April 7-11: Titanic Light Show, Belfast; A visonary light show to showcase the iconic new Titanic Belfast visitor attraction.

April 12-13: MTV Music Event, Belfast; MTV will be back to deliver a a major outdoor music event on the Titanic slipways.

April 14: Titanic: A Centenary Commemoration, Waterfront Hall, Belfast: A gala event will showcase the city’s Titanic story.

April 22- May 19:Titanic (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner’s inquiry, 1912), Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast: Based on the emotive verbatim testimonies heard as the Titanic Inquiry in London 1912, following the ship’s sinking.

Construction of the new Borough Viaduct will cut delays for passengers travelling to and through London BridgeThe new viaduct will run alongside the existing rail bridge over Borough Market. By doubling the number of tracks heading West out of London Bridge station, it will cut delays for passengers, and let more train services to continue to and through London Bridge.

The new viaduct been designed to preserve as much of the heritage in the area as possible. The listed Globe pub has been retained and the Victorian market roof has been taken off-site to be refurbished. It will be reinstalled when the viaduct is complete.

The team has worked closely with archeologists to capture and preserve the buried record. A pair of 16th century ‘Borough Delftware’ plates found at the Park Street site are already been display at the Museum of London.

We have been working closely with the local community, including the traders and management of the historic Borough Market, to limit the impact of the construction work.

The Market will also expand into a new glazed market hall on Borough High Street, bringing it back to the high street for the first time in centuries.

A 21st century railway
It is an essential element of the Thameslink programme and paves the way for the complete redevelopment of London Bridge Station, due to begin in 2013.

The new rail bridge over Borough High Street will form a new landmark for the area.

The bridge is being constructed on top of the new viaduct and will be slid into place over a long weekend in the Spring of 2011. This minimises disruption and road closures during the installation and helps us keep road and rail traffic moving during the work.

Belfast Architectural façade specialist, Spanwall, manufacturer of the  stunning multi-panel rainscreen cladding for Belfast’s iconic £100m Titanic Signature Building, has won yet another exciting contract for a visually arresting building. This time around, a Full Service Data Center of Terremark on the Amsterdam Schiphol premises is about to get a tremendous make-over. Terremark, a Verizon Company, is a leader in transforming and securing enterprise-class IT on a global scale. With a global network of data centers and a comprehensive portfolio of secure solutions, Terremark is helping enterprise  and  government  executives  realize  the  power  and  promise  of  the  cloud  today. 

The project involves 2,500 square metres of aluminium panels which feature a striking series of binary numbers, laser-cut and punched into the panels’ surface, giving the exterior of Terremark’s state of the art Data Center facility a sophisticated and highly visual presence.  Architectural Aluminium Ltd, who are the leading Facade Specialist in Ireland, were contacted by Mercury Engineering, Ireland’s internationally renowned construction specialist, to design, supply and install the exterior rainscreen perforated cladding.  Architectural Aluminium commissioned Spanwall to manufacture the external perforated rainscreen cladding comprising of anodised and polyester powder coated panels in a 60%/40% panel split.  The panels as designed by Architectural Aluminium Ltd were manufactured in Spanwall’s advanced manufacturing plant at Carryduff, to achieve the graphic effect that Van Aken Architecten has envisioned for the exterior of the building.

 Spanwall MD Keith Toner said, “Coming on the back of the Titanic Signature Building project which is generating huge interest in our bespoke manufacturing capabilities, this project in the Netherlands is another example of not only our engineering expertise but also our ability to collaborate with other industry specialists – in this case even in a cross-border fashion. We find this approach a very productive and rewarding one”.

Welcoming the news, Kevin McCann, Invest Northern Irelands Director of Transport, Construction and Tourism said “Securing this project in Amsterdam is a significant achievement for EDM Spanwall.  It has invested considerable time and resources, with advice and support from Invest NI to ensure it can compete globally for new business.  It is a good example of how Northern Ireland manufacturers continue to be internationally competitive.”

About Spanwall

Spanwall has been a specialist producer of architectural façade products for over 40 years.

The company has a team of specialist engineers working in their purpose- built facility located in Carryduff, just outside Belfast.

 Our experience

 In addition to the Titanic Signature Building, Spanwall’s design team has solved and provided fully tested, project-specific rain screen cladding solutions for façade contracts in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter including the Proni building, the Audi showroom, the Innovation Centre, Citi Bank and the ECIT Centre, each in itself an already prestigious project in this rapidly developing part of the city.

 On the international stage, Spanwall’s portfolio includes the award-winning Kensington Oval cricket stadium in Barbados which was built for the cricket world cup final. The 4,500 sqm of the Spanwall rain screen cladding system was designed in-house for the cone-shaped elevations where the panels had to be installed on these very complex radius-curved elevations (no 2 panels were the same). They had to be fitted on a fully adjustable Spanwall carrier system for ease of panel installation. Spanwall’s rain screen design met all these complex design demands and complied with the budgetary constraints.

The company has also provided engineered façades for a number of high-profile architectural projects including The British Airways World Cargo Centre at Heathrow, Bridgewater Place Leeds, City of Manchester Stadium, and John Dalton Towers Manchester, Leicester University Biomedical building and Leverton Gardens Sheffield.

Media contact for Spanwall: Ian Bennington ian@triplicatedesign.com

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) is one of three national archives in the UK and is responsible for the storage, management, conservation and access to historical records of public interest.  The building accommodates some 3000sqm of archival shelving held within the central repository, around which is wrapped 3 storeys of supporting accommodation. A dramatic internal atrium contributes to the natural ventilation of the internal spaces and the expressive form and ‘Corten’ metal cladding (produced by Spanwall) to the repository give a sense of identity to the building’s exterior.

In the main foyer of the building Spanwall created a backround for the famous poem Ulster Names by local poet John Hewitt.

Spanwall, manufacturers of the unique rainscreen cladding for the Titanic Signature Building sponsored the Royal Society of Ulster Architects Autumn Dinner held recently in the Great Hall of Queen’s University.  On the night David Evans, architect, artist, author and academic was made an Honorary member of the RSUA.

Spanwall’s Keith Toner said “this was a huge technical challange but we worked very closly with the project architects TODD’s at the early concept design stage of the building and were able to simplify the design of the complex panel and layout to create 10 standard geometrical shaped J57s anodised aluminium panels plus one very special one-off shaped panel around all the elevations.  We provided technical details and sample panels of TODD’s proposed design solutions to reslove the system in collaboration with their designers and were able to incorporate our own fully tested RF50 Rainscreen carrier systems for the installation of the panels.  This Spanwall design soultion achieved the original concept and vision for the irregular panel facade whilst keeping the costs for the geometrically complex shapes and their installation within the project budget”.

The 93ft Titanic Signature Building’s stunning interior is underway. Manufactured by Spanwall, the unique undulating system of steel panels for the walls and ceiling have been specially corroded to a rusted finish giving them a patina reflective of Belfast’s shipbuilding heritage.