New York’s Architizer.com has awarded Kaynemaile’s RE/8 architectural mesh an A+ Jury Award for ‘Building Envelopes, Cladding, and Roofing’ in its 12th annual awards honouring the world’s best architecture and spaces. Kaynemaile was also the A+ Popular Choice Winner for ‘Sustainable Design.’
The design-led company from Petone, New Zealand is on an awards roll following its naming in the U.S. Architectural Record Products of the Year Awards saluting the best building and design products introduced to the U.S. market within the last year.
In 2023, Kaynemaile® won ‘Global Gold’ for exporting at Wellington’s Gold Awards and featured in multiple New Zealand architectural awards including a bespoke kinetic Wave facade for Invercargill Central that helped transform the city centre into a vibrant community hub with a beautiful indoor shopping complex.
The U.S. awards are for Kaynemaile’s new RE/8 product launched in San Francisco a year ago. RE/8 is made from 88% bio-circular content from Covestro, the world-leading provider of high-tech polymers. Kaynemaile’s mesh is extremely lightweight, uses 20% of the energy needed to produce steel, and is 100% recyclable.
“Today Kaynemaile is a global leader in specialised architectural mesh applications that can be found on building exteriors and interiors all over the world,” says Kaynemaile founder and CEO Kayne Horsham. Over 90 per cent of sales are generated through exports.
Horsham says RE/8 has achieved a rare certification from the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) organisation covering its entire product cycle from ‘cradle to grave’. RE/8 features a reduction in the carbon footprint of the base polymer material by up to 80%.
Kaynemaile’s focus on the U.S. has seen the recent completion of exterior and interior projects in Atlanta, Dallas, Des Moines, Los Angeles, and Orlando, as well as Santa Clara in Silicon Valley where 1,000 square metres of Kaynemaile 3D kinetic Wave screens now cover an 800-space parking garage, plus another Wave facade system is currently being installed on a large car parking garage in Galveston, Texas.
Outside of the U.S., Horsham says a major building wrap for a high-tech manufacturer has just been unveiled in Belgium, with new designs currently in development for retail and hotel installations in the Philippines and Saudi Arabia. Closer home, June saw the formal unveiling of Waimahara, a transformative interactive urban artwork in Myers Park, Auckland. The mana whenua-led project honouring the presence of ancient waters now flowing beneath the ground is an interactive sound and light sculptural installation, inspired by Kaynemaile’s 13,000m² 2020 Dubai World Expo entrance sculpture and shade canopy.
Wellington technology investor Movac is lead shareholder in Kaynemaile. Movac founding partner Phil McCaw has been chair of Kaynemaile since 2016 and says the flow of awards to the Petone represents the success of a ‘wonder product’ created by founder Kayne Horsham.
“The work that the Kaynemaile team have done over the past three years executing a major circular economy shift is opening multiple opportunities in architecture and construction as building codes around the world move to exacting new standards of environmental compliance,” says McCaw.
“Kaynemaile is a beautiful thing that has taken a long time to bake. This is a business that combines architectural aesthetics and functionality, materials and building science, machine design, manufacturing, exporting, intellectual property, and climate mitigation.”
In 2023, Kaynemaile doubled the size of its production facility and commissioned a new injection moulding machine to enable 24/7 shifts as the company closes on some of the largest order enquiries they have experienced. The company works closely with artists, architects and engineers throughout the world to customise its mesh systems to meet their specific design requirements.
Whether it is a mega parking garage facade or a highly decorative atrium chandelier, Kaynemaile’s technology, IP and large-scale delivery knowhow makes Kaynemaile the ‘go-to’ when traditional solutions fail to offer a solution.
Kayne Horsham says an emerging key benefit of Kaynemaile is what he calls the ‘WonderCool Effect’. “With nearly a quarter of the U.S. population projected to live in extreme heat conditions, there is an urgent need for passive heat mitigation technology in new building designs. Kaynemaile mesh facades deliver a 70% reduction in solar gain on exterior installations. It’s a product made for a hot world.”
Image: Angas St; Credit: Iain Bond
