Locker Group custom designed a range of facade panels for the new carpark at the QE11 Medical Centre in Perth, Western Australia.
Located opposite Kings Park in Perth, the QE11 carpark was required to meet strict design considerations to ensure privacy for users as well as minimise disturbance for local residents from the car headlights. Additionally, the design needed to be visually appealing to avoid affecting the ambience of Kings Park. The facade cladding also had to meet BCA requirements of >50% open area.
The designers at Designinc (Perth) wanted to achieve a unique design that would meet both aesthetic and functional considerations.
The architect envisaged a ‘scale’ concept where each individual scale would face up, redirecting internal light into the night sky and avoiding disturbing the local residents. The panels would also be sufficiently open to provide high air flow, reducing the requirement for mechanical extraction equipment for ventilation inside the carpark.
Locker Group’s engineering department worked closely with the architect to understand the design vision and create the tooling that would allow them to work within the confines of the material, as well as the manufacturing equipment to produce the panels locally.
A first for Locker Group, the Dragon Scale pattern is a true 3-dimensional profile, where the scales are formed individually out of the aluminium sheet. The hardness of aluminium presented a number of challenges before the team was able to achieve the anticipated profile shape and depth, without any cracking or tearing.
Dragon Scale panels are installed on the carpark ‘slab to slab’, eliminating the need for intermediate supports, thereby simplifying installation. The folded panels were just lifted onto the brackets and fixed to each slab, saving the installation team time and money.
Thanks to the panel design, the spacing from the building face and internal guttering that catches rainwater, the carpark doesn’t get wet during rains.
The bright Duratec colour scheme reflects the transition from dusk to nightfall and was designed to emulate an occupied building.
Photography: Rob Burnett
