The Ticon building is a bit of an icon in the city of Drammen in Norway. Built in 1963, it has an architectural style typical of that time period which is quickly diminishing today. Its exterior is therefore listed as historically protected by the local building authorities.
This represents a source of pride for the owner, Ticon Eiendom, but it was also a conundrum when the building started to get ripe for modernization. They wanted to prepare the building for the future, but any upgrades needed to be done with as little change to the original design as possible.
“We were told this project was impossible, and there is no denying it has been challenging,” says Vegard Foseid, project manager from Ticon. “To solve it, we established a project group that deeply involved the architects, the entrepreneur, and our suppliers, among them Hydro.”
Hydro, through its building systems brand WICONA, contributed aluminium expertise, training for the metal builder FacadeConsult, and not least some of the world’s most sustainable aluminium, Hydro CIRCAL, made of minimum 75% recycled consumer scrap, such as old window frames, aluminium packaging and car parts.
Not only did they manage to bring the building up to contemporary standards while keeping the original architectural design, they went far beyond by making it into a near energy-neutral, super-sustainable building packed with high-tech and Hydro CIRCAL. The result is a building that reduces heating needs by 80 percent.
It’s been a little more than a year since Hydro launched its greener brands CIRCAL and REDUXA. Since the launch, Hydro’s Building Systems business unit, which supplies facades to the building and construction industry thorough its brands WICONA, TECHNAL and Sapa, has gone all-in on selling our greener aluminium products.
The business unit recently passed a milestone of 40 building projects using CIRCAL facades. That’s more than 2,300 tonnes of greener aluminium, with big and small projects of up to 400 tonnes. This year, all of Building Systems’ solutions in Europe will be available in either CIRCAL or REDUXA.
Published: January 17, 2020
