

A change is as good as a rest

However, that isn’t the end of the story. Gesler Research’s survey also revealed a curious additional effect: It’s less to do with the open-plan office itself, and more to do with the lack of different environments in which to work. When you are unable to escape from an open office, it’s no wonder that people end up getting sick of it.

Gesler Research explains that the key to better productivity, efficiency and workplace morale is to allow for a greater variety of different work environments. Enclosed, semi-enclosed and open, all available to workers.

The difference between enclosed and semi-enclosed could be as simple as installing a set of chain curtains around one portion of desks. People can still interact through them, and you maintain that important office airflow, but it gives the illusion of a more private space. Considering how many workers seem to be calling for some kind of getaway, business owners might find that they get a little bit more out of their workforce when they aren’t chained to the open-plan design.

For more information and applications of chain curtains or other architectural products, make sure you check out our lookbook below, or get in touch with us directly right here at Locker Group.

Climate change affects us all, and we are already feeling some of the effects here in Australia. An ozone hole above our heads, stormy and violent weather, even a fair bit of rising water – it’s no wonder that people are starting to take protecting the environment more seriously than ever.

However, there is only so much the average resident of Australia can do. A great deal of the burden is on the business and industrial sectors of the country – and we’re not just talking about cutting down on the business vehicle driving.

Commercial buildings of all shapes and sizes can contribute to climate change in one way or another: poor energy efficiency, environmentally unfriendly materials, damage to the surrounding land. However, as much damage as these buildings can bring, the right design could be the key to a cleaner, greener Australia. Could a new facade for your building be part of the drive towards carbon neutrality?

Could your building be the key for greener Australian cities?

It’s time for a change

Here’s the current situation: The Australian government found that commercial buildings were responsible for about 10 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2009, and those levels were predicted to increase by 25 per cent from then to 2020. We’re now on the more distant side of that prediction, so that proportion of responsibility could be that much weightier.

With that in mind, there is clearly an opportunity for business owners to reduce the impact that their enterprise has on the environment – and it could be achieved through existing technologies and better design, according to a report from the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC). It explains that the vast majority of potential energy savings available to commercial buildings by 2030 are in the realm of heating and cooling. Greater efficiency in this area makes up almost two thirds of the opportunity for building managers to reduce their utility bills, as well as their impact on the environment.

The power of Pic-Perf

You might wonder what these “current technologies” that ASBEC mentions look like – is there some product out there that could eliminate two thirds of your heating and cooling needs in one fell swoop? Some kind of futuristic, science-fiction HVAC unit, for example? The reality is a little more down-to-earth, and it has a lot to do with good design.

Pic-Perf, an addition to the Atmosphere product offered by us here at Locker Group, won’t shave off two thirds of your heating needs, but it can certainly contribute to it. Because Pic-Perf acts as a sun shade for your building, as well as improving air flow and ventilation, it could help reduce the cooling requirements of your building. That’s something that should certainly be at the front of your mind as we head into the warmer spring sun.

As a result, you draw on fewer energy resources to keep your building comfortable, increasing habitability without putting pressure on the climate or your energy bills.

Pic-Perf has more than just one application.

More than just green

Of course, Pic-Perf offers a great deal more than that. Not only does it block the sun, but it improves wind resistance, security and perhaps even health – the intense Australian sun being blocked from burning the inhabitants is a good thing by anyone’s measure.

But, perhaps most of all, it also improves the aesthetics of your building. Whether it’s a brand, a logo, a scene or just a pattern, Pic-Perf can contribute to the overall design of your building, making it that much more attractive to both visitors and tenants. Better for the environment, better for your wallet, better for your brand – what’s not to like?

If you’d like to find out more about Pic-Perf, or other Locker Group products, take a glance through our look book to discover a number of potential applications.